The Halloween Tree Read online

  "Thanks, lad! Free! No fun being wrapped like some old funeral gift for the Land of the Dead. But--hist! Quick, boys, hop in the niches, stand stiff. Someone's coming. Play mummies, boys, play dead!"

  The boys leaped to stand, arms folded, eyes shut, breaths held, like a frieze of small mummies cut in the ancient rock.

  "Easy," whispered Moundshroud. "Here comes--"

  A funeral procession.

  An army of mourners in gold and fine silks bearing small sailing-ship toys and copper bowls of food in their hands.

  And in their midst, a mummy case carried light as sunshine on the shoulders of six men. And behind that, a fresh-wrapped mummy with new paintings on its linen vestments and a small gold mask fitted over the hidden face.

  "See the food, boys, the toys," whispered Moundshroud. "They put toys in the tombs, lads. So the gods will come play, romp, roustabout, and run children happy to the Land of the Dead. See the boats, kites, jump-ropes, toy knives--"

  "But look at the size of that mummy," said Ralph, inside his hot linen bandages. "It's a twelve-year-old boy in there! Like me! And that gold mask on the boy mummy's face--doesn't it look familiar?"

  "Pipkin!" cried everyone, hoarsely.

  "Sh!" hissed Moundshroud.

  For the funeral had stopped, the high priests were glancing around through the flickering torch shadows.

  The boys, high in their niches, squeezed their eyes tight, sucked in their breaths.

  "Not a whisper," said Moundshroud, a mosquito in Tom's ear. "Not a murmur."

  The harp music began again.

  The funeral shuffled on.

  And in the midst of all the gold and toys, the kites of the dead, there was the small twelve-year-old fresh-new mummy with a gold mask that looked just exactly like--

  Pipkin.

  No, no, no, no, no! thought Tom.

  "Yes!" cried a mouse voice, tiny, lost, wrapped away, kept, trapped, wild. "It's me! I'm here. Under the mask. Under the wrappings. Can't move! Can't yell. Can't fight free!"

  Pipkin! thought Tom. Wait!

  "Can't help it! Trapped!" shouted the small wee voice wrapped in picture linens. "Follow! Meet me! Find me at--"

  The voice faded, for the funeral procession had turned a corner in the dark labyrinth and was gone.

  "Follow you where, Pipkin?" Tom Skelton jumped down from his niche and yelled into the dark. "Meet you where?"

  But at that exact moment, Moundshroud, like a chopped tree, fell out of his niche. Bang! he struck the floor.

  "Wait!" he cautioned Tom, looking up at him with one eye that looked like a spider caught in its own web. "We'll save old Pipkin yet. Sly does it. Slide and creep, boys. Ssst."

  They helped him up and unwound some of his mummy wrappings and tiptoed down the long corridor and turned the corner.

  "Holy cow," whispered Tom. "Look. They're putting Pipkin's mummy in the coffin and the coffin inside the--the--"

  "Sarcophagus," Moundshroud supplied the jawcracker. "A coffin in a coffin in a coffin, lad. Each larger than the last, all done up in hieroglyphs to tell his life story--"

  "Pipkin's life?" said all.

  "Or whoever Pipkin was this time around, this year, four thousand years ago."

  "Yeah," whispered Ralph. "Look at the pictures on the sides of the coffin. Pipkin one year old. Pipkin five. Pipkin ten and running fast. Pipkin up an apple tree. Pipkin pretending to drown in the lake. Pipkin eating his way through a peach orchard. Wait, what's that?"

  Moundshroud watched the busy funeral. "They're putting furniture in the tomb for him to use in the Land of the Dead. Boats. Kites. Tops to spin. Fresh fruits should Pipkin wake a hundred years from now, hungry."

  "He'll be hungry all right. Good grief, look, they're going out! They're closing the tomb!" Moundshroud had to grab and hold Tom for he was jumping up and down in agony. "Pipkin's still in there, buried! When do we save him?"

  "Later. The Long Night is young. We'll see Pipkin again, never fear. Then--"

  The tomb door slammed shut.

  The boys yammered and yelled. In the dark they could hear the scrape and slosh of mortar filling the last cracks and seams as the final stones were shoved in place.

  The mourners went away with their silent harps.

  Ralph stood in his Mummy costume, stunned, watching the last shadows go.

  "Is that why I'm dressed like a mummy?" He fingered the bandages. He touched his clay-wrinkled ancient face. "Is that what my part of Halloween is all about?"

  "All, boy, all," murmured Moundshroud. "The Egyptians, why, they built to last. Ten thousand years they planned for. Tombs, boys, tombs. Graves. Mummies. Bones. Death, death. Death was at the very heart, gizzard, light, soul, and body of their life! Tombs and more tombs with secret passages, so none might be found, so grave robbers could not borrow souls and toys and gold. You are a mummy, boy, because that was how they dressed for Eternity. Spun up in a cocoon of threads, they hoped to come forth like lovely butterflies in some far dear loving world. Know your cocoon, boy. Touch the strange stuffs."

  "Why," said Ralph the Mummy, blinking at the smoky walls and old hieroglyphs. "Every day was Halloween to them!"

  "Every day!" gasped all, in admiration.

  "Every day was Halloween for them, too." Moundshroud pointed.

  The boys turned.

  A kind of green electric storm simmered in the tomb dungeon. The ground shuddered as with an ancient earthquake. Somewhere, a volcano turned over in its sleep, lighting the walls with one fiery shoulder.

  And on the walls beyond were prehistoric drawings of cavemen, long before the Egyptians.

  "Now," said Moundshroud.

  Lightning struck.

  Saber-toothed tigers caught the cavemen screaming. Tarpits drowned their bones. They sank, wailing.

  "Wait. Let's save a few with fire."

  Moundshroud blinked. Lightning struck to burn forests. One apeman, running, seized a burning branch and rammed it in a saber-tooth's jaws. The tiger shrieked and fell away. The apeman, snorting in triumph, tossed the fiery branch into a pile of autumn leaves in his cave. Other men came to hold their hands out to the fire, laughing at the night where the yellow beast eyes waited, afraid.

  "See, boys?" Moundshroud's face flickered with the fire. "The days of the Long Cold are done. Because of this one brave, new-thinking man, summer lives in the winter cave."

  "But?" said Tom. "What's that got to do with Halloween?"

  "Do? Why, blast my bones, everything. When you and your friends die every day, there's no time to think of Death, is there? Only time to run. But when you stop running at long last--"

  He touched the walls. The apemen froze in mid-flight.

  "--now you have time to think of where you came from, where you're going. And fire lights the way, boys. Fire and lightning. Morning stars to gaze at. Fire in your own cave to protect you. Only by night fires was the caveman, beastman, able at last to turn his thoughts on a spit and baste them with wonder. The sun died in the sky. Winter came on like a great white beast shaking its fur, burying him. Would spring ever come back to the world? Would the sun be reborn next year or stay murdered? Egyptians asked it. Cavemen asked it a million years before. Will the sun rise tomorrow morning?"

  "And that's how Halloween began?"

  "With such long thoughts at night, boys. And always at the center of it, fire. The sun. The sun dying down the cold sky forever. How that must have scared early man, eh? That was the Big Death. If the sun went away forever, then what?

  "So in the middle of autumn, everything dying, apemen turned in their sleep, remembered their own dead of the last year. Ghosts called in their heads. Memories, that's what ghosts are, but apemen didn't know that. Behind their eyelids, late nights, the memory ghosts called, waved, danced, so apemen woke up, tossed twigs on the fire, shivered, wept. They could drive away wolves but not memories, not ghosts. So they held tight to their ribs, prayed for spring, watched the fire, thanked invisible gods for harvests of fru
it and nuts.

  "Halloween, indeed! A million years ago, in a cave in autumn, with ghosts inside heads, and the sun lost."

  Moundshroud's voice faded.

  He unraveled another yard or two of mummy wrappings, draped them over his arm grandly and said: "More to see. Come on, boys."

  And they walked out of the catacombs into the twilight of an old Egyptian day.

  A great pyramid lay before them, waiting.

  "Last one to the top," said Moundshroud, "is a monkey's uncle!"

  And the monkey's uncle was Tom.

  Gasping, they reached the pyramid's top where waited a vast crystal lens, a viewing glass which spun slowly in the wind on a golden tripod, a gigantic eye with which to bring far places near.

  In the west, the sun, smothered and dying in clouds, sank. Moundshroud hooted his delight:

  "There it goes, boys. The heart, soul, and flesh of Halloween. The Sun! There Osiris is murdered again. There sinks Mithras, the Persian fire. There falls Phoebus Apollo all Grecian light. Sun and flame, boys. Look and blink. Turn that crystal spyglass. Swing it down the Mediterranean Coast a thousand miles. See the Greek Isles?"

  "Sure," said plain George Smith, dressed up as fancy pale ghost. "Cities, towns, streets, houses. People jumping out on porches to bring food!"

  "Yes." Moundshroud beamed. "Their Festival of the Dead: the Feast of Pots. Trick-or-Treat old style. But tricks from the dead if you don't feed them. So treats are laid out in fine banquets on the sill!"

  Far away, in the sweet dusk, smells of cooked meats steamed, dishes were dealt out for spirits that smoked across the land of the living. The women and children of the Grecian homes came and went with multitudinous quantities of spiced and delectable victuals.

  Then, all through the Grecian Isles, doors slammed. The vast slamming echoed along the dark wind.

  "The temples shutting tight," said Moundshroud. "Every holy place in Greece will be double-locked this night."

  "And look!" Ralph-who-was-a-Mummy swung the crystal lens. The light flared over the boys' masks. "Those people, why are they painting black molasses on their front door posts?"

  "Pitch," corrected Moundshroud. "Black tar to glue the ghosts, stick them fast, so they can't get inside."

  "Why," said Tom, "didn't we think of that!?"

  Darkness moved down the Mediterranean shores. From the tombs, like mist, the dead spirits wavered in soot and black plumes along the streets to be caught in the dark tar that smeared the porch sills. The wind mourned, as if telling the anguish of the trapped dead.

  "Now, Italy. Rome." Moundshroud turned the lens to see Roman cemeteries where people placed food on graves and hurried off.

  The wind whipped Moundshroud's cape. It hollowed his mouth:

  "O autumn winds that bake and burn

  And all the world to darkness turn,

  Now storm and seize and make of me...

  A swarm of leaves from Autumn's Tree!"

  He kick-jumped straight up in the air. The boys yelled delight, even as his clothes, cape, hair, skin, body, corn-candy bones tore apart before their eyes.

  "...leaves...burn...

  ...change...turn...!"

  The wind ribboned him to confetti; a million autumn leaves, gold, brown, red as blood, rust, all wild, rustling, simmering, a clutch of oak and maple leaf, a hickory leaf downfall, a toss of flaking whisper, murmur, rustle to the dark river-creek sky. Not one kite, but ten thousand thousand tiny mummy-flake kites, Moundshroud exploded apart:

  "World turn! Leaves burn!

  Grass die! Trees...fly!"

  And from a billion other trees in autumn lands, leaves rushed to join with the upflung battalions of dry bits that were Moundshroud dispersed in whirlwinds from which his voice stormed:

  "Boys, see the fires along the Mediterranean coast? Fires burning north through Europe? Fires of fear. Flames of celebration. Would you spy, boys? Up, now, fly!"

  And the leaves in avalanche fell upon each boy like terrible flapping moths and carried them away. Over Egyptian sands they sang and laughed and giggled. Over the strange sea, rapturous and hysterical, they soared.

  "Happy New Year!" a voice cried, far below.

  "Happy what?" asked Tom.

  "Happy New Year!" Moundshroud, a flock of rusty leaves, rustled his voice. "In old times, the first of November was New Year's Day. The true end of summer, the cold start of winter. Not exactly happy, but, well, Happy New Year!"

  They crossed Europe and saw new water below.

  "The British Isles," whispered Moundshroud. "Would you cock an eye at England's own druid God of the Dead?"

  "We would!"

  "Quiet as milkweed, then, soft as snow, fall, blow away down, each and all."

  The boys fell.

  Like a bushel of chestnuts, their feet rained to earth.

  Now the boys who landed like a downpour of bright autumn trash were in this order:

  Tom Skelton, dressed up in his delicious Bones.

  Henry-Hank, more or less a Witch.

  Ralph Bengstrum, an unraveled Mummy, becoming more unbandaged by the minute.

  A Ghost named George Smith.

  J.J. (no other name needed) a very fine Apeman.

  Wally Babb who said he was a Gargoyle, but everyone said he looked more like Quasimodo.

  Fred Fryer, what else but a beggar fresh out of a ditch.

  And last and not least, "Hackles" Nibley who had run up a costume at the last moment by simply clapping on a white scare-mask and grabbing his grandpa's harvest scythe off the garage wall.

  All the boys being safely landed on English earth, their billion autumn leaves fell off and blew away.

  They stood in the midst of a vast field of wheat.

  "Here, Master Nibley, I brought your scythe. Take it. Grab! Now lie low!" warned Moundshroud. "The Druid God of the Dead! Samhain! Fall!"

  They fell.

  For a huge scythe came skimming down out of the sky. With its great razor edge it cut the wind. With its whistling side it sliced clouds. It beheaded trees. It razored along the cheek of the hill. It made a clean shave of wheat. In the air a whole blizzard of wheat fell.

  And with every whisk, every cut, every scythe, the sky was aswarm with cries and shrieks and screams.

  The scythe hissed up.

  The boys cowered.

  "Hunh!" grunted a large voice.

  "Mr. Moundshroud, is that you!" cried Tom.

  For towering forty feet above them in the sky, an immense scythe in his hands, was this cowled figure, its face in midnight fogs.

  The blade swung down: hisssssss!

  "Mr. Moundshroud, let us be!"

  "Shut up." Someone knocked Tom's elbow. Mr. Moundshroud lay on the earth beside him. "That's not me. That's--"

  "Samhain!" cried the voice in the fog. "God of the Dead! I harvest thus, and so!"

  Sssss-whoooshhhh!

  "All those who died this year are here! And for their sins, this night, are turned to beasts!"

  Sssssswooommmmmmm!

  "Please," whimpered Ralph-the-Mummy.

  Ssssssssttttt! The scythe zippered Hackles Nibley's spine, ripping his costume in a long tear, knocking his own small scythe free of his hands.

  "Beasts!"

  And the harvest wheat, flailed up, spun round on the wind, shrieking its souls, all those who had died in the past twelve months, rained to earth. And falling, touching, the heads of wheat were turned to asses, chickens, snakes which scurried, cackled, brayed; were turned to dogs and cats and cows that barked, cried, bawled. But all were miniature. All were tiny, small, no bigger than worms, no bigger than toes, no bigger than the sliced-off tip of a nose. By the hundreds and thousands the wheat heads snowed up in scatters and fell down as spiders which could not shout or beg or weep for mercy, but which, soundless, raced over the grass, poured over the boys. A hundred centipedes tip-toed on Ralph's spine. Two hundred leeches clung to Hackles Nibley's scythe until with a nightmare gasp he raved and shook them off.
Everywhere fell black widows and tiny boa constrictors.

  "For your sins! Your sins! Take that! And this!" bellowed the voice in the whistling sky.

  The scythe flashed. The wind, cut, fell in bright thunders. The wheat churned and gave up a million heads. Heads fell. Sinners hit like rocks. And, hitting, were turned to frogs and toads and multitudes of scaly warts with legs and jellyfish which stank in the light.

  "I'll be good!" prayed Tom Skelton.

  "Lemme live!" added Henry-Hank.

  All of this said very loudly, for the scythe was making a dreadful roar. It was like an ocean wave falling down out of the sky, cleaning a beach, and running away up to cut more clouds. Even the clouds seemed to be whispering out swift and more fervent prayers for their own fates. Not me! not me!

  "For all the evil you ever did!" said Samhain.

  And the scythe cut and the souls were harvested and fell in blind newts and awful bedbugs and dreadful cockroaches to scuttle, limp, creep, scrabble.

  "My gosh, he's a bug maker."

  "Flea squasher!"

  "Snake grinder-outer!"

  "Roach transformer!"

  "Fly keeper!"

  "No! Samhain! October God. God of the Dead!"

  Samhain stomped a great foot which tread a thousand bugs in the grass, trompled ten thousand tiny soul-beasts in the dust.

  "I think," said Tom, "it's time we--"

  "Ran?" suggested Ralph, not offhand.

  "Shall we take a vote?"

  The scythe hissed. Samhain boomed.

  "Vote, heck!" said Moundshroud.

  All jumped up.

  "You there!" thundered the voice above them. "Come back!"

  "No, sir, thanks," said one and then another.

  And put right foot after left.

  "I figure," said Ralph, panting, leaping, tears on his cheeks. "I been pretty good most of my life. I don't deserve to die."

  "Hah-hnnh!" shouted Samhain.

  The scythe came in a guillotine which chunked the head off an oak tree and felled a maple. A whole orchard of autumn apples fell into a marble pit somewhere. It sounded like a houseful of boys falling downstairs.

  "I don't think he heard you, Ralph," said Tom.

  They dived. They fell among rocks and shrubs.

  The scythe ricocheted off the stones.

  Samhain gave such a yell as brought an avalanche down a small hill nearby.

  "Boy," said Ralph, squinched up, balled up, feet against chest, eyes tight. "England is no place to be a sinner."