The Halloween Tree

"Yesssss--!" whispered the wind coming up from below. "All of you. Come. Next. And next. And another and another. Quick."

The boys raced down the linen path in darkness.

"Watch for murder, boys! Murder!"

The pillars on both sides of the rushing boys flashed to life. Pictures shivered and moved.

The golden sun was on every pillar.

But it was a sun with arms and legs, bound tight with mummy wrappings.

"Murder!"

A dark creature struck the sun one dreadful blow.

The sun died. Its fires went out.

The boys ran blind in darkness.

Yeah, thought Tom, running, sure, I mean, I think, every night, the sun dies. Going to sleep, I wonder, will it come back? Tomorrow morning, will it still be dead?

The boys ran. On new pillars dead-ahead, the sun appeared again, burning out of eclipse.

Swell! thought Tom. That's it! Sunrise!

But just as quickly, the sun was murdered again. On each pillar they raced by, the sun died in autumn and was buried in cold winter.

Middle of December, thought Tom, I often think: the sun'll never come back! Winter will go on forever! This time the sun is really dead!

But as the boys slowed at the end of the long corridor, the sun was reborn. Spring arrived with golden horns. Light filled the corridor with pure fire.

The strange God stood burning on every wall, his face a grand fire of triumph, wrapped in golden ribbons.

"Why, heck, I know who that is!" panted Henry-Hank. "Saw him in a movie once with terrible Egyptian mummies!"

"Osiris!" said Tom.

"Yesssssssss...," hissed Moundshroud's voice from the deep tombs. "Lesson Number One about Halloween. Osiris, Son of the Earth and Sky, killed each night by his brother Darkness. Osiris slain by Autumn, murdered by his own night blood.

"So it goes in every country, boys. Each has its death festival, having to do with seasons. Skulls and bones, boys, skeletons and ghosts. In Egypt, lads, see the Death of Osiris, King of the Dead. Gaze long."

The boys gazed.

For they had come to a vast hole in the underground cavern and through this hole they could look out at an Egyptian village where, at dusk, food was being placed out in pottery and copper dishes on porches and sills.

"For the homecoming ghostssssss," whispered Moundshroud somewhere in the shadows.

Rows of oil lamps were nailed to house fronts and the soft smoke from these rose up on the twilight air like wandering spirits.

You could almost see the haunts shifting along the cobbled streets.

The shadows leaned away from the lost sun in the west and tried to enter the houses.

But the warm food, steaming on the porches, kept the shadows circli

ng and stirring.

A faint smell of incense and mummy dust wafted up to the boys who looked out upon this ancient Halloween and the "treats" being set forth not for wandering boys but homeless ghosts.