The Halloween Tree

And as the boys watched, a new thing happened.

The pumpkins began to come alive.

One by one, starting at the bottom of the Tree and the nearest pumpkins, candles took fire within the raw interiors. This one and then that and this and then still another, and on up and around, three pumpkins here, seven pumpkins still higher, a dozen clustered beyond, a hundred, five hundred, a thousand pumpkins lit their candles, which is to say brightened up their faces, showed fire in their square or round or curiously slanted eyes. Flame guttered in their toothed mouths. Sparks leaped out their ripe-cut ears.

And from somewhere two voices, three or maybe four voices whispered and chanted a kind of singsong or old sea shanty of the sky and time and the earth turning over into sleep. The rain-spouts blew spiderdust:

“It’s big, it’s broad …”

A voice smoked from the rooftop chimney:

“It’s broad, it’s bright …

It fills the sky of All Hallows’ Night …”

From open windows somewhere, cobwebs drifted:

“The strangest sight you’ve ever seen.

The Monster Tree on Halloween.”

The candles flickered and flared. The wind crooned in, the wind crooned out the pumpkin mouths, tuning the song:

“The leaves have burned to gold and red

The grass is brown, the old year dead,

But hang the harvest high, Oh see!

The candle constellations on the Halloween Tree!”

Tom felt his mouth stir like a small mouse, wanting to sing:

“The stars they turn, the candles burn

And the mouse-leaves scurry on the cold wind bourne,

And a mob of smiles shine down on thee

From the gourds hung high on the Halloween Tree.

The smile of the Witch, and the smile of the Cat,

The smile of the Beast, the smile of the Bat,

The smile of the Reaper taking his fee

All cut and glimmer on the Halloween Tree …”

Smoke seemed to sift from Tom’s mouth:

“Halloween Tree …”

All the boys whispered it:

“Halloween … Tree …”

And then there was silence.

And during the silence the last of the triples and quadruples of All Hallows’ Tree candles were lit in titanic constellations woven up through the black branches and peeking down through the twigs and crisp leaves.

And the Tree had now become one vast substantial Smile.

The last of the pumpkins now were lit. The air around the Tree was Indian-summer-breathing warm. The Tree exhaled sooty smoke and raw-pumpkin smell upon them.

“Gosh,” said Tom Skelton.

“Hey, what kind of place is this?” asked Henry-Hank, the Witch. “I mean, first the house, that man and no treats only tricks, and now—? I never saw a tree like this in my life. Like a Christmas tree only bigger and all those candles and pumpkins. What’s it mean? What’s it celebrate?”

“Celebrate!” a vast voice whispered somewhere, perhaps in a chimney soot bellows, or perhaps all the windows of the house opened like mouths at the same moment behind them, sliding up, sliding down, announcing the word “Celebrate!” with breathings-out of darkness. “Yes,” said the gigantic whisper, which trembled the candles in the pumpkins. “… celebration …”

The boys leaped around.

But the house was still. The windows were closed and brimmed with pools of moonlight.

“Last one in’s an Old Maid!” cried Tom, suddenly.

And a bon of leaves lay waiting like old fires, old gold.

And the boys ran and dived at the huge lovely pile of autumn treasure.

And in the moment of diving, about to vanish beneath the leaves in crisp swarms, yelling, shouting, shoving, falling, there was an immense gulp of breath, a seizing in of air. The boys yelped, pulled back as if an invisible whip had struck them.

For coming up out of the pile of leaves was a bony white hand, all by itself.

And following it, all smiles, hidden one moment but now revealed as it slid upward, was a white skull.

And what had been a delicious pool of oak and elm and poplar leaves to thrash and sink and hide in, now became the last place on all this world the boys wanted to be. For the white bony hand was flying on the air. And the white skull rose to hover before them.

And the boys fell back, colliding, sneezing out their air in panics, until in one wild mass they fell flat upon the earth and writhed and tore at the grass to fight free, scramble, try to run.

“Help!” they cried.

“Oh, yes, help,” said the Skull.

Then peal after peal of laughter froze them further as the hand upon the air, the bony skeleton hand, reached up, took hold of the white skull face and—peeled it down and off!

The boys blinked once behind their masks. Their jaws dropped, though none could see them dropping.

The huge man in dark clothes soared up out of the leaves, taller and yet taller. He grew like a tree. He put out branches that were hands. He stood framed against the Halloween Tree itself, his outstretched arms and long white bony fingers festooned with orange globes of fire and burning smiles. His eyes were pressed tight as he roared his laughter. His mouth gaped wide to let an autumn wind rush out.

“Not treat, boys, no, not Treat! Trick, boys, Trick! Trick!”

They lay there waiting for the earthquake to come. And it came. The tall man’s laughter took hold of the ground and gave it a shake. This tremor, passed through their bones, came out their mouths. And it came out in the form of still more laughter!

They sat up amid the ruins of the thrashed-about leaf pile, surprised. They put their hands to their masks to feel the hot air leaping out in small gusts of echoing mirth.

Then they looked up at the man as if to verify their surprise.

“Yes, boys, that, that was a Trick! You’d forgotten? No, you never knew!”

And he leaned against the Tree, finishing out his fits of happiness, shaking the trunk, making the thousand pumpkins shiver and the fires inside to smoke and dance.

Warmed by their laughter, the boys got up to feel their bones and see if anything was broken. Nothing was. They stood in a small mob under the Halloween Tree, waiting, for they knew this was only the beginning of something new and special and grand and fine.

“Well,” said Tom Skelton.

“Well, Tom,” said the man.

“Tom?” cried everyone else. “Is that you?”

Tom, in the Skeleton mask, stiffened.

“Or is it Bob or Fred, no, no, that must be Ralph,” said the man, quickly.

“All of those!” sighed Tom, clapping his mask hard in place, relieved.

“Yeah, all!” said everyone.

The man nodded, smiling. “Well now! Now you know something about Halloween you never knew before. How did you like my Trick?”

“Trick, yes, trick.” The boys were catching fire with the idea. It made all the good glue go out of their joints and put a little dust of sin in their blood. They felt it stir around until it pumped on up to light their eyes and stretch their lips to show their happy-dog teeth. “Yeah, sure.”

“Is this what you used to do on Halloween?” asked the Witch boy.

“This, and more. But, let me introduce myself! Moundshroud is the name. Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud. Does that have a ring, boys? Does it sound for you?”

It sounds, the boys thought, oh, oh, it sounds …!

Moundshroud.

“A fine name,” said Mr. Moundshroud, giving it a full sepulchral night-church sound. “And a fine night. And all the deep dark wild long history of Halloween waiting to swallow us whole!”

“Swallow us?”

“Yes!” cried Moundshroud. “Lads, look at yourselves. Why are you, boy, wearing that Skull face? And you, boy, carrying a scythe, and you, lad, made up like a Witch? And you, you, you!” He thrust his bony finger at each mask. “You don’t know, do you? You just put on those faces and old mothball clothes and jump out, but you don’t really know, do you?”

“Well,” said Tom, a mouse behind his skull-white muslin. “Er—no.”

“Yeah,” said the Devil boy. “Come to think of it, “Why am I wearing this?” He fingered his red cloak and sharp rubber horns and lovely pitchfork.

“And me, this,” said the Ghost, trailing its long white graveyard sheets.

And all the boys were given to wonder, and touched their own costumes and refit their own masks.

“Then wouldn’t it be fun for you to find out?” asked Mr. Moundshroud. “I’ll tell you! No, I’ll show you! If only there was time—”

“It’s only six thirty. Halloween hasn’t even begun!” said Tom-in-his-cold-bones.

“True!” said Mr. Moundshroud. “All right, lads—come along!”

He strode. They ran.

At the edge of the deep dark night ravine he pointed over the rim of the hills and the earth, away from the light of the moon, under the dim light of strange stars. The wind fluttered his black cloak and the hood that half shadowed and now half revealed his almost fleshless face.

“There, do you see it, lads?”

“What?”

“The Undiscovered Country. Out there. Look long, look deep, make a feast. The Past, boys, the Past. Oh, it’s dark, yes, and full of nightmare. Everything that Halloween ever was lies buried there. Will you dig for bones, boys? Do you have the stuff?”

He burned his gaze at them.

“What is Halloween? How did it start? Where? Why? What for? Witches, cats, mummy dusts, haunts. It’s all there in that country from which no one returns. Will you dive into the dark ocean, boys? Will you fly in the dark sky?”

The boys swallowed hard.

Someone peeped: “We’d like to, but—Pipkin. We’ve got to wait for Pipkin.”

“Yeah, Pipkin sent us to your place. We couldn’t go without him.”

As if summoned in this instant they heard a cry from the far side of the ravine.

“Hey! Here I am!” called a frail voice. They saw his small figure standing with a lit pumpkin, on the far ravine ledge.

“This way!” they all yelled. “Pipkin! Quick!”

“Coming!” was the cry. “I don’t feel so good. But—I had to come—wait for me!”

Chapter 6

They saw his small figure run down the middle of the ravine, on the path.

“Oh, wait, please wait—” the voice began to fail. “I don’t feel well. I can’t run. Can’t—can’t—”

“Pipkin!” everyone shouted, waving from the edge of the cliff.

His figure was small, small, small. There were shadows mixed everywhere. Bats flew. Owls shrieked. Night ravens clustered like black leaves in trees.

The small boy, running with his lit pumpkin, fell.

“Oh,” gasped Moundshroud.

The pumpkin light went out.

“Oh,” gasped everyone.

“Light your pumpkin, Pip, light it!” shrieked Tom.

He thought he saw the small figure scrabbling in the dark grass below, trying to strike a light. But in that instant of darkness, the night swept in. A great wing folded over the abyss. Many owls hooted. Many mice scampered and slithered in the shadows. A million tiny murders happened somewhere.

“Light your pumpkin, Pip!”

“Help—” wailed his sad voice.

A thousand wings flew away. A great beast beat the air some-where like a thumping drum.

The clouds, like gauzy scenes, were pulled away to set a clean sky. The moon was there, a great eye.

It looked down upon—

An empty path.

Pipkin nowhere to be seen.

Way off, toward the horizon, something dark frittered and danced and slithered away in the cold star air.

“Help—help—” wailed a fading voice.

Then it was gone.

“Oh,” mourned Mr. Moundshroud. “This is bad. I fear Something has taken him away.”

“Where, where?” gibbered the boys, cold.

“To the Undiscovered Country. The Place I wanted to show you. But now—”

“You don’t mean that Thing in the ravine, It, or Him, or whatever, that Something, was—Death? Did he grab Pipkin and—run?!”

“Borrowed is more like it, perhaps to hold him for ransom,” said Moundshroud.

“Can Death do that?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Oh, gosh.” Tom felt his eyes water. “Pip, tonight, running slow, so pale. Pip, you shouldn’t’ve come out!” he shouted at the sky, but there was only wind there and white clouds floating like old spirit fluff, and a clear river of wind.

They stood, cold, shivering. They looked off to where the Dark Something had stolen their friend.

“So,” said Moundshroud. “All the more reason for you to come along, lads. If we fly fast, maybe we can catch Pipkin. Grab his sweet Halloween corn-candy soul. Bring him back, pop him in bed, toast him warm, save his breath. What say, lads? Would you solve two-mysteries-in-one? Search and seek for lost Pipkin, and solve Halloween, all in one fell dark blow?”

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