The Halloween Tree

"Sh!" hissed Moundshroud.

For the funeral had stopped, the high priests were glancing around through the flickering torch shadows.

The boys, high in their niches, squeezed their eyes tight, sucked in their breaths.

"Not a whisper," said Moundshroud, a mosquito in Tom's ear. "Not a murmur."

The harp music began again.

The funeral shuffled on.

And in the midst of all the gold and toys, the kites of the dead, there was the small twelve-year-old fresh-new mummy with a gold mask that looked just exactly like--

Pipkin.

No, no, no, no, no! thought Tom.

"Yes!" cried a mouse voice, tiny, lost, wrapped away, kept, trapped, wild. "It's me! I'm here. Under the mask. Under the wrappings. Can't move! Can't yell. Can't fight free!"

Pipkin! thought Tom. Wait!

"Can't help it! Trapped!" shouted the small wee voice wrapped in picture linens. "Follow! Meet me! Find me at--"

The voice faded, for the funeral procession had turned a corner in the dark labyrinth and was gone.

"Follow you where, Pipkin?" Tom Skelton jumped down from his niche and yelled into the dark. "Meet you where?"

But at that exact moment, Moundshroud, like a chopped tree, fell out of his niche. Bang! he struck the floor.

"Wait!" he cautioned Tom, looking up at him with one eye that looked like a spider caught in its own web. "We'll save old Pipkin yet. Sly does it. Slide and creep, boys. Ssst."

They helped him up and unwound some of his mummy wrappings and tiptoed down the long corridor and turned the corner.

"Holy cow," whispered Tom. "Look. They're putting Pipkin's mummy in the coffin and the coffin inside the--the--"

"Sarcophagus," Moundshroud supplied the jawcracker. "A coffin in a coffin in a coffin, lad. Each larger than the last, all done up in hieroglyphs to tell his life story--"

"Pipkin's life?" said all.

"Or whoever Pipkin was this time around, this year, four thousand years ago."

"Yeah," whispered Ralph. "Look at the pictures on the sides of the coffin. Pipkin one year old. Pipkin five. Pipkin ten and running fast. Pipkin up an apple tree. Pipkin pretending to drown in the lake. Pipkin eating his way through a peach orchard. Wait, what's that?"

Moundshroud watched the busy funeral. "They're putting furniture in the tomb for him to use in the Land of the Dead. Boats. Kites. Tops to spin. Fresh fruits should Pipkin wake a hundred years from now, hungry."

"He'll be hungry all right. Good grief, look, they're going out! They're closing the tomb!" Moundshroud had to grab and hold Tom for he was jumping up and down in agony. "Pipkin's still in there, buried! When do we save him?"

"Later. The Long Night is young. We'll see Pipkin again, never fear. Then--"

The tomb door slammed shut.

The boys yammered and yelled. In the dark they could hear the scrape and slosh of mortar filling the last cracks and seams as the final stones were shoved in place.

The mourners went away with their silent harps.

Ralph stood in his Mummy costume, stunned, watching the last shadows go.

"Is that why I'm dressed like a mummy?" He fingered the bandages. He touched his clay-wrinkled ancient face. "Is that what my part of Halloween is all about?"