The Halloween Tree

"What?"

"Their folks couldn't pay the rent on their graves, so the gravedigger dug up these people and put them down here. The earth is so dry it makes mummies out of them. And look, see how they're dressed."

The boys looked and saw that some of the ancient people were dressed like farmers and some like peasant maids and some like businessmen in old dark suits, and one even like a bullfighter in his dusty suit of lights. But inside their suits they were all thin bones and skin and spiderweb and dust that shook down through their ribs if you sneezed and trembled them.

"What's that?"

"What, what?"

"Ssssst!"

Everyone listened.

They peered into the long vault.

All the mummies looked back with empty eyes. All the mummies waited with empty hands.

Someone was weeping at the far end of the long dark hall.

"Ahhh--" came the sound.

"Oh--" came the crying.

"eeee--" and the small voice wept.

"That's--why, that's Pip. Only heard him cry once, but that's him. Pipkin. And he's trapped there in the catacomb."

The boys stared.

And they saw, a hundred feet away, crouched down in a corner, trapped at the most distant part of the catacomb, a small figure that--moved. The shoulders twitched. The head was bent and covered with trembling hands. And behind the hands, the mouth wailed and was afraid.

"Pipkin--?"

The crying stopped.

"Is that you?" whispered Tom.

A long pause, a trembled insuck of breath and then:

"...yes."

"Pip, for cri-yi, what you doing there?"

"I don't know!"

"Come out?"

"I--I can't. I'm afraid!"

"But, Pip, if you stay there--"

Tom paused.

Pip, he thought, if you stay, you stay forever. You stay with all the silence and the lonely ones. You stand in the long line and tourists come and look at you and buy tickets to look at you some more. You--

"Pip!" said Ralph behind his mask. "You got to come out."

"I can't." Pip sobbed. "They won't let me."