The Halloween Tree

When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.

People vanished forever. They died, oh Lord, they died! but came back in dreams. Those dreams were called Ghosts, and frightened men in every age

“Always the same but different, eh? every age, every time. Day was always over. Night was always coming. And aren’t you always afraid, Apeman there? or you, Mummy, that the sun will never rise again?”

Did you ever dream that death could be

Whittled down so very small?”

Memories, that’s what ghosts are, but apemen didn’t know that.

“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—”

“Do not lose your way in the dark,” voices sang in the houses, to harps and lutes. “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.”

“Halloween, indeed! A million years ago, in a cave in autumn, with ghosts inside heads, and the sun lost.”

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.

“So it goes in every country. 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.”