"We would!"
"Quiet as milkweed, then, soft as snow, fall, blow away down, each and all."
The boys fell.
Like a bushel of chestnuts, their feet rained to earth.
Now the boys who landed like a downpour of bright autumn trash were in this order:
Tom Skelton, dressed up in his delicious Bones.
Henry-Hank, more or less a Witch.
Ralph Bengstrum, an unraveled Mummy, becoming more unbandaged by the minute.
A Ghost named George Smith.
J.J. (no other name needed) a very fine Apeman.
Wally Babb who said he was a Gargoyle, but everyone said he looked more like Quasimodo.
Fred Fryer, what else but a beggar fresh out of a ditch.
And last and not least, "Hackles" Nibley who had run up a costume at the last moment by simply clapping on a white scare-mask and grabbing his grandpa's harvest scythe off the garage wall.
All the boys being safely landed on English earth, their billion autumn leaves fell off and blew away.
They stood in the midst of a vast field of wheat.
"Here, Master Nibley, I brought your scythe. Take it. Grab! Now lie low!" warned Moundshroud. "The Druid God of the Dead! Samhain! Fall!"
They fell.
For a huge scythe came skimming down out of the sky. With its great razor edge it cut the wind. With its whistling side it sliced clouds. It beheaded trees. It razored along the cheek of the hill. It made a clean shave of wheat. In the air a whole blizzard of wheat fell.
And with every whisk, every cut, every scythe, the sky was aswarm with cries and shrieks and screams.
The scythe hissed up.
The boys cowered.
"Hunh!" grunted a large voice.
"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 Tom's 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!"