The Halloween Tree

"Yes--" someone murmured.

"Always the same but different, eh? every age, every time. Day was always over. Night was always coming. And aren't you always afraid, Apeman there? or you, Mummy, that the sun will never rise again?"

"Yesss," more of them whispered.

And they looked up through the levels of the great house and saw every age, every story, and all the men in history staring round about as the sun rose and set. Apemen trembled. Egyptians cried laments. Greeks and Romans paraded their dead. Summer fell dead. Winter put it in the grave. A billion voices wept. The wind of time shook the vast house. The windows rattled and broke like men's eyes, into crystal tears. Then, with cries of delight, ten thousand times a million men welcomed back bright summer suns which rose to burn each window with fire!

"Do you see, lads? Think! People vanished forever. They died, oh Lord, they died! but came back in dreams. Those dreams were called Ghosts, and frightened men in every age--"

"Ah!" cried a billion voices from attics and basements.

Shadows climbed walls like old films rerun in ancient theaters. Puffs of smoke lingered at doors with sad eyes and gibbering mouths.

"Night and day. Summer and winter, boys. Seedtime and harvest. Life and death. That's what Halloween is, all rolled up in one. Noon and midnight. Being born, boys. Rolling over, playing dead like dogs, lads. And getting up again, barking, racing through thousands of years of death each day and each night Halloween, boys, every night, every single night dark and fearful until at last you made it and hid in cities and towns and had some rest and could get your breath.

"And you began to live longer and have more time, and space out the deaths, and put away fear, and at last have only special days in each year when you thought of night and dawn and spring and autumn and being born and being dead.

"And it all adds up. Four thousand years ago, one hundred years ago, this year, one place or another, but the celebrations all the same--"

"The Feast of Samhain--"

"The Time of the Dead Ones--"

"All Souls'. All Saints'."

"The Day of the Dead."

"El Dia de Muerte."

"All Hallows'."

"Halloween."

The boys sent their frail voices up, up through the levels of time, from all the countries, and all the ages, naming the holidays which were the same.

"Good, lads, good."

Far off, the town clock struck three quarters after eleven.

"Almost midnight, boys. Halloween's almost over."

"But!" cried Tom. "What about Pipkin? We followed him through history, burying him, digging him up, walking him in parades, crying him in wakes. Is or isn't he alive?"

"Yeah!" said everyone. "Did we save him?"

"Did you, indeed?"

Moundshroud stared. They stared with him, across the ravine to a building where lights were going out.

"That's his hospital, boys. But check his house. The final knock of the night, the last grand trick or treat. Go ask for final answers. Mr. Marley, see them out!"

The front door flew wide--bang!

The Marley knocker on the door gaped its bandaged jaw and whistled them farewell as the boys slid down the banisters and raced for the door.

They were stopped by a final shout from Moundshroud: "Boys! Well, which was it? Tonight, with me--trick or treat?"

The boys took a vast breath, held it, burst it out: "Gosh, Mr. Moundshroud--both!"