The Halloween Tree

"Hey," whispered all the boys.

"Do not lose your way in the dark," voices sang in the houses, to harps and lutes. "O dear sweet dead, come home, and welcome here. Lost in the dark but always dear. Do not wander, do not roam. Dear ones, come home, come home."

Smoke curled from the dim lamps.

And the shadows stepped up on the porches and, very gently, touched the gifts of food.

And in one house they could see an old grandfather mummy being taken out of a closet and put in the place of honor at the head of the table, with food set before him. And the members of the family sat down to their evening meal and lifted their glasses and drank to the dead one seated there, all dust and dry silence....

"Quick, now, come find me!"

Moundshroud's voice, laughing, called them on.

"This way! No, this! This!"

They ran along the slender ribbon of mummy wrapping, deep into the earth.

"Yes. Here I am."

They turned a corner and stopped, for the long linen ribbon wound across the tomb floor and up a wall to wrap around the feet of an ancient brown mummy which was propped atilt in a candlelit niche.

"Is," stuttered Ralph Bengstrum, dressed in his own Mummy costume. "Is--is that a real mummy?"

"Yes." Dust sifted from under the golden mask on the mummy's face. "Real."

"Mr. Moundshroud! You!"

The gold mask fell to clang like a bright bell on the floor.

Where the mask had been was a mummy's face, a pool of brown mud crinkled by blasts of sun. One eye was glued shut with spiderweb. The other eye cracked forth tears of dust and a glint of bright blue glass.

"Isssss there some boy there dressed like a mummy?" asked the voice muffled beneath the shroud.

"Why, me, sir!" squeaked Ralph, showing his arms, legs, chest, the medical bandages it had taken him all afternoon to wrap himself up in, mummified.

"Good," sighed Moundshroud. "Grab the linen strip. Pull!"

Ralph bent, took hold of the ancient mummy bandages and--yanked!

The ribbon unraveled up around, up around to reveal the great ancient reptile nose-beak and flaky chin and dry smiling dust-powdery mouth of Moundshroud. His crossed arms fell loose.

"Thanks, lad! Free! No fun being wrapped like some old funeral gift for the Land of the Dead. But--hist! Quick, boys, hop in the niches, stand stiff. Someone's coming. Play mummies, boys, play dead!"

The boys leaped to stand, arms folded, eyes shut, breaths held, like a frieze of small mummies cut in the ancient rock.

"Easy," whispered Moundshroud. "Here comes--"

A funeral procession.

An army of mourners in gold and fine silks bearing small sailing-ship toys and copper bowls of food in their hands.

And in their midst, a mummy case carried light as sunshine on the shoulders of six men. And behind that, a fresh-wrapped mummy with new paintings on its linen vestments and a small gold mask fitted over the hidden face.

"See the food, boys, the toys," whispered Moundshroud. "They put toys in the tombs, lads. So the gods will come play, romp, roustabout, and run children happy to the Land of the Dead. See the boats, kites, jump-ropes, toy knives--"

"But look at the size of that mummy," said Ralph, inside his hot linen bandages. "It's a twelve-year-old boy in there! Like me! And that gold mask on the boy mummy's face--doesn't it look familiar?"

"Pipkin!" cried everyone, hoarsely.