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.
“Come on.”
But they were already crowding up the path. Until they stood at last by a crumbling wall, looking up and up and still farther up at the great tombyard top of the old house. For that’s what it seemed. The high mountain peak of the mansion was littered with what looked like black bones or iron rods, and enough chimneys to choke out smoke signals from three dozen fires on sooty hearths hidden far below in the dim bowels of this monster place. With so many chimneys, the roof seemed a vast cemetery, each chimney signifying the burial place of some old god of fire or enchantress of steam, smoke, and firefly spark. Even as they watched, a kind of bleak exhalation of soot breathed up out of some four dozen flues, darkening the sky still more, and putting out some few stars.
“Boy,” said Tom Skelton, “Pipkin sure knows what he’s talking about!”
“Boy,” said all, agreeing.
They crept along a weed-infested path toward the crumpled front porch.
Tom Skelton, alone, itched his bony foot up on the first porch-step. The others gasped at his bravery. So, now, finally in a mob, a compact mass of sweating boys moved up on the porch amid fierce cries of the planks underfoot, and shudderings of their bodies. Each wished to pull back, swivel about, run, but found himself trapped against the boy behind or in front or to the side. So, with a pseudopod thrust out here or there, the amoebic form, the large perspiration of boys leaned and made a run and a stop to the front door of the house which was as tall as a coffin and twice as thin.
They stood there for a long moment, various hands reaching out like the legs of an immense spider as if to twist that cold knob or reach up for the knocker on that front door. Meanwhile, the wooden floorings of the porch sank and wallowed beneath their weight, threatening at every shift of proportion to give way and fling them into some cockroach abyss beneath. The planks, each tuned to an A or an F or a C, sang out their uncanny music as heavy shoes scraped on them. 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?
But they were not thinking this.
Henry-Hank Smith (for that’s who it was), hidden inside his black Witch’s costume, cried: “Look!”
And all looked at the knocker on the door. Tom’s hand trembled out to touch it.
“A Marley knocker!”
“What?”
“You know, Scrooge and Marley, a Christmas Carol!” whispered Tom.
And indeed the face that made up the knocker on the door was the face of a man with a dread toothache, his jaw bandaged, his hair askew, his teeth prolapsed, his eyes wild. Dead-as-a-doornail Marley, friend to Scrooge, inhabitor of lands beyond the grave, doomed to wander this earth forever until …
“Knock,” said Henry-Hank.
Tom Skelton took hold of old Marley’s cold and grisly jaw, lifted it, and let it fall.
All jumped at the concussion!
The entire house shook. Its bones ground together. Shades snap-furled up so that windows blinked wide their ghastly eyes.
Tom Skelton cat-leaped to the porch rail, staring up.
On the rooftop, weird weathercocks spun. Two-headed roosters whirled in the sneezed wind. A gargoyle on the western rim of the house erupted twin snorts of rain-funnel dust. And down the long snaking serpentine rainspouts of the house, after the sneeze had died and the weathercocks ceased spinning, vagrant wisps of autumn leaf and cobweb fell gusting out onto the dark grass.
Tom whirled to look at the faintly shuddering windows. Moonlit reflections trembled in the glass like schools of disturbed silver minnows. Then the front door gave a shake, a twist of its knob, a grimace of its Marley knocker, and flung itself wide.
The wind made by the suddenly opening door almost knocked the boys off the porch. They seized one another’s elbows, yelling.
Then the darkness within the house inhaled. A wind sucked through the gaping door. It pulled at the boys, dragging them across the porch. They had to lean back so as not to be snatched into the deep dark hall. They struggled, shouted, clutched the porch rails. But then the wind ceased.
Darkness moved within darkness.
Inside the house, a long way off, someone was walking toward the door. Whoever it was must have been dressed all in black for they could see nothing but a pale white face drifting on the air.
An evil smile came and hung in the doorway before them.
Behind the smile, the tall man hid in shadow. They could see his eyes now, small pinpoints of green fire in little charred pits of sockets, looking out at them.
“Well,” said Tom. “Er—trick or treat?”
“Trick?” said the smile in the dark. “Treat?”
“Yes, sir.”
The wind played a flute in a chimney somewhere; an old song about time and dark and far places. The tall man shut up his smile like a bright pocketknife.
“No treats,” he said. “Only—trick!”
The door slammed!
The house thundered with showers of dust.
Dust puffed out the rainspout again, in fluffs, like an emergence of downy cats.
Dust gasped from open windows. Dust snorted from the porchboards under their feet.
The boys stared at the locked shut-fast front door. The Marley knocker was not scowling now, but smiling an evil smile.
“What’s he mean?” asked Tom. “No treats, only trick?”
Backing off around the side of the house they were astonished at the sounds it made. A whole rigamarole of whispers, squeaks, creaks, wails, and murmurs, and the night wind was careful to let the boys hear them all. With every step they took, the great house leaned after them with soft groans.
They rounded the far side of the house and stopped.
For there was the Tree.
And
