(1972) The Halloween Tree Read online

Bong!

  A bell tolled in the sky.

  Bong!

  “… help … !” whispered a voice when the sound had died.

  Bong!

  The boys looked and saw a kind of scaffolding reared up in half a belfry-keep upon the moon. At the very top hung a huge bronze bell that was tolling now.

  And from inside that bell with every crash and bang and gong this small voice shouted:

  “Help!”

  The boys looked at Moundshroud.

  Their eyes blazed a question:

  Pipkin?

  Meet me in the air! thought Tom. And there he is!

  There, hung upside down over Paris, his head for a knocker, was Pipkin in a bell. Or the shadow, ghost, or lost spirit of Pipkin, anyway.

  Which is to say there was a bell and when it sounded the hour, why that sound was made by a flesh-and-blood clapper which knocked the rim. Pipkin’s head banged the bell. Bong! And again: Bong!

  “Knock his brains out,” gasped Henry-Hank.

  “Help!” called Pipkin, a shadow in the bell, a ghost chained upside down to strike the quarters and the hours.

  “Fly!” cried the boys to their brooms, but their brooms lay dead on the Paris stones.

  “No life in them,” mourned Moundshroud. “Juice, sap, and fire all gone. Well, now.” He rubbed his chin to sparks. “How do we get up to help Pipkin, with no brooms?”

  “You fly, Mr. Moundshroud.”

  “Ah, no, that’s not the ticket. You must save him, always and forever, again and again, this night, until one grand salvation. Wait. Ah! Inspiration. We were going to build Notre Dame, correct? Well then, let us by all means build it, there! and climb our way up to hard-skulled knock-the-bell sound-the-hour Pipkin! Hop it, lads! Climb those stairs!”

  “What stairs?”

  “These! Here! Here! And here!”

  Bricks fell in place. The boys leaped. And as they put a foot up, out, and down, a stair came under it, one stone at a time.

  Bong! said the bell.

  Help! said Pipkin.

  Feet galloping empty air came down to tap, rustle, clomp on—

  A step. Another step.

  And yet another and another climbing empty space.

  Help! said Pipkin.

  Bong! again went the hollow bell.

  So they ran on emptiness, with Moundshroud prodding, shoving after. They ran on pure windy light only to have bricks and stones and mortar shuffle like cards, deal themselves solid, take form beneath their toes and heels.

  It was like racing up through a cake that built itself layer on stone layer, and the wild bell and sad Pipkin shouting and pleading them on.

  “Our shadow, there it is!” said Tom.

  And indeed the shadow of this cathedral, this splendid Notre Dame, was tossed by moonlight all across France and half of Europe.

  “Up, boys, up; no pause, no rest, run!”

  Bong!

  Help!

  They ran. They began to fall with each step, but again and again and again steps came in place and saved them and ran them taller so the shadow of the spires loomed tall across rivers and fields to snuff the last witch fires at crossroads. Crones, hags, wise men, demon lovers, a thousand miles off, snuffed like candles, whiffed to smoke, wailed and sank to hide as the church leaned, tilted across the heavens.

  “So even as the Romans cut down druid trees and chopped their God of the Dead to fall, we now with this church, boys, cast such a shadow as knocks all witches off their stilts, and puts seedy sorcerers and trite magicians to heel. No more small witch fires. Only this great lit candle, Notre Dame. Presto!”

  The boys laughed with delight.

  For the last step fell in place.

  They had reached the top, gasping.

  Notre Dame cathedral was finished and built.

  Bong!

  The last soft hour was struck.

  The great bronze bell shuddered.

  And hung empty.

  The boys leaned to peer into its cavernous mouth.

  There was no clapper inside shaped like Pipkin.

  “Pipkin?” they whispered.

  “… kin,” echoed the bell in a small echo.

  “He’s here somewhere. Up there in the air, meet him’s what he promised. And Pipkin falls back on no promises” said Moundshroud. “Look about, boys. Fine handiwork, eh? Centuries of toil done in a fast gallop and sneeze, right? But, ah, ah, something beside Pipkin’s missing. What? Glance up. Scan round. Eh?”

  The boys peered. They puzzled.

  “Er—”

  “Don’t the place look awful plain, boys? Awful untouched and unornamented?”

  “Gargoyles!”

  Everyone turned to look at…

  Wally Babb, who was dressed as a Gargoyle for Halloween. His face fairly beamed with revelation.

  “Gargoyles. The place’s got no gargoyles.”

  “Gargoyles.” Moundshroud uttered and ululated and beautifully ribboned the word with his lizardly tongue. “Gargoyles. Shall we put them on, boys?”

  “How?”

  “Why I should think we could whistle them in place. Whistle for demons, boys, whistle for fiends, give a high tootling blow for beasties and ferocious fanged loomers of the dark.”

  Wally Babb sucked in a great breath. “Here’s mine!”

  He whistled.

  All whistled.

  And the gargoyles?

  They came running.

  The unemployed of all midnight Europe shivered in their stone sleep and came awake.

  Which is to say that all the old beasts, all the old tales, all the old nightmares, all the old unused demons-put-by, and witches left in the lurch, quaked at the call, reared at the whistle, trembled at the summons, and in dust devils of propulsion skimmed down the roads, flitted skies, buckshot through shaken trees, forded streams, swam rivers, pierced clouds, and arrived, arrived.

  Which is still to say that all the dead statues and idols and semigods and demigods of Europe lying like a dreadful snow all about, abandoned, in ruins, gave a blink and start and came as salamanders on the road, or bats in skies or dingoes in the brush. They flew, they galloped, they skittered.

  To the general excitement and amazement and much babbling shout from the fringe of boys leaning out, Moundshroud leaning with them as the mobs of strange beasts came from north, south, east, west to panic at the gates and wait for whistles.

  “Shall we drop white-hot boiling lead down on them?”

  The boys saw Moundshroud’s smile.

  “Heck, no,” said Tom. “Hunchback already did that years ago!”

  “Well, then, no burning lava. So shall we whistle them up?”

  They all whistled.

  And obedient to summons, the mobs, the flocks, the prides, the crush, the collection, the raving flux of monsters, beasts, vices rampant, virtues gone sour, discarded saints, misguided prides, hollow pomps oozed, slid, suckered, pelted, ran bold and right up the sides of Notre Dame. In a floodtide of nightmare, in a tidal wave of outcry and shamble they inundated the cathedral, to crust themselves on every pinion and upthrust stone.

  So here ran pigs and there climbed Satan’s goats and yet another wall knew devils which recarved themselves along the way, dropped horns and grew new ones, shaved beards to sprout tendril earthworm mustaches.

  Sometimes a swarm of only masks and faces scuttled up the walls and took the buttress heights, carried by an army of crayfish and wobbly-crotchety lobsters. Here came the heads of gorillas, full of sin and teeth. There came men’s heads with sausages in their mouths. Beyond danced the mask of a Fool upheld by a spider that knew ballet.

  So much was going on that Tom said: “My gosh, so much is going on!”

  “And more to come, there!” said Moundshroud.

  For now that Notre Dame was infested with various beasts and spidering leers and gloms and masks, why here came dragons chasing children and whales swallowing Jonahs and chariots chockful of skulls-and-bones. Acrobats and tum
blers, yanked out of shape by demidemons, limped and fell in strange postures to freeze on the roof.

  All accompanied by pigs with harps and sows with piccolos and dogs playing bagpipes, so the music itself helped charm and pull new mobs of grotesques up the walls to be trapped and caught forever in sockets of stone.

  Here an ape plucked a lyre; there floundered a woman with a fish’s tail. Now a sphinx flew out of the night, shed its wings and became woman and lion, half and half, settled to snooze away the centuries in the shadow and sound of high bells.

  “Why, what are those?” cried Tom.

  Moundshroud, leaning over, gave a snort: “Why those are Sins, boys! And nondescripts. There crawls the Worm of Conscience!”

  They looked to see it crawl. It crawled very fine.

  “Now,” whispered Moundshroud softly. “Settle. Slumber. Sleep.”

  And the flocks of strange creatures turned about three times like evil dogs and lay down. All beasts took root. All grimaces froze to stone. All cries faded.

  The moon shadowed and lit the gargoyles of Notre Dame.

  “Does it make sense, Tom?”

  “Sure. All the old gods, all the old dreams, all the old nightmares, all the old ideas with nothing to do, out of work, we gave them work. We called them here!”

  “And here they will remain for centuries, right?”

  “Right!”

  They looked down over the rim.

  There was a mob of beasts on the east battlement.

  A crowd of sins on the west.

  A surge of nightmares on the south.

  And a fine scuttle of unnamed vices and ill-kept virtues to the north.

  “I,” said Tom, proud of this night’s work, “wouldn’t mind living here.”

  The wind crooned in the mouths of the beasts. Their fangs hissed and whistled: “Much thanks.”

  “Jehosophat,” said Tom Skelton, on the parapet. “We whistled all the stone griffins and demons here. Now Pipkin’s lost again. I was thinking, why can’t we whistle him?”

  Moundshroud laughed so his cape boomed on the night wind and his dry bones jangled inside his skin.

  “Boys! Look around! He’s still here!”

  “Where?”

  “Here,” mourned a small faraway voice.

  The boys crickled their spines looking over the parapet, cracked their necks staring up.

  “Look and find, lads, hide and seek!”

  And even in seeking they could not help but enjoy once more the turbulent slates of the cathedral all fringed with horrors and deliciously ugly with trapped beasts.

  Where was Pipkin among all those dark sea creatures with gills gaped open like mouths for an eternal gasp and sigh? Where among all those lovely chiseled nightmares cut from the gallstones of night-lurks and monsters cracked out of old earthquakes, vomited up from mad volcanoes which cooled themselves to frights and deliriums?

  “Here,” wailed a far, small, familiar voice again.

  And way down on a ledge, halfway to the earth, the boys, squinting, thought they saw one small round beautiful angel-devil face with a familiar eye, a familiar nose, a friendly and familiar mouth.

  “Pipkin!”

  Shouting, they ran down stairways along dark corridors until they reached a ledge. Far out there on the windy air, above a very narrow walkway indeed, was that small face, lovely among so much ugliness.

  Tom went first, not looking down, spreadeagling himself. Ralph followed. The rest inched along in a line.

  “Watch out, Tom, don’t fall!”

  “I’m not fallin’. Here’s Pip.”

  And there he was.

  Standing in a line directly under the outthrust stone mask, the bust, the head of a gargoyle, they looked up at that mighty fine profile, that great nub nose, that unbearded cheek, that fuzzy cap of marbled hair.

  Pipkin.

  “Pip, for cri-yi, what you doin’ here?” called Tom.

  Pip said nothing.

  His mouth was cut stone.

  “Aw it’s just rock,” said Ralph. “Just a gargoyle carved here a long time ago, looks like Pipkin.”

  “No, I heard him call!”

  “But, how—”

  And then the wind gave them the answer.

  It blew around the high corners of Notre Dame. It fluted in the ears and piped out the gaping mouths of the gargoyles.

  “Ahhh—” whispered Pipkin’s voice.

  The hair stood up on the backs of their necks.

  “Ooooo,” murmured the stone mouth.

  “Listen. There it is!” said Ralph excitedly.

  “Shut up!” cried Tom. “Pip? Next time the wind blows, tell us, how do we help? What got you here? How do we get you down?”

  Silence. The boys clung to the rock-cliff face of the great cathedral.

  Then another swoop of wind sucked by, drew their breaths, and whistled in the carved stone boy’s teeth.

  “One—” said Pip’s voice.

  “—question,” whispered Pip’s voice again after a pause.

  Silence. More wind.

  “At a—”

  The boys waited.

  “—time.”

  “One question at a time!” translated Tom.

  The boys hooted with laughter. That was Pip all right.

  “Okay” Tom gathered his spit. “What are you doing up here?”

  The wind blew sadly and the voice spoke as from deep in an old well:

  “Been—so many—places—in just—a few—hours.”

  The boys waited, grinding their teeth.

  “Speak up, Pipkin!”

  The wind came back to mourn in the open stone mouth:

  But the wind had died.

  It began to rain.

  And this was best of all. For the raindrops ran cold in Pipkin’s stone ears and out along his nose and fountained from his marble mouth so that he began to utter syllables in liquid tongues, with clear cold rainwater words:

  “Hey—this is better!”

  He spouted mist, he sprayed quick rain:

  “You should’ve been where I been! Gosh! I was buried for a mummy! I was trapped in a dog!”

  “We guessed that was you, Pipkin!”

  “And now here,” said the rain in the ear, the rain in the nose, the rain in the clear-dripping marble mouth. “Gosh, golly, funny, strange, inside this rock with all these devils and demons for pals! And, ten minutes from now, who knows where I’ll be? higher up? or buried deep!”

  “Where, Pipkin?”

  The boys jostled. The rain squalled and beat them so they almost tilted and fell off the ledge.

  “Are you dead, Pipkin?”

  “No, not yet,” said the cold rain in his mouth. “Part of me in a hospital a long way off home, part of me in that old Egyptian tomb. Part of me in the grass in England. Part of me here. Part of me in a worse place—”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t, oh gosh, one minute I’m yelling laughs, the next I’m scared. Now, just now, this very minute, I guess, I know, I’m scared. Help me, guys. Help, oh please!”

  Rain poured out his eyes like tears.

  The boys reached up to touch Pipkin’s chin, as best they could. But before they could touch …

  A lightning bolt struck out of the sky.

  It flashed blue and white.

  The entire cathedral shook. The boys had to grab demons’ horns and angels’ wings on either side so as not to be knocked off.

  Thunder and smoke. And a great scattering of rock and stone.

  Pipkin’s face was gone. Knocked off by the lightning bolt, it fell down through space to shatter the ground below.

  “Pipkin!”

  But there below on the cathedral porch stones were only flinty firesparks blowing away, and a fine gargoyle dust. Nose, chin, stone lip, hard cheek, bright eye, carved fine ear, all, all whipped away on the wind in chaff and shrapnel dust. They saw something like a spirit smoke, a bloom of gunpowder blow drifting south and west. />
  “Mexico—” Moundshroud, one of the few men in all the world who knew how to utter, uttered the word.

  “Mexico?” asked Tom.

  “The last grand travel of this night,” said Moundshroud, still uttering, savoring the syllables. “Whistle, boys, scream like tigers, cry like panthers, shriek like carnivores!”

  “Scream, cry, shriek?”

  “Reassemble the Kite, lads, the Kite of Autumn. Paste back the fangs and fiery eyes and bloody talons. Yell the wind to sew it all together and ride us high and long and last. Bray, boys, whimper, trumpet, shout!”

  The boys hesitated. Moundshroud ran along the ledge like someone racketing a picket fence. He knocked each boy with his knee and elbow. The boys fell, and falling gave each his particular whimper, shriek, or scream.

  Plummeting down through cold space, they felt the tail of a murderous peacock flourish beneath, all blood-filled eye. Ten thousand burning eyes came up.

  Hovered suddenly round a windy corner of gargoyles, the Autumn Kite, freshly assembled, broke their fall.

  They grabbed, they held to rim, to edge, to cross-struts, to trapdrum rattling papers, to bits and tatters and shreds of old meat-breath lion-mouth, and stale-blood tiger’s maw.

  Moundshroud leaped up to grab. This time he was the tail.

  The Autumn Kite hovered, waiting, eight boys upon its billowing surf of teeth and eyes.

  Moundshroud tuned his ear.

  Hundreds of miles away, beggars ran down Irish roads, starving, asking for food from door to door. Their cries rose in the night.

  Fred Fryer, in his beggar’s costume, heard.

  “That way! Let’s fly there!”

  “No. No time. Listen!”

  Thousands of miles away, there was a faint tap-hammering of deathwatch beetles ticking the night.

  “The coffin makers of Mexico.” Moundshroud smiled. “In the streets with their long boxes and nails and little hammers, tapping, tapping.”

  “Pipkin?” whispered the boys.

  “We hear,” said Moundshroud. “And, to Mexico, we go.”

  The Autumn Kite boomed them away on a one-thousand-foot tidal wave of wind.

  The gargoyles, fluting in their stone nostrils, gaping their marble lips, used that same wind to wail them farewell.

  They hung above Mexico.

  They hung above an island in that lake in Mexico.