The Halloween Tree. Ray Bradbury

The Halloween Tree - Ray  Bradbury


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      THE HALLOWEEN TREE

       Illustrated by Joseph Mugnaini

      Ray Bradbury

       With love for

      MADAME MAN’HA GARREAU-DOMBASLE

       met twenty-seven years

       ago in the graveyard at

       midnight on the Island

       of Janitzio at Lake Patzcuaro,

       Mexico, and remembered

       on each anniversary of

       The Day of the Dead.

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Keep Reading

       About the Book

       About the Author and Illustrator

       Also by the Author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

      It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small northern part of a Midwest state. There wasn’t so much wilderness around you couldn’t see the town. But on the other hand there wasn’t so much town you couldn’t see and feel and touch and smell the wilderness. The town was full of trees. And dry grass and dead flowers now that autumn was here. And full of fences to walk on and sidewalks to skate on and a large ravine to tumble in and yell across. And the town was full of …

      Boys.

      And it was the afternoon of Halloween.

      And all the houses shut against a cool wind.

      And the town full of cold sunlight.

      But suddenly, the day was gone.

      Night came out from under each tree and spread.

      Behind the doors of all the houses there was a scurry of mouse feet, muted cries, flickerings of light.

      Behind one door, Tom Skelton, aged thirteen, stopped and listened.

      The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats.

      Tom Skelton shivered. 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 cries behind the locked house doors grew more exasperated as shadows of boys flew by windows. Half-dressed boys, greasepaint on their cheeks; here a hunchback, there a medium-size giant. Attics were still being rummaged, old locks broken, old steamer chests disemboweled for costumes.

      Tom Skelton put on his bones.

      He grinned at the spinal cord, the ribcage, the kneecaps stitched white on black cotton.

      Lucky! he thought. What a name you got! Tom Skelton. Great for Halloween! Everyone calls you Skeleton! So what do you wear?

      Bones.

      Wham. Eight front doors banged shut.

      Eight boys made a series of beautiful leaps over flowerpots, rails, dead ferns, bushes, landing on their own dry-starched front lawns. Galloping, rushing, they seized a final sheet, adjusted a last mask, tugged at strange mushroom caps or wigs, shouting at the way the wind took them along, helped their running; glad of the wind, or cursing boy curses as masks fell off or hung sidewise or stuffed up their noses with a muslin smell like a dog’s hot breath. Or just letting the sheer exhilaration of being alive and out on this night pull their lungs and shape their throats into a yell and a yell and a … yeeeellll!

      Eight boys collided at one intersection.

      “Here I am: Witch!”

      “Apeman!”

      “Skeleton!” said Tom, hilarious inside his bones.

      “Gargoyle!”

      “Beggar!”


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