(1972) The Halloween Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

kept the shadows circling and stirring.
    A faint smell of incense and mummy dust wafted up to the boys who
looked out upon this ancient Halloween and the “treats” being set
forth not for wandering boys but homeless ghosts.
    “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.”
    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!”
    Moundshrouds 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.
    “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