“Halloween, indeed! A million years ago, in a cave in autumn, with ghosts inside heads, and the sun lost.”
Moundshroud’s voice faded.
He unraveled another yard or two of mummy wrappings, draped them over his arm grandly and said: “More to see. Come on, boys.”
And they walked out of the catacombs into the twilight of an old Egyptian day.
A great pyramid lay before them, waiting.
“Last one to the top,” said Moundshroud, “is a monkey’s uncle!”
And the monkey’s uncle was Tom.
Chapter XI
Gasping, they reached the pyramid’s top where waited a vast crystal lens, a viewing glass which spun slowly in the wind on a golden tripod, a gigantic eye with which to bring far places near.
In the west, the sun, smothered and dying in clouds, sank. Moundshroud hooted his delight:
“There it goes, boys. The heart, soul, and flesh of Halloween. The Sun! There Osiris is murdered again. There sinks Mithras, the Persian fire. There falls Phoebus Apollo all Grecian light. Sun and flame, boys. Look and blink. Turn that crystal spyglass. Swing it down the Mediterranean Coast a thousand miles. See the Greek Isles?”
“Sure,” said plain George Smith, dressed up as fancy pale ghost. “Cities, towns, streets, houses. People jumping out on porches to bring food!”
“Yes.” Moundshroud beamed. “Their Festival of the Dead: the Feast of Pots. Trick-or-Treat old style. But tricks from the dead if you don’t feed them. So treats are laid out in fine banquets on the sill!”
Far away, in the sweet dusk, smells of cooked meats steamed, dishes were dealt out for spirits that smoked across the land of the living. The women and children of the Grecian homes came and went with multitudinous quantities of spiced and delectable victuals.
Then, all through the Grecian Isles, doors slammed. The vast slamming echoed along the dark wind.
“The temples shutting tight,” said Moundshroud. “Every holy place in Greece will be double-locked this night.”
“And look!” Ralph-who-was-a-Mummy swung the crystal lens. The light flared over the boys’ masks. “Those people, why are they painting black molasses on their front door posts?”
“Pitch,” corrected Moundshroud. “Black tar to glue the ghosts, stick them fast, so they can’t get inside.”
“Why,” said Tom, “didn’t we think of that!?”
Darkness moved down the Mediterranean shores. From the tombs, like mist, the dead spirits wavered in soot and black plumes along the streets to be caught in the dark tar that smeared the porch sills. The wind mourned, as if telling the anguish of the trapped dead.
“Now, Italy. Rome.” Moundshroud turned the lens to see Roman cemeteries where people placed food on graves and hurried off.
The wind whipped Moundshroud’s cape. It hollowed his mouth:
“O autumn winds that bake and burn
And all the world to darkness turn,
Now storm and seize and make of me…
A swarm of leaves from Autumn’s Tree!”
He kick-jumped straight up in the air. The boys yelled delight, even as his clothes, cape, hair, skin, body, corn-candy bones tore apart before their eyes.
“… leaves … burn …
… change … turn … !”
The wind ribboned him to confetti; a million autumn leaves, gold, brown, red as blood, rust, all wild, rustling, simmering, a clutch of oak and maple leaf, a hickory leaf downfall, a toss of flaking whisper, murmur, rustle to the dark river-creek sky. Not one kite, but ten thousand thousand tiny mummy-flake, kites, Moundshroud exploded apart:
“World turn! Leaves burn!
Grass die! Trees …fly!”
And from a billion other trees in autumn lands, leaves rushed to join with the upflung battalions of dry bits that were Moundshroud dispersed in whirlwinds from which his voice stormed:
“Boys, see the fires along the Mediterranean coast? Fires burning north through Europe? Fires of fear. Flames of celebration. Would you spy, boys? Up, now, fly!”
And the leaves in avalanche fell upon each boy like terrible flapping moths and carried them away. Over Egyptian sands they sang and laughed and giggled. Over the strange sea, rapturous and hysterical, they soared.
“Happy New Year!” a voice cried, far below.
“Happy what?” asked Tom.
“Happy New Year!” Moundshroud, a flock of rusty leaves, rustled his voice. “In old times, the first of November was New Year’s Day. The true end of summer, the cold start of winter. Not exactly happy, but, well, Happy New Year!”
They crossed Europe and saw new water below.
“The British Isles,” whispered Moundshroud. “Would you cock an eye at England’s own druid God of the Dead?”
“We would!”
“Quiet as milkweed, then, soft as snow, fall, blow away down, each and all.”
The boys fell.
Like a bushel of chestnuts, their feet rained to earth.
Chapter XII
Now the boys who landed like a downpour of bright autumn trash were in this order:
Tom Skelton, dressed up in his delicious Bones.
Henry-Hank, more or less a Witch.
Ralph Bengstrum, an unraveled Mummy, becoming more unbandaged by the minute.
A Ghost named George Smith.
J.J. (no other name needed) a very fine Apeman.
Wally Babb who said he was a Gargoyle, but everyone said he looked more like Quasimodo.
Fred Fryer, what else but a beggar fresh out of a ditch.
And last and not least, “Hackles” Nibley who had run up a costume at the last moment by simply clapping on a white scare-mask and grabbing his grandpa’s harvest scythe off the garage wall.
All the boys being safely landed on English earth, their billion autumn leaves fell off and blew away.
They stood in the midst of a vast field of wheat.
“Here, Master Nibley, I brought your scythe. Take it. Grab! Now lie low!” warned Moundshroud. “The Druid God of the Dead! Samhain! Fall!”
They fell.
For a huge scythe came skimming down out of the sky. With its great razor edge it cut the wind. With its whistling side it sliced clouds. It beheaded trees. It razored along the cheek of the hill. It made a clean shave of wheat. In the air a whole blizzard of wheat fell.
And with every whisk, every cut, every scythe, the sky was aswarm with cries and shrieks and screams.
The scythe hissed up.
The boys cowered.
“Hunh!” grunted a large voice.
“Mr. Moundshroud, is that you!” cried Tom.
For towering forty feet above them in the sky, an immense scythe in his hands, was this cowled figure, its face in midnight fogs.
The blade swung down: hisssssss!
“Mr. Moundshroud, let us be!”
“Shut up.” Someone knocked Toms elbow. Mr. Moundshroud lay on the earth beside him. “That’s not me. That’s—”
“Samhain!” cried the voice in the fog. “God of the Dead! I harvest thus, and so!”
Sssss-whoooshhhh!
“All those who died this year are here! And for their sins, this night, are turned to beasts!”
Sssssswooommmmmmm!
“Please,” whimpered Ralph-the-Mummy
“Sssssssttttt! The scythe zippered Hackles Nibley’s spine, ripping his costume in a long tear, knocking his own small scythe free of his hands.
“Beasts!”
And the harvest wheat, flailed up, spun round on the wind, shrieking its souls, all those who had died in the past twelve months, rained to earth. And falling, touching, the heads of wheat were turned to asses, chickens, snakes which scurried, cackled, brayed; were turned to dogs and cats and cows that barked, cried, bawled. But all were miniature. All were tiny, small, no bigger than worms, no bigger than toes, no bigger than the sliced-off tip of a nose.
By the hundreds and thousands the wheat heads snowed up in scatters and fell down as spiders which could not shout or beg or weep for mercy, but which, soundless, raced over the grass, poured over the boys. A hundred centipedes tiptoed on Ralph’s spine. Two hundred leeches clung to Hackles Nibley’s scythe until with a nightmare gasp he raved and shook them off. Everywhere fell black widows and tiny boa constrictors.
“For your sins! Your sins! Take that! And this!” bellowed the voice in the whistling sky.
The scythe flashed. The wind, cut, fell in bright thunders. The wheat churned and gave up a million heads. Heads fell. Sinners hit like rocks. And, hitting, were turned to frogs and toads and multitudes of scaly warts with legs and jellyfish which stank in the light.
“I’ll be good!” prayed Tom Skelton.
“Lemme live!” added Henry-Hank.
All of this said very loudly, for the scythe was making a dreadful roar. It was like an ocean wave falling down out of the sky, cleaning a beach, and running away up to cut more clouds. Even the clouds seemed to be whispering out swift and more fervent prayers for their own fates. Not me! not me!
“For all the evil you ever did!” said Samhain.
And the scythe cut and the souls were harvested and fell in blind newts and awful bedbugs and dreadful cockroaches to scuttle, limp, creep, scrabble.
“My gosh, he’s a bug maker.”
“Flea squasher!”
“Snake grinder-outer!”
“Roach transformer!”
“Fly keeper!”
“No! Samhain! October God. God of the Dead!”
Samhain stomped a great foot which tread a thousand bugs in the grass, trompled ten thousand tiny soul-beasts in the dust.
“I think,” said Tom, “it’s time we-”
“Ran?” suggested Ralph, not offhand.
“Shall we take a vote?”
The scythe hissed. Samhain boomed.
“Vote, heck!” said Moundshroud.
All jumped up.
“You there!” thundered the voice above them. “Come back!”
“No, sir, thanks,” said one and then another.
And put right foot after left.
“I figure,” said Ralph, panting, leaping, tears on his cheeks. “I been pretty good most of my life. I don’t deserve to die.”
“Hah-hnnh!” shouted Samhain.
The scythe came in a guillotine which chunked the head off an oak tree and felled a maple. A whole orchard of autumn apples fell into a marble pit somewhere. It sounded like a houseful of boys falling downstairs.
“I don’t think he heard you, Ralph,” said Tom.
They dived. They fell among rocks and shrubs.
The scythe ricocheted off the stones.
Samhain gave such a yell as brought an avalanche down a small hill nearby
“Boy,” said Ralph, squinched up, balled up,
