Read (1972) The Halloween Tree for Free Online

shuffled on.
    And in the midst of all the gold and toys, the kites of the dead, there
was the small twelve-year-old fresh-new mummy with a gold mask that
looked just exactly like—
    Pipkin.
    No, no, no, no! thought Tom.
    “Yes!” cried a mouse voice, tiny, lost, wrapped away kept, trapped, wild. “Its me! I’m here. Under the mask. Under the wrappings. Can’t move! Can’t yell Can’t fight free!”
    Pipkin! thought Tom. Wait!
    “Can’t help it! Trapped!” shouted the small wee voice wrapped in picture linens. “Follow! Meet me! Find me at—”
    The voice faded, for the funeral procession had turned a corner in the dark labyrinth and was gone.
    “Follow you where, Pipkin?” Tom Skelton jumped down from his niche and yelled into the dark. “Meet you where?”
    But at that exact moment, Moundshroud, like a chopped tree, fell out of his niche. Bang! he struck the floor.
    “Wait!” he cautioned Tom, looking up at him with one eye that looked
like a spider caught in its own web. “We’ll save old Pipkin yet. Sly
does it. Slide and creep, boys. Ssst.”
    They helped him up and unwound some of his mummy wrappings and tiptoed down the long corridor and turned the corner.
    “Holy Cow,” whispered Tom. “Look. They’re putting Pipkin’s mummy in the coffin and the coffin inside the—the—”
    “Sarcophagus,” Moundshroud supplied the jawcracker. “A coffin in a
coffin in a coffin, lad. Each larger than the last, all done up in
hieroglyphs to tell his life story—”
    “Pipkin’s life?” said all.
    “Or whoever Pipkin was this time around, this year, four thousand years ago.”
    “Yeah,” whispered Ralph. “Look at the pictures on the sides of the
coffin. Pipkin one year old. Pipkin five. Pipkin ten and running fast.
Pipkin up an apple tree. Pipkin pretending to drown in the lake. Pipkin
eating his way through a peach orchard. Wait, what’s that?!”
    Moundshroud watched the busy funeral. “They’re putting furniture in the
tomb for him to use in the Land of the Dead. Boats. Kites. Tops to
spin. Fresh fruits should Pipkin wake a hundred years from now, hungry”
    “He’ll be hungry all right. Good grief, look, they’re going out!
They’re closing the tomb!” Moundshroud had to grab and hold Tom for he
was jumping up and down in agony “Pipkin’s still in there, buried! When
do we save him?”
    “Later. The Long Night is young. We'll see Pipkin again, never fear. Then—”
    The tomb door slammed shut.
    The boys yammered and yelled. In the dark they could hear the scrape
and slosh of mortar filling the last cracks and seams as the final
stones were shoved in place.
    The mourners went away with their silent harps.
    Ralph stood in his Mummy costume, stunned, watching the last shadows go.
    “Is that why I’m dressed like a mummy?” He fingered the bandages. He
touched his clay-wrinkled ancient face. “Is that what my part of
Halloween is all about?”
    “All, boy, all,”
murmured Moundshroud. “The Egyptians, why, they built to last. Ten
thousand years they planned for. Tombs, boys, tombs. Graves. Mummies.
Bones. Death, death. Death was at the very heart, gizzard, light, soul, and body of
their life! Tombs and more tombs with secret passages, so none might be
found, so grave robbers could not borrow souls and toys and gold. 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.”
    “Why,” said Ralph the Mummy, blinking at the smoky walls and old hieroglyphics. “Every day was Halloween to them!”
    “Every day!” gasped all, in admiration.
    “Every day was Halloween for them, too.” Moundshroud pointed.
    The boys turned.
    A kind of green electric storm simmered in the tomb dungeon. The ground
shuddered as with an ancient earthquake. Somewhere, a volcano turned
over in its sleep, lighting the walls with one