(1972) The Halloween Tree (3 page)

The pumpkins on the Tree were
not mere pumpkins. Each had a face sliced in it. Each face was
different. Every eye was a stranger eye. Every nose was a weirder nose.
Every mouth smiled hideously in some new way.

There must have been a thousand pumpkins on this tree, hung high and on
every branch. A thousand smiles. A thousand grimaces. And
twice-times-a-thousand glares and winks and blinks and leerings of
fresh-cut eyes.

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 rainspouts 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!”

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 somewhere 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?”

They thought of All Hallows’ Night and the billion ghosts awandering the lonely lanes in cold winds and strange smokes.

They thought of Pipkin, no more than a thimbleful of boy and sheer
summer delight, torn out like a tooth and carried off on a black tide
of web and horn and black soot.

And, almost as one, they murmured: “Yes.”

Moundshroud sprang. He ran. He pummeled, he pushed, he raved. “Quick
now, along this path, up this rise, along this road! The abandoned
farm! Over the fence! Allez-oop!”

They
leaped the fence running and stood by a barn that was frosted over with
old circus posters, with banners tattered by wind pasted here thirty,
forty, fifty years back. Circuses, passing through, had left patches
and swatches of themselves ten inches thick.

“A kite, boys. Build a kite. Quick!”