The Halloween Tree

by Ray Bradbury

There was Pipkin’s house, but not enough pumpkins in the windows, not enough cornshocks on the porch, not enough spooks peering out through the dark glass in the high upstairs tower room.

Pipkin. An assemblage of speeds, smells, textures; a cross section of all the boys who ever ran, fell, got up, and ran again.

The ravine, filled with varieties of night sounds, lurkings of black-ink stream and creek, lingerings of autumns that rolled over in fire and bronze and died a thousand years ago. From this deep place sprang mushroom and toadstool and cold stone frog and crawdad and spider. There was a long tunnel down there under the earth in which poisoned waters dripped and the echoes never ceased calling Come Come Come and if you do you’ll stay forever, forever, drip, forever, rustle, run, rush, whisper, and never go, never go go go…

I'm not a fan of how Bradbury often writes women, but his descriptions ALWAYS come alive in my head

The town was left behind to suffer itself with sweetness.

The house was special and fine and tall and dark. There must have been a thousand windows in its sides, all shimmering with cold stars. It looked as if it had been cut out of black marble instead of built out of timbers, and inside? who could guess how many rooms, halls, breezeways, attics. Superior and inferior attics, some higher than others, some more filled with dust and webs and ancient leaves or gold buried above ground in the sky but lost away so high no ladder in town could take you there.

But a house, a haunted house, on All Hallows’ Eve? Eight small hearts beat up an absolute storm of glory and approbation.

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.

to the front door of the house which was as tall as a coffin and twice as thin.

The entire house shook. Its bones ground together. Shades snap-furled up so that windows blinked wide their ghastly eyes.

And this tree rose up some one hundred feet in the air, taller than the high roofs and full and round and well branched, and covered all over with rich assortments of red and brown and yellow autumn leaves.

For the Tree was hung with a variety of pumpkins of every shape and size and a number of tints and hues of smoky yellow or bright orange.

The pumpkins on the Tree were not mere pumpkins. Each had a face sliced in it. Each face was different. Every eye was a stranger eye. Every nose was a weirder nose. Every mouth smiled hideously in some new way. There must have been a thousand pumpkins on this tree, hung high and on every branch. A thousand smiles. A thousand grimaces. And twice-times-a-thousand glares and winks and blinks and leerings of fresh-cut eyes.

“The leaves have burned to gold and red The grass is brown, the old year dead, But hang the harvest high, Oh see! The candle constellations on the Halloween Tree!”

“Trick, yes, trick.” The boys were catching fire with the idea. It made all the good glue go out of their joints and put a little dust of sin in their blood.

“The Undiscovered Country. Out there. Look long, look deep, make a feast. 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? Do you have the stuff?”

“What is Halloween? How did it start? Where? Why? What for? Witches, cats, mummy dusts, haunts. It’s all there in that country from which no one returns. Will you dive into the dark ocean, boys? Will you fly in the dark sky?”

we fly fast, maybe we can catch Pipkin. Grab his sweet Halloween corn-candy soul. Bring him back, pop him in bed, toast him warm, save his breath.

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

“So it goes in every country, boys. Each has its death festival, having to do with seasons. Skulls and bones, boys, skeletons and ghosts. In Egypt, lads, see the Death of Osiris, King of the Dead. Gaze long.”

“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, come home.”

You are a mummy, boy, because that was how they dressed for Eternity. Spun up in a cocoon of threads, they hoped to come forth like lovely butterflies in some far dear loving world. Know your cocoon, boy. Touch the strange stuffs.”

“What’s that got to do with Halloween?” “Do? Why, blast my bones, everything. When you and your friends die every day, there’s no time to think of Death, is there? Only time to run. But when you stop running at long last—” He touched the walls. The apemen froze in mid-flight. “—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. Fire in your own cave to protect you. Only by night fires was the caveman, beastman, able at last to turn his thoughts on a spit and baste them with wonder. The sun died in the sky. Winter came on like a great white beast shaking its fur, burying him. Would spring ever come back to the world? Would the sun be reborn next year or stay murdered? Egyptians asked it. Cavemen asked it a million years before. Will the sun rise tomorrow morning?”

“So in the middle of autumn, everything dying, apemen turned in their sleep, remembered their own dead of the last year. Ghosts called in their heads. Memories, that’s what ghosts are, but apemen didn’t know that. Behind their eyelids, late nights, the memory ghosts called, waved, danced, so apemen woke up, tossed twigs on the fire, shivered, wept. They could drive away wolves but not memories, not ghosts. So they held tight to their ribs, prayed for spring, watched the fire, thanked invisible gods for harvests of fruit and nuts.

“There it goes, boys. The heart, soul, and flesh of Halloween. The Sun!

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!”

“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!”

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:

“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!”

The soldiers slammed swords and axes into the bases of the holy druid oaks. Samhain shrieked in pain as if the axes had chopped his knees. The holy trees groaned, whistled, and, with a final chop, thundered to earth. Samhain trembled in the high air. The druid priests, fleeing, stopped and shuddered. Trees fell. The priests, chopped at the ankles, the knees, fell. They were blown over like oaks in a hurricane. “No!” roared Samhain in the high air. “But yes!” cried the Romans. “Now!” The soldiers gave a final mighty blow. And Samhain, God of the Dead, torn at his roots, chopped at his ankles, began to fall.

“Here we shall build our temples to our gods!” The soldiers lit new fires and burned incense before golden idols which they set in place. But, no sooner lit, than a star shone in the east. On far desert sands, to camel bells, Three Wise Men moved. The Roman soldiers lifted their bronze shields against the glare of the Star in the sky. But their shields melted. The Roman idols melted and became shapes of Mary and her Son.

“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…”

“Hide out from what?” wondered Tom. “Here come the Christians!” yelled voices below, on the roads. And that was the answer.

“Ye little gods and fishes, lad, every town has its resident witch. 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.

The "or woman" shouldn't be an add-on, since it was primarily women who were accused of witchcraft. Some men, yes, but mostly women.

“Well, now, boys, what should we do to scare the scarers, frighten the frighteners, shiver the shiverers?” called Moundshroud inside a cloud. “What’s bigger than demons and witches?”

An idea gets big, yes? A religion gets big! How. With buildings large enough to cast shadows across an entire land. Build buildings you can see for a hundred miles. Build one so tall and famous it has a hunchback in it, ringing bells.

You must save him, always and forever, again and again, this night, until one grand salvation.

“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. Presto!”

Whistle for demons, boys, whistle for fiends, give a high great tootling blow for beasties and ferocious fanged loomers of the dark.”

Which is to say that all the old beasts, all the old tales, all the old nightmares, all the old unused demons-put-by, and witches left in the lurch, quaked at the call, reared at the whistle, trembled at the summons,

Which is still to say that all the dead statues and idols and semigods and demigods of Europe lying like a dreadful snow all about, abandoned, in ruins, gave a blink and start and came as salamanders on the road, or bats in skies or dingoes in the brush. They flew, they galloped, they skittered.

the raving flux of monsters, beasts, vices rampant, virtues gone sour, discarded saints, misguided prides, hollow pomps oozed, slid, suckered, pelted, ran bold and right up the sides of Notre-Dame.

“Sure. 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!”

By every grave was a woman kneeling to place gardenias or azaleas or marigolds in a frame upon the stone. By every grave knelt a daughter who was lighting a new candle or lighting a candle that had just blown out. By every grave was a quiet boy with bright brown eyes, and in one hand a small papier-mâché funeral parade glued to a shingle, and in the other hand a papier-mâché skeleton head which rattled with rice or nuts inside.

“Boy,” said Tom, half to himself, “at home we never go to the graveyard, except maybe Memorial Day, once a year, and then at high noon, full sun, no fun. This now, this is—fun!”

“Up in Illinois, we’ve forgotten what it’s all about. I mean the dead, up in our town, tonight, heck, they’re forgotten. Nobody remembers. Nobody cares. Nobody goes to sit and talk to them. Boy, that’s lonely. That’s really sad. But here—why, shucks. It’s both happy and sad. It’s all firecrackers and skeleton toys down here in the plaza and up in that graveyard now are all the Mexican dead folks with the families visiting and flowers and candles and singing and candy. I mean it’s almost like Thanksgiving, huh? And everyone set down to dinner, but only half the people able to eat, but that’s no mind, they’re there. It’s like holding hands at a séance with your friends, but some of the friends gone.