(1972) The Halloween Tree (2 page)

The front door opened.

Pipkin stepped out.

Not flew. Not banged. Not exploded.

Stepped
out.

And came down the walk to meet his friends.

Not running. And
not
wearing a mask! No mask!

But moving along like an old man, almost.

“Pipkin!” they shouted, to scare away their uneasiness.

“Hi, gang,” said Pipkin.

His face was pale. He tried to smile, but his eyes looked funny. He was
holding his right side with one hand as if he had a boil there.

They all looked at his hand. He took his hand away from his side.

“Well,” he said with faint enthusiasm. “We ready to go?”

“Yeah, but
you
don’t look ready,” said Tom. “You sick?”

“On Halloween?” said Pipkin. “You kidding?”

“Where’s your costume—?”

“You go on ahead, I’ll catch up.”

“No, Pipkin, we’ll wait for you to—”

“Go on,” said Pipkin, saying it slowly, his face deathly pale now. His hand was back on his side.

“You got a stomachache?” asked Tom. “You told your folks?”

“No, no, I can’t! They’d—” Tears burst from Pipkin’s eyes. “It’s
nothing, I tell you. Look. Go straight on toward the ravine. Head for
the House, okay? The place of the Haunts, yeah? Meet you there.”

“You swear?”

“Swear. Wait’ll you see my costume!”

The boys began to back off. On the way, they touched his elbow, or
knocked him gently in the chest, or ran their knuckles along his chin
in a fake fight. “Okay, Pipkin. As long as you’re sure—”

“I’m sure.” He took his hand away from his side. His face colored for a
moment as if the pain were gone. “On your marks. Get set. Go!”

When Joe Pipkin said “Go,” they Went.

They ran.

They ran backward halfway down the block, so they could see Pipkin standing there, waving at them.

“Hurry up, Pipkin!”

“I’ll catch you!” he shouted, a long way off.

The night swallowed him.

They ran. When they looked back again, he was gone.

They banged doors, they shouted Trick or Treat and their brown paper bags began to fill with incredible sweets. They galloped with their teeth glued shut with pink gum. They ran with red wax lips bedazzling their faces.

But all the people who met them at doors looked like candy factory
duplicates of their own mothers and fathers. It was like never leaving
home. Too much kindness flashed from every window and every portal.
What they wanted was to hear dragons belch in basements and banged
castle doors.

And so, still looking back for Pipkin, they reached the edge of town and the place where civilization fell away in darkness.

The Ravine.

The ravine, filled with varieties of night sounds, lurkings of
black-ink stream and creek, lingerings of autumns that rolled over in
fire and bronze and died a thousand years ago. From this deep place
sprang mushroom and toadstool and cold stone frog and crawdad and
spider. There was a long tunnel down there under the earth in which
poisoned waters dripped and the echoes never ceased calling Come Come
Come and if you do you’ll stay forever, forever, drip, forever, rustle,
run, rush, whisper, and never go, never go go go …

The boys lined up on the rim of darkness, looking down.

And then Tom Skelton, cold in his bones, whistled his breath in his
teeth like the wind blowing over the bedroom screen at night. He
pointed.

“Oh, hey—
that’s
where Pipkin told us to go!”

He vanished.

All looked. They saw his small shape race down the dirt path into one
hundred million tons of night all crammed in that huge dark pit, that
dank cellar, that deliciously frightening ravine.

Yelling, they plunged after.

Where they had been was empty.

The town was left behind to suffer itself with sweetness.

They ran down through the ravine
at a swift rush, all laughing, jostling, all elbows and ankles, all
steamy snort and roustabout, to stop in collision when Tom Skelton
stopped and pointed up the path.

“There,” he whispered. “There’s the
only
house in town worth visiting on Halloween! There!”

“Yeah!” said everyone.

For it was true. The house was special and fine and tall and dark.
There must have been a thousand windows in its sides, all shimmering
with cold stars. It looked as if it had been cut out of black marble
instead of built out of timbers, and inside? who could guess how many
rooms, halls, breezeways, attics. Superior and inferior attics, some
higher than others, some more filled with dust and webs and ancient
leaves or gold buried above ground in the sky but lost away so high no
ladder in town could take you there.

The house beckoned with its towers, invited with its gummed-shut doors. Pirate ships are a tonic. Ancient forts are a boon.
But a house, a
haunted
house, on All Hallows’ Eve? Eight small hearts
beat up an absolute storm of glory and approbation.

“Come on.”

But they were already crowding up the path. Until they stood at last by
a crumbling wall, looking up and up and still farther up at the great
tombyard top of the old house. For that’s what it seemed. The high
mountain peak of the mansion was littered with what looked like black
bones or iron rods, and enough chimneys to choke out smoke signals from
three dozen fires on sooty hearths hidden far below in the dim bowels
of this monster place. With so many chimneys, the roof seemed a vast
cemetery, each chimney signifying the burial place of some old god of
fire or enchantress of steam, smoke, and firefly spark. Even as they
watched, a kind of bleak exhalation of soot breathed up out of some
four dozen flues, darkening the sky still more, and putting out some
few stars.

“Boy,” said Tom Skelton, “Pipkin sure knows what he’s talking about!”

“Boy,” said all, agreeing.

They crept along a weed-infested path toward the crumpled front porch.

Tom Skelton, alone, itched his bony foot up on the first porch-step.
The others gasped at his bravery. So, now, finally in a mob, a compact
mass of sweating boys moved up on the porch amid fierce cries of the
planks underfoot, and shudderings of their bodies. Each wished to pull
back, swivel about, run, but found himself trapped against the boy behind or
in front or to the side. So, with a pseudo-pod thrust out here or
there, the amoebic form, the large perspiration of boys leaned and made
a run and a stop to the front door of the house which was as tall as a
coffin and twice as thin.

They stood
there for a long moment, various hands reaching out like the legs of an
immense spider as if to twist that cold knob or reach up for the
knocker on that front door. Meanwhile, the wooden floorings of the
porch sank and wallowed beneath their weight, threatening at every
shift of proportion to give way and fling them into some cockroach
abyss beneath. The planks, each tuned to an A or an F or a C, sang out
their uncanny music as heavy shoes scraped on them. And if there had
been time and it were noon, they might have danced out a cadavers tune
or a skeleton’s rigadoon, for who can resist an ancient porch which,
like a gigantic xylophone, only wants to be jumped on to make music?

But they were not thinking this.

Henry-Hank Smith (for that’s who it was), hidden inside his black Witch’s costume, cried: “Look!”

And all looked at the knocker on the door. Tom’s hand trembled out to touch it.

“A Marley knocker!”

“What?”

“You know, Scrooge and Marley, a
Christmas Carol!”
whispered Tom.

And indeed the face that made up the knocker on the door was the face of a man with a dread toothache, his jaw bandaged,
his hair askew, his teeth prolapsed, his eyes wild. Dead-as-a-doornail
Marley, friend to Scrooge, inhabiter of lands beyond the grave, doomed
to wander this earth forever until…

“Knock,” said Henry-Hank.

Tom Skelton took hold of old Marley’s cold and grisly jaw, lifted it, and let it fall.

All jumped at the concussion!

The entire house shook. Its bones ground together. Shades snap-furled up so that windows blinked wide their ghastly eyes.

Tom Skelton cat-leaped to the porch rail, staring up.

On the rooftop, weird weathercocks spun. Two-headed roosters whirled in
the sneezed wind. A gargoyle on the western rim of the house erupted
twin snorts of rain-funnel dust. And down the long snaking serpentine
rainspouts of the house, after the sneeze had died and the weathercocks
ceased spinning, vagrant wisps of autumn leaf and cobweb fell gusting
out onto the dark grass.

Tom whirled to
look at the faintly shuddering windows. Moonlit reflections trembled in
the glass like schools of disturbed silver minnows. Then the front door
gave a shake, a twist of its knob, a grimace of its Marley knocker, and
flung itself wide.

The wind made by the suddenly opening door almost knocked the boys off the porch. They seized one another’s elbows, yelling.

Then the darkness within the house inhaled. A wind sucked
through the gaping door. It pulled at the boys, dragging them across
the porch. They had to lean back so as not to be snatched into the deep
dark hall. They struggled, shouted, clutched the porch rails. But then
the wind ceased.

Darkness moved within darkness.

Inside the house, a long way off, someone was walking toward the door.
Whoever it was must have been dressed all in black for they could see
nothing but a pale white face drifting on the air.

An evil smile came and hung in the doorway before them.

Behind the smile, the tall man hid in shadow. They could see his eyes
now, small pinpoints of green fire in little charred pits of sockets,
looking out at them.

“Well,” said Tom. “Er—trick or treat?”

“Trick?” said the smile in the dark. “Treat?”

“Yes, sir.”

The wind played a flute in a chimney somewhere; an old song about time
and dark and far places. The tall man shut up his smile like a bright
pocketknife.

“No treats,” he said. “Only—
trick!”

The door
slammed!

The house thundered with showers of dust.

Dust puffed out the rainspout again, in fluffs, like an emergence of downy cats.

Dust gasped from open windows. Dust snorted from the porchboards under their feet.

The boys stared at the locked shut-fast front door. The Marley knocker was not scowling now, but smiling an evil smile.

“What’s he
mean?”
asked Tom. “No treats, only trick?”

Backing off around the side of the house they were astonished at the
sounds it made. A whole rigamarole of whispers, squeaks, creaks, wails,
and murmurs, and the night wind was careful to let the boys hear them
all. With every step they took, the great house leaned after them with
soft groans.

They rounded the far side of the house and stopped.

For there was the Tree.

And it was such a tree as they had never seen in all their lives.

It stood in the middle of a vast yard behind the terribly strange
house. And this tree rose up some one hundred feet in the air, taller
than the high roofs and full and round and well branched, and covered
all over with rich assortments of red and brown and yellow autumn
leaves.

“But,” whispered Tom, “oh, look. What’s up
in
that tree!”

For the Tree was hung with a variety of pumpkins of every shape and
size and a number of tints and hues of smoky yellow or bright orange.

“A pumpkin tree,” someone said.

“No,” said Tom.

The wind blew among the high branches and tossed their bright burdens, softly.

“A Halloween Tree,” said Tom.

And he was right.