In-Between

By Ray Bradbury

Attics are awful and lovely.

You know what I mean?

Basements are low, dank, and darksome,

Halloween’s buried there;

The air of the earth

Simmers slowly, gives rise

To nightmares at midnight,

The size of its shadows is awesome.

And in-between?

The house that we live in,

Sane, boring and plain,

Pictures hung straight on walls,

Here nothing appalls,

The rugs if they misbehave,

Are twice taken out and beaten.

Meals are eaten three times a day

In a room where our dining,

And occasional wining with poker 

With loud uncles who laugh

When the joker is played,

Is all staid; sound and clean.

In-between, where we live, in-between,

A boy could go mad.

So on sad days in autumn,

He takes his dry soul

Down the hole in the dark

Or, pure lark on the fly,

Climbs to attic and sky,

Where the wind leans all year,

And pure fear is the stuff

That roams gardens of dust

And web, where the spider,

Soft glider of nerves,

Serves a fly for dessert

Then back down to the scene

Where the green salad waits

On dumb dining room plates

And nice parents whose talk

Is a chalk-screech on board.

Where the lands of the Lord

Are a Sunday morn chat

That can flatten the mind

And sift dust in the ear

Year on year.  No wildness.  No joy.

No place for a boy.

Attic, yes!  Basement, sure!

There the terror is pure.

There an All Hallows grave

Can save souls that might smother

From calm dad or sweet mother.

Up! Down! That’s the scene!

But---In-between?

Oh my gosh.  In-between?

Know what I mean?

Elysburg Haunted House

"I don't mind skulls and bones," said Marie. "There's nothing even vaguely human to them.  I'm not scared of skulls and bones. They're like something insectile.  If a child was raised and didn't know he had a skeleton in him, he wouldn't think anything of bones, would he? That's how it is with me. Everything human has been scraped off these.  There's nothing familiar left to be horrible.  In order for a thing to be horrible it has to suffer a change you can recognize.  This isn't changed. They're still skeletons, like they always were.  The part that changed is gone, and so there's nothing to show for it. Isn't that interesting?"

- The Next in Line, Ray Bradbury

Image source.

The October Country Project

It was one of those things they keep in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled, dead eyes staring at you and never seeing you.

- Ray Bradbury, The Jar

It Wouldn’t Be Halloween Without Pipkin

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.

- Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

The Order Of The Halloween Tree

A photo series tribute to Ray Bradbury's classic tale.

This series comes to an end with Chapter 6:  Ralph Bengstrum 

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!"

The Order Of The Halloween Tree

A photo series tribute to Ray Bradbury's classic tale.

Chapter 5:  Hackles Nibley
 
“Mr. Moundshroud, is that you!” cried Tom.

For towering forty feet above them in the sky, an immense scythe in his hands, was this cowled figure, its face in midnight fogs.

The blade swung down: hisssssss!
 
“Mr. Moundshroud, let us be!”

“Shut up.” Someone knocked Toms elbow. Mr. Moundshroud lay on the earth beside him. “That’s not me. That’s—”

“Samhain!” cried the voice in the fog. “God of the Dead! I harvest thus, and so!”
Sssss-whoooshhhh!
 
“All those who died this year are here! And for their sins, this night, are turned to beasts!”
Sssssswooommmmmmm!

“Please,” whimpered Ralph-the-Mummy.

“Sssssssttttt! The scythe zippered Hackles Nibley’s spine, ripping his costume in a long tear, knocking his own small scythe free of his hands.

“Beasts!”

And the harvest wheat, flailed up, spun round on the wind, shrieking its souls, all those who had died in the past twelve months, rained to earth.

The Order Of The Halloween Tree

A photo series tribute to Ray Bradbury's classic tale.

Chapter 4:  The Devil Boy

"But, let me introduce myself! Moundshroud is the name.  Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud. Does that have a ring, boys? Does it sound for you?”
  
It sounds, the boys thought, oh, oh, it sounds … !

Moundshroud.

“A fine name,” said Mr. Moundshroud, giving it a full sepulchral night-church sound. “And a fine night. And all the deep dark wild long history of Halloween waiting to swallow us whole!”

“Swallow us?”

“Yes!” cried Moundshroud. “Lads, look at yourselves. Why are you, boy, wearing that Skull face? And you, boy, carrying a scythe, and you, lad, made up like a Witch? And you, you, you!” He thrust his bony finger at each mask. “You don’t know, do you? You just put on those faces and old mothball clothes and jump out, but you don’t really know, do you?”

“Well,” said Tom, a mouse behind his skull-white muslin. “Er—no.”

“Yeah,” said the Devil boy. “Come to think of it, Why am I wearing this?” He fingered his cloak and sharp rubber horns and lovely pitchfork.

The Order Of The Halloween Tree

A photo series tribute to Ray Bradbury's classic tale.

Chapter 3:  Henry-Hank Smith

Fires burned all over Europe. At every crossroad and by every haystack dark forms jumped in cats across flames. Cauldrons bubbled. Old hags cursed. Dogs frolicked red-hot coals.

“Witches, witches, everywhere,” said Tom, amazed. “I never knew they were so many!”

“Mobs and multitudes, Tom. Europe was flooded to the dikes. Witches underfoot, under bed, in the cellars and high attics.”

“Boy oh boy,” said Henry-Hank, proud in his Witch costume. “Real witches!

The Order Of The Halloween Tree

A photo series tribute to Ray Bradbury's classic tale.

Chapter 2:  George Smith

In the west, the sun, smothered and dying in clouds, sank. Moundshroud hooted his delight:

“There it goes, boys. The heart, soul, and flesh of Halloween. The Sun! There Osiris is murdered again. There sinks Mithras, the Persian fire. There falls Phoebus Apollo all Grecian light. Sun and flame, boys. Look and blink. Turn that crystal spyglass. Swing it down the Mediterranean Coast a thousand miles. See the Greek Isles?”

“Sure,” said plain George Smith, dressed up as fancy pale ghost. “Cities, towns, streets, houses. People jumping out on porches to bring food!”

“Yes.” Moundshroud beamed. “Their Festival of the Dead: the Feast of Pots. Trick-or-Treat old style. But tricks from the dead if you don’t feed them. So treats are laid out in fine banquets on the sill!”

The Order Of The Halloween Tree

A photo series tribute to Ray Bradbury's classic tale.

Chapter 1:  Tom Skelton

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-sized 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.

The Autumn People

First of all, it was October, a rare month of boys; full of cold winds, long nights, dark promises. Days get short. The shadows lengthen. The wind warms in such a way, you want to run forever through the fields, because up ahead, ten thousand pumpkins lie waiting to be cut.

- Ray Bradbury

Staring And Never Seeing

It was one of those things they keep in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled, dead eyes staring at you and never seeing you.

- Ray Bradbury, The Jar

Image source.

Dandelion Wine

Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered...sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks...

― Ray Bradbury

A while back I posted about a terrific dandelion wine from the Maple River Winery.  As a Ray Bradbury fanatic (lunatic), I knew I had to get my hands on this mysterious wine mentioned in his novel with the same name.  In the book, it was sipped during the non-summer months to keep that season alive and well on cold winter days.  For me, it was always perfect on a hot summer day on the porch, served extremely chilled.  Well, the Maple River Winery closed its doors a couple years ago and the Bradbury tradition was no more.  We found a local winery that offered this unusual varietal, but unfortunately, they make their version with grapes and not entirely with dandelions, so it was a super sweet dessert wine that had none of the charm and mystery of Maple River's.

Recently, Jenna found a dandelion wine being sold by the Hidden Legend Winery.  I took a chance and ordered a bottle.  Happy to report that this is the stuff.  As they describe it on their site:

This is not your grandmother’s dandelion wine, but it’s pretty darn close. It’s been approvingly described as “delicate” and “grassy” but we just think of it as summer on a back porch in Montana. Hidden Legend Dandelion Wine is best-appreciated mid-afternoon, by itself, or with a very soft cheese.

A perfect description.  And four more bottles are on their way to chill those hot humid summer days that will soon be here.

The Hidden Legend site.

The Candy Skull

You walked up the hill and paid the graveyard attendant a peso and he flung back a steel door and you went down a spiral stone stair into the earth, into the catacombs.  You entered a long dim hall with one hundred twenty-five mummies facing each other, standing against the walls, their mouths open, their beards intact.  Looking as if they had leaped up at your entrance, screaming silently.

You walked along the line of standing dead.  You looked into the bony, tight-skinned faces.

Until you came to the body of Douglas McClure.

- Ray Bradbury

Haunted Eve 2023: Haunted Bayou

She took the great iron spoon and the mummified frog and gave it a bash and made dust of it, and talked to the dust while she ground it in her stony fists quickly.

Ray Bradbury, Invisible Boy

Many more images here.

And even more at their IG account.

Night Cemetery

At midnight the wind blew softly in the window, whispering the curtains, shadowing the moonlight.
There, far across town, lay the cemetery, immense white teeth scattered on a meadow of fresh moon-silvered grass.

- Ray Bradbury, Somewhere A Band Is Playing

Image by Gene Hilmu.

Summer Orchard

Martin knew it was autumn again, for Dog ran into the house bringing wind and frost and a smell of apples turned to cider under trees. In dark clock-springs of hair, Dog fetched goldenrod, dust of farewell-summer, acorn-husk, hair of squirrel, feather of departed robin, sawdust from fresh-cut cordwood, and leaves like charcoals shaken from a blaze of maple trees. Dog jumped. Showers of brittle fern, blackberry vine, marsh-grass sprang over the bed where Martin shouted. No doubt, no doubt of it at all, this incredible beast was October!

- Ray Bradbury, The Emissary 

October Dreaming

Work by the amazing Joseph Mugnaini.

House Owl

There are gifts,

And then there are gifts.

Summer Solstice

A whole summer ahead to cross off the calendar, day by day. Like the goddess Siva in the travel books, he saw his hands jump everywhere, pluck sour apples, peaches, and midnight plums. He would be clothed in trees and bushes and rivers. He would freeze, gladly, in the hoarfrosted icehouse door. He would bake, happily, with ten thousand chickens, in Grandma’s kitchen.

 

But now—a familiar task awaited him. One night each week he was allowed to leave his father, his mother, and his younger brother Tom asleep in their small house next door and run here, up the dark spiral stairs to his grandparents’ cupola, and in this sorcerer’s tower sleep with thunders and visions, to wake before the crystal jingle of milk bottles and perform his ritual magic.

He stood at the open window in the dark, took a deep breath and exhaled. The street lights, like candles on a black cake, went out. He exhaled again and again and the stars began to vanish. Douglas smiled. He pointed a finger. There, and there. Now over here, and here . . .

Yellow squares were cut in the dim morning earth as house lights winked slowly on. A sprinkle of windows came suddenly alight miles off in dawn country.

“Everyone yawn. Everyone up.”

- Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine