MY FRIEND, MR MOUNDSHROUD...

 

Mr. Moundshroud, who are YOU?

 

And Mr. Moundshroud, way up there on the roof, sent his thoughts back: I think you know, boy, I think you know. 

 

Will we meet again, Mr. Moundshroud? 

 

Many years from now, yes, I’ll come for you.

 

And a last thought from Tom: O Mr. Moundshroud, will we EVER stop being afraid of nights and death?

 

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

 

Tom listened, heard, and waved quietly. 

 

Mr. Moundshroud, far off, lifted his hand. 

 

Click. Tom’s front door went shut. 

 

His pumpkin-like-a-skull, on the vast Tree, sneezed and went dark.

 

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury, 1972

 

 

[Illustration: 'Mr. Carapace Clavicle Moundshround' by Joseph 'Joe' Mugnaini (1912-1992)]

A TRAIN OF THOUGHT

Today would have been the 104th birthday of legendary fantasy writer, Ray Bradbury, with whom I was fortunate to have a 38-year friendship from 1974 until his too-early death in 2012. Whenever I visited Ray at his home in Los Angeles, I always made a point of pausing in front of this oil painting hanging on his sitting-room wall. 

 

Entitled ‘The Carnival’, was painted in 1952 by Joseph ‘Joe' Mugnaini (1912-1992). Long before Ray was sufficiently established in his career to purchase the original canvas, he had spotted a lithograph of the picture in the window of a Beverly Hills gallery. 

 

‘The Carnival’ presents an enigmatic vision of a crowded, flag-and-banner-bedecked train which is either coming out of nowhere (bound for a destination equally unknown) or is, otherwise, reversing towards the abrupt and perilous end of both railroad-track and viaduct. For Ray, it seemed to chime with some of the bizarre and fantastical themes that he had explored in his 1947 debut collection of short stories, Dark Carnival.

 

The result was the first of many meetings between two men with minds wide open to the eloquent and extravagant possibilities of an unfettered imagination. For Joe, it was the beginning of his collaboration with Ray: illustrating, decorating or providing evocative jacket-art for a succession of books beginning, in 1953, with The Golden Apples of the Sun and including such story collections as The October Country, A Medicine for Melancholy, The Machineries of Joy and the novels, The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and The Halloween Tree.

 

Joe's carnival train also, unquestionably, contributed to the shaping of Ray's book Something Wicked This Way Comes in which Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, with its entourage of monsters and misfits, arrives by locomotive, under the cover of night, in a sleepy American town to disrupt the fates and fortunes of the local residents and, in particular, the destinies of two young boys.

 

I'm sharing this haunting image today with grateful, affectionate memories of my many encounters and long years of correspondence with Uncle Ray and with respect and admiration for his creative collaboration with the talented Mr. Mugnaini.