On the first page of the excerpt (page 6), the narrator explains that the child awoke when something beneath him crashed. Consid
ering what we learn later on, what most likely happened in the scene before this? Who is the man Jack, and why is he looking for the boy? Study Sync The Graveyard Book
The most likely explanation of what happened in the scene before is that the boy's mother was killed by the husband and in a fight to stay alive she put up a fight. This fight created the loud crashes, but sadly she lost the fight as well as her life. We can infer this because Mrs. Owens says when her figure appears in the graveyard "..Freshly dead by the look of her."
Man Jack is most likely the man that killed the mother of the boy. He is looking for the boy so that he can "eliminate" him and hide the evidence and then leave town, also leaving no evidence of a crime, doing this so he get quickly leave town, not get caught, and if he does get found out he will be far away from the crime scene and inevitably become untraceable
