Thackeray Porringer died of apoplexy as a teenage apprentice to a painter who, as a joke, sent him out to find red-and-white paint. He was buried with his favorite book, Robinson Crusoe. Now, angry still, he bounds up the hill to where Bod reads the book and demands it back: “you thief!” Bod insists he’s only borrowing it, and he offers to read it aloud to Thackeray, but the ghost takes the book, punches Bod in the ear, and stomps away.

Bod trots down the walk in the rain. He slips, skinning his knee and tearing his jeans, and later nearly bumps into Euphemia Horsfall and Tom Sands, ghosts out on a date. They inform him that Silas is looking for him. He hurries to the chapel, where Silas says that, at age 11, Bod deserves to know where he came from.

Bod already knows about the assassin. Many from the graveyard have described his first night there, when he was a toddler chased by a strange man. Bod says instead that he wants to know more about the world beyond the graveyard. He’s not afraid of the assassin—he can Haunt and Fade, for example—and he’s not afraid of death, since most of his friends already are dead.