The Halloween Tree

coffin makers of Mexico." Moundshroud smiled. "In the streets with their long boxes and nails and little hammers, tapping, tapping."

"Pipkin?" whispered the boys.

"We hear," said Moundshroud. "And, to Mexico, we go."

The Autumn Kite boomed them away on a one-thousand-foot tidal wave of wind.

The gargoyles, fluting in their stone nostrils, gaping their marble lips, used that same wind to wail them farewell.

They hung above Mexico.

They hung above an island in that lake in Mexico.

They heard dogs barking in the night far below. They saw a few boats on the moonlit lake moving like water insects. They heard a guitar playing and a man singing in a high sad voice.

A long way off across the dark borders of land, in the United States, packs of children, mobs of dogs ran laughing, barking, knocking, from door to door, their hands full of sweet bags of treasure, wild with joy on Halloween night.

"But, here--" whispered Tom.

"Here what?" asked Moundshroud, hovering at his elbow.

"Oh, why here--"

"And down through all of South America--"

"Yes, South. Here and South. All the cemeteries. All the graveyards are--"

--full of candlelight, Tom thought. A thousand candles in this cemetery, a hundred candles in that graveyard, ten thousand small flickering lights farther on a hundred miles, five thousand miles down to the very tip of Argentina.

"Is that the way they celebrate--"

"El Dia de los Muertos. How's your grade school Spanish, Tom?"

"The Day of the Dead Ones?"

"Caramba, si! Kite, disassemble!"

Swooping down, the Kite flew apart for a final time.

The boys tumbled on the stony shore of the quiet lake.

Mists hung over the waters.

Far across the lake they could see an unlit tombyard. There were, as yet, no candles burning in it.

Out of the mists, a dugout canoe moved silently without oars, as if the tide touched it across the waters.

A tall figure in a gray winding sheet stood motionless in one end of the boat.

The boat nudged the grassy shore softly.

The boys gasped. For, as far as they could tell, only darkness was cupped inside the hood of the shrouded figure.

"Mr.--Mr. Moundshroud?"

They knew it had to be him.

But he said nothing. Only the faintest firefly of a grin flickered within the cowl. A bony hand gestured.