Ray Bradbury - The Halloween Tree

Dawns, lying in bed, you heard a birdpeck at the window. Pipkin.

You stuck your head out into the snow-water-clear-summer-morning air.

There in the dew on the lawn rabbit prints showed where, just a moment ago, not a dozen rabbits but one rabbit had circled and crisscrossed in a glory of life and exultation, bounding hedges, clipping ferns, tromping clover. It resembled the switchyards down at the rail depot. A million tracks in the grass but no …

Pipkin.

And here he rose up like a wild sunflower in the garden. His great round face burned with fresh sun. His eyes flashed Morse code signals:

“Hurry up! It’s almost over!”

“What?”

“Today! Now! Six A.M.! Dive down! Wade in it!”

Or: “This summer ! Before you know, bang!—it’s gone! Quick!”

And he sank away in sunflowers to come up all onions.

Pipkin, oh, dear Pipkin, finest and loveliest of boys.

How he ran so fast no one knew. His tennis shoes were ancient. They were colored green of forests jogged through, brown from old harvest trudges through September a year back, tar-stained from sprints along the docks and beaches where the coal barges came in, yellow from careless dogs, splinter-filled from climbing wood fences. His clothes were scarecrow clothes, worn by Pipkin’s dogs all night, loaned to them for strolls through town, with chew marks along the cuffs and fall marks on the seat.

His hair? His hair was a great hedgehog bristle of bright brown-blond daggers sticking in all directions. His ears, pure peachfuzz. His hands, mittened with dust and the good smell of airedales and peppermint and stolen peaches from the far country orchards.

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

No one, in all the years, had ever seen him sitting still. He was hard to remember in school, in one seat, for one hour. He was the last into the schoolhouse and the first exploded out when the bell ended the day.

Pipkin, sweet Pipkin.

Who yodeled and played the kazoo and hated girls more than all the other boys in the gang combined.

Pipkin, whose arm around your shoulder, and secret whisper of great doings this day, protected you from the world.

Pipkin.

God got up early just to see Pipkin come out of his house, like one of those people on a weatherclock. And the weather was always fine where Pipkin was.

Pipkin.

They stood in front of his house.

Any moment now that door would open wide.

Pipkin would jump out in a blast of fire and smoke.

And Halloween would REALLY begin!

Come on, Joe, oh, Pipkin, they whispered, come on!

The front door opened.

Pipkin stepped out.

Not flew. Not banged. Not exploded.

Stepped out.

And came down the walk to meet his friends.

Not running. And not wearing a mask! No mask!

But moving along like an old man, almost.

“Pipkin!” they shouted, to scare away their uneasiness.

“Hi, gang,” said Pipkin.

His face was pale. He tried to smile, but his eyes looked funny. He was holding his right side with one hand as if he had a boil there.

They all looked at his hand. He took his hand away from his side.

“Well,” he said with faint enthusiasm. “We ready to go?”

“Yeah, but you don’t look ready,” said Tom. “You sick?”

“On Halloween?” said Pipkin. “You kidding?”

“Where’s your costume—?”

“You go on ahead, I’ll catch up.”

“No, Pipkin, we’ll wait for you to—”

“Go on,” said Pipkin, saying it slowly, his face deathly pale now. His hand was back on his side.

“You got a stomachache?” asked Tom. “You told your folks?”

“No, no, I can’t! They’d—” Tears burst from Pipkin’s eyes. “It’s nothing, I tell you. Look. Go straight on toward the ravine. Head for the House, okay? The place of the Haunts, yeah? Meet you there.”

“You swear?”

“Swear. Wait’ll you see my costume!”

The boys began to back off. On the way, they touched his elbow, or knocked him gently in the chest, or ran their knuckles along his chin in a fake fight. “Okay, Pipkin. As long as you’re sure—”

“I’m sure.” He took his hand away from his side. His face colored for a moment as if the pain were gone. “On your marks. Get set. Go!”

When Joe Pipkin said “Go,” they Went.

They ran.

They ran backward halfway down the block, so they could see Pipkin standing there, waving at them.

“Hurry up, Pipkin!”

“I’ll catch you!” he shouted, a long way off.

The night swallowed him.

They ran. When they looked back again, he was gone.

They banged doors, they shouted Trick or Treat and their brown paper bags began to fill with incredible sweets. They galloped with their teeth glued shut with pink gum. They ran with red wax lips bedazzling their faces.

But all the people who met them at doors looked like candy factory duplicates of their own mothers and fathers. It was like never leaving home. Too much kindness flashed from every window and every portal. What they wanted was to hear dragons belch in basements and banged castle doors.

And so, still looking back for Pipkin, they reached the edge of town and the place where civilization fell away in darkness.

The Ravine.

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 …

The boys lined up on the rim of darkness, looking down.

And then Tom Skelton, cold in his bones, whistled his breath in his teeth like the wind blowing over the bedroom screen at night. He pointed.

“Oh, hey— that’s where Pipkin told us to go!”

He vanished.

All looked. They saw his small shape race down the dirt path into one hundred million tons of night all crammed in that huge dark pit, that dank cellar, that deliciously frightening ravine.

Yelling, they plunged after.

Where they had been was empty.

The town was left behind to suffer itself with sweetness.

They ran down through the ravine at a swift rush, all laughing, jostling, all elbows and ankles, all steamy snort and roustabout, to stop in collision when Tom Skelton stopped and pointed up the path.

“There,” he whispered. “There’s the only house in town worth visiting on Halloween! There!”

“Yeah!” said everyone.

For it was true. 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.

The house beckoned with its towers, invited with its gummed-shut doors. Pirate ships are a tonic. Ancient forts are a boon. But a house, a haunted house, on All Hallows’ Eve? Eight small hearts beat up an absolute storm of glory and approbation.