The Halloween Tree

It blew around the high corners of Notre-Dame. It fluted in the ears and piped out the gaping mouths of the gargoyles.

"Ahhh--" whispered Pipkin's voice.

The hair stood up on the backs of their necks.

"Ooooo," murmured the stone mouth.

"Listen. There it is!" said Ralph excitedly.

"Shut up!" cried Tom. "Pip? Next time the wind blows, tell us, how do we help? What got you here? How do we get you down?"

Silence. The boys clung to the rock-cliff face of the great cathedral.

Then another swoop of wind sucked by, drew their breaths, and whistled in the carved stone boy's teeth.

"One--" said Pip's voice.

"--question," whispered Pip's voice again after a pause.

Silence. More wind.

"At a--"

The boys waited.

"--time."

"One question at a time!" translated Tom.

The boys hooted with laughter. That was Pip all right.

"Okay." Tom gathered his spit. "What are you doing up here?"

The wind blew sadly and the voice spoke as from deep in an old well: "Been--so many--places--in just--a few--hours."

The boys waited, grinding their teeth.

"Speak up, Pipkin!"

The wind came back to mourn in the open stone mouth: But the wind had died.

It began to rain.

And this was best of all. For the raindrops ran cold in Pipkin's stone ears and out along his nose and fountained from his marble mouth so that he began to utter syllables in liquid tongues, with clear cold rainwater words: "Hey--this is better!"

He spouted mist, he sprayed quick rain:

"You should've been where I been! Gosh! I was buried for a mummy! I was trapped in a dog!"

"We guessed that was you, Pipkin!"

"And now here," said the rain in the ear, the rain in the nose, the rain in the clear-dripping marble mouth. "Gosh, golly, funny, strange, inside this rock with all these devils and demons for pals! And, ten minutes from now, who knows where I'll be? higher up? or buried deep!"

"Where, Pipkin?"

The boys jostled. The rain squalled and beat them so they almost tilted and fell off the ledge.

"Are you dead, Pipkin?"