(1972) The Halloween Tree Read online

  “Almost midnight, boys. Halloween’s almost over.”

  “But!” cried Tom. “What about Pipkin? We followed him through history, burying him, digging him up, walking him in parades, crying him in wakes. Is or isn’t he alive?”

  “Yeah!” said everyone. “Did we save him?”

  “Did you, indeed?”

  Moundshroud stared. They stared with him, across the ravine to a building where lights were going out.

  “That’s his hospital, boys. But check his house. The final knock of the night, the last grand trick or treat. Go ask for final answers. Mr. Marley, see them out!”

  The front door flew wide—bang!

  The Marley knocker on the door gaped its bandaged jaw and whistled them farewell as the boys slid down the banisters and raced for the door.

  They were stopped by a final shout from Moundshroud: “Boys! Well, which was it? Tonight, with me—trick or treat?”

  The boys took a vast breath, held it, burst it out: “Gosh, Mr. Moundshroud—both!”

  Rap! went the Marley knocker.

  Slam! went the door.

  And the boys were gone running, running down through the ravine and up along the street gasping hot gusts of air, their masks falling to be trampled until at last they stopped on Pipkin’s sidewalk and looked at the far hospital and back at Pipkin’s front door.

  “You go, Tom, you,” said Ralph.

  And Tom slowly edged up to the house and put his foot on the front step and then the second step up and approached the door, afraid to knock, afraid to find the final answer about dear old Pipkin. Pipkin dead? Pipkin in a last funeral? Pipkin, Pipkin gone forever? No!

  He tapped at the door.

  The boys waited on the sidewalk.

  The door opened. Tom went in. There was a long moment of the boys on the sidewalk standing cold and letting the wind freeze their most awful thoughts.

  Well? they yelled silently in at the house, the shut door, the dark windows, well? well? What?

  And then at last the door opened again, and Tom came out and stood on the porch not knowing where he was.

  Then Tom looked up and saw his friends waiting for him a million miles off.

  Tom leaped off the porch, yelling.

  “Oh gosh, oh gosh, oh, Gosh!”

  He ran along the sidewalk, shrieking: “He’s okay, he’s all right, he’s okay! Pipkin’s in the hospital! took his appendix out at nine tonight! got it just in time! doctor says he’s great!”

  “Pipkin—?”

  “Hospital—?”

  “Great—?”

  The air jumped out as if each had been punched in the stomach. Then the air went in and out again in a great rave, a yell, a ragged shout of triumph.

  “Pipkin, oh, Pipkin, Pip!”

  And the boys stood on Pipkin’s lawn and the sidewalk in front of Pipkin’s porch and house and looked with numb curiosity at each other as their smiles spread and their eyes watered and they yelled and the happy tears ran down their cheeks.

  “Oh, boy, boy oh boy, oh boy oh boy,” said Tom, exhausted, and weeping with happiness.

  “You can say that again,” said someone, and they all said it again.

  And they all stood there and had a fine happy cry.

  And since the whole night was turning soupy with tears, Tom looked around and revved them up. “Look at Pipkin’s house. Don’t it look awful? Tell you what we do—!”

  And they ran and each came back carrying a lit pumpkin and lined them up on Pipkin’s porch rail where they smiled outrageous smiles to wait for Pipkin to come home.

  And they stood on the lawn and looked at the lovely sight of all those smiles, their costumes tattered upon their arms and shoulders and legs, and the greasepaint dripped and running on their faces, and a great wondrous happy tiredness gathering in their eyelids and arms and feet, but not wanting to go yet.

  And the town clock struck midnight—GUNNNG!

  And gunnng again, to a full count of twelve.

  And Halloween was over.

  And all about the town, doors were slamming and lights going out.

  The boys began to drift saying Night and Night and again Night and some Good Night but most Night, yes, Night. And the lawn was empty, but Pipkin’s porch was just full of candle illumination and warmth and baked pumpkin smell.

  And Ghost and Mummy and Skeleton and Witch and all the rest were back at their own homes, on their own porches, and each turned to look at the town and remember this special night they would never in all their lives ever forget and they looked across the town at one another’s porches but especially on and over across the ravine to that great House where at the very top Mr. Moundshroud stood on his spike-railinged roof.

  The boys waved, each from his own porch.

  The smoke curling out of the high Moundshroud gothic chimney fluttered, motioned, waved back.

  And still more doors were slamming to lock all around town.

  And with each slam, one more pumpkin and then another and another and another on the huge Halloween Tree snuffed out. By the dozens, by the hundreds, by the thousands, doors banged, pumpkins went blind, snuffed candles smoked delicious smokes.

  The Witch hesitated, went in, shut the door.

  A Witch-faced pumpkin on the Tree went dark.

  The Mummy stepped into his house and shut his door.

  A pumpkin with the face of a mummy extinguished its light.

  And finally, the last boy in all the town remaining alone on his veranda, Tom Skelton in his skull and bones hating to go in, wanting to wring the last dear drop from his favorite holiday in all the year, sent his thoughts on the night air toward the strange house beyond the ravine:

  Mr. Moundshroud, who are YOU?

  And Mr. Moundshroud, way up there on the roof, sent his thoughts back:

  I think you know, boy, I think you know.

  Will we meet again, Mr. Moundshroud?

  Many years from now, yes, I’ll come for you.

  And a last thought from Tom:

  O Mr. Moundshroud, will we EVER stop being afraid of nights and death?

  And the thought returned:

  When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.

  Tom listened, heard, and waved quietly.

  Mr. Moundshroud, far off, lifted his hand.

  Click. Tom’s front door went shut.

  His pumpkin-like-a-skull, on the vast Tree, sneezed and went dark.

  The wind stirred the great Halloween Tree which was now empty of all light save one pumpkin at the very top.

  A pumpkin with Mr. Moundshroud’s eyes and face.

  At the top of the house, Mr. Moundshroud leaned out, took a breath, blew.

  His candle in his pumpkin head on the Tree fluttered, died.

  Miraculously, smoke curled out of his own mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes, as if his soul had been extinguished within his lungs at the very moment the sweet pumpkin gave up its incensed ghost.

  He sank down into his house. The roof trapdoor closed.

  The wind came by. It rocked all the dark smoking pumpkins on the vast and beautiful Halloween Tree. The wind seized a thousand dark leaves and blew them away up over the sky and down over the earth toward the sun that must surely rise.

  Like the town, the Tree turned off its embered smiles and slept.

  At two in the morning, the wind came back for more leaves.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. His formal education ended there, but he furthered it by himself—at night in the library and by day at his typewriter. He sold newspapers on Los Angeles street corners from 1938 to 1942, a modest beginning for a man whose name would one day be synonymous with the best in science fiction. Ray Bradbury sold his first science fiction short story in 1941, and his early reputation is based on stories published in the budding science fiction magazines of that
time. His work was chosen for best American short story collections in 1946, 1948 and 1952. His awards include The O. Henry Memorial Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award in 1954 and The Aviation-Space Writer’s Association Award for best space article in an American magazine in 1967. Mr. Bradbury has written for television, radio, the theater and film, and he has been published in every major American magazine. Editions of his novels and shorter fiction span several continents and languages, and he has gained world-wide acceptance for his work. His titles include The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, I Sing the Body Electric, The Golden Apples of the Sun, A Medicine for Melancholy, The Illustrated Man, Long After Midnight, The Toynbee Convector, Death Is a Lonely Business, A Graveyard for Lunatics and Green Shadows, White Whale.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  Joseph Mugnaini is a professor of art at the Otis Art Institute. He has written two books on painting and drawing. Three of his lithographs have been placed in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress. He lives in California with his family.