The Halloween Tree

by Ray Bradbury

And it was the afternoon of Halloween.

Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve.

With so many chimneys, the roof seemed a vast cemetery, each chimney signifying the burial place of some old god of fire or enchantress of steam, smoke, and firefly spark. Even as they watched, a kind of bleak exhalation of soot breathed up out of some four dozen flues, darkening the sky still more, and putting out some few stars.

“The strangest sight you’ve ever seen. The Monster Tree on Halloween.”

The Past, boys, the Past. Oh, it’s dark, yes, and full of nightmare. Everything that Halloween ever was lies buried there. Will you dig for bones, boys?

“Borrowed is more like it, perhaps to hold him for ransom,” said Moundshroud. “Can Death do that?” “Sometimes, yes.”

I mean, I think, every night, the sun dies. Going to sleep, I wonder, will it come back? Tomorrow morning, will it still be dead?

“Lesson Number One about Halloween. Osiris, Son of the Earth and Sky, killed each night by his brother Darkness. Osiris slain by Autumn, murdered by his own night blood.

now you have time to think of where you came from, where you’re going. And fire lights the way, boys. Fire and lightning. Morning stars to gaze at.

“And that’s how Halloween began?” “With such long thoughts at night, boys. And always at the center of it, fire. The sun. The sun dying down the cold sky forever. How that must have scared early man, eh? That was the Big Death. If the sun went away forever, then what?

“Halloween, indeed! A million years ago, in a cave in autumn, with ghosts inside heads, and the sun lost.”

“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!”

“Aye, boys, see? Gods following gods. The Romans cut the Druids, their oaks, their God of the Dead, bang! down! And put in their own gods, eh? Now the Christians run and cut the Romans down! New altars, boys, new incense, new names…”

Every town hides some old Greek pagan priest, some Roman worshiper of tiny gods who ran up the roads, hid in culverts, sank in caves to escape the Christians! In every tiny village, boy, in every scrubby farm the old religions hide out. You saw the druids cut and chopped, eh? They hid from the Romans. And now the Romans, who fed Christians to lions, run themselves to hide. So all the little lollygaggin’ cults, all flavors and types, scramble to survive. See how they run, boys!”

“But, stop and think. What does the word ‘witch’ truly mean?” “Why—” said Tom, and was stymied. “Wits,” said Moundshroud. “Intelligence. That’s all it means. Knowledge. So any man, or woman, with half a brain and with inclinations toward learning had his wits about him, eh? And so, anyone too smart, who didn’t watch out, was called—” “A witch!” said everyone.

“Did witches feel the night wind in their bed And reel and dance with devils and the dead? No! But that is what they bragged and claimed and said!

Until whole continents, hellbent Named ‘witches’ of the Innocent, And did conspire To burn old women, babes, and virgins in a fire.”

“So even as the Romans cut down druid trees and chopped their God of the Dead to fall, we now with this church, boys, cast such a shadow as knocks all witches off their stilts, and puts seedy sorcerers and trite magicians to heel. No more small witch fires. Only this great lit candle, Notre-Dame.

There crawls the Worm of Conscience!”

All the old gods, all the old dreams, all the old nightmares, all the old ideas with nothing to do, out of work, we gave them work. We called them here!”

“Whistle, boys, scream like tigers, cry like panthers, shriek like carnivore!”

the dead, up in our town, tonight, heck, they’re forgotten. Nobody remembers. Nobody cares. Nobody goes to sit and talk to them.

It’s like holding hands at a séance with your friends, but some of the friends gone.

For each step down was a billion miles lost from life and warm beds and good candlelight and mothers’ voices and fathers’ pipe-smoke and clearing his voice in the night which made you feel good knowing he was there somewhere in the dark, alive and turning in his sleep

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.

They felt something like a cage of birds let out of their chests and bodies and flying off, invisible. They saw but did not see the years they gave as gifts wing off round the world to settle somewhere in

“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?”

Summer fell dead. Winter put it in the grave.

“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.

I think you know, boy, I think you know. Will we meet again, Mr. Moundshroud? Many years from now, yes, I’ll come for you.

O Mr. Moundshroud, will we EVER stop being afraid of nights and death?

When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.