A rare month ...

First of all it was October, a rare month for boys.

So begins Ray Bradbury's autumnal classic, Something Wicked This Way Comes, one of three books on your October-reading syllabus. A tale of loss, change, and life fully-lived. A father-son tale. A friendship tale. A tale of appreciating what is rather than what could be. A tale of around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight ...

Bradbury is a sensory master. He shines, or should I say glares, in The Halloween Tree ...

The pumpkins on the Tree were not mere pumpkins. Each had a face sliced into it. Each face was different. Every eye was a stranger eye. Every nose was a weirder nose. Every mouth smiled hideously in some new way.

There must have been a thousand pumpkins on this tree, hung high and on every branch. A thousand smiles. A thousand grimaces. And twice-times-a-thousand glares and winks and blinks and leerings of fresh cut eyes.

And as the boys watched, a new thing happened.

The pumpkins began to come alive.

One by one, starting at the bottom of the Tree and the nearest pumpkins, candles took fire within the raw interiors. This one and then that and this and then still another, and on up and around, three pumpkins here, seven pumpkins still higher, a dozen clustered beyond, a hundred, five hundred, a thousand pumpkins lit their candles, which is to say brightened up their faces, showed fire in their square or round or curiously slanted eyes. Flame guttered in their toothed mouths. Sparks leaped out their ripe-cut ears.

And then from somewhere two voices, three or maybe four voices whispered and chanted a kind of singsong or old sea shanty of the sky and time and the earth turning over into sleep. The rainspouts blew spiderdust:

"It's big, it's broad ..."

A voice smoked from the rooftop chimney:

"It's broad, it's bright ...

It fills the sky of All Hallows' Night ..."

From open windows somewhere, cobwebs drifted:

"The strangest sight you've ever seen.

The Monster Tree on Halloween."

The candles flickered and flamed. The wind crooned in, the wind crooned out the pumpkin mouths, tuning the song:

"The leaves have burned to gold and red

The grass is brown, the old year dead,

But hang the harvest high, Oh see!

The candle constellations on the Halloween Tree!"

Tom felt his mouth stir like a small mouse, wanting to sing:

"The stars they turn, the candles burn

And the mouse-leaves scurry on the cold wind bourne,

And a mob of smiles shine down on thee

From the gourds hung high on the Halloween Tree.

The smile of the Witch, and the smile of the Cat

The smile of the Beast, and the smile of the Bat,

The smile of the Reaper taking his fee

All cut and glimmer on the Halloween Tree ..."

Smoke seemed to sift from Tom's mouth"

"Halloween Tree ..."

All the boys whispered it:

"Halloween ... Tree ..."

And then there was silence.

Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has been on my bedside table at this time of year since I was a kid.

Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, black, and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, ...

Light a fire, pour a drink, and settle in ... 'tis autumn

Oh! I almost forgot. You'll need this, this, this, and (since my Mom doesn't do retail) this , as well.

You'll also want to attend this.