The Halloween Tree

by Ray Bradbury

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. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked.

The bricks of the street became planks of a drunken ship all tilted and foundered with dark and light.

The day Joe Pipkin was born all the Orange Crush and Nehi soda bottles in the world fizzed over;

And if there had been time and it were noon, they might have danced out a cadaver’s tune or a skeleton’s rigadoon, for who can resist an ancient porch which, like a gigantic xylophone, only wants to be jumped on to make music?

The wind played a flute in a chimney somewhere; an old song about time and dark and far places.

And then down they sailed off away deep into the Undiscovered Country of Old Death and Strange Years in the Frightful Past.…

And, sure enough, the Egypt that lay below was ancient sand but new-cut stone.