From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury

with Minerva Halliday, looking remarkably dead for someone so dead.
    Timothy's father, peering out at this half-perceived vibration of cold air, sensed an intelligence there that could respond to questions before they were asked. And so at last he said:
    "Are you one of us?"
    "Am I one of you, or with you?" the ghastly passenger replied. "And what are you, or we, or us? Can it be named? Is there a shape? What ambience is there? Are we kin to autumn rains? Do we rise in mists from wetland moors? Do twilight fogs seem similar? Do we prowl or run or lope? Are we shadows on a ruined wall? Are we dusts shaken in sneezes from angel tombstones with broken wings? Do we hover or fly or writhe in October ectoplasms? Are we footsteps heard to waken us and bump our skulls on nailed-shut lids? Are we batwing heartbeats held in claw or hand or teeth? Do our cousins weave and spell their lives like that creature lassoed to the boy-child's neck?" He gestured.
    Arach unraveled its spinneret in dark silence.
    "Do we snug with that ?" Again the gesture.
    Mouse vanished in Timothy's vest.
    "Do we move soundless? There?"
    Anuba combed good Timothy's foot.
    "Are we the mirror glimpses, unseen but there? Do we abide in walls as mortuary beetles telling time? Is the drafting breath upsucked in chimneys our terrible respiration? When clouds curdle the moon are we such clouds? When rainspouts speak from the gargoyles' mouths are we those tongueless sounds? Do we sleep by day and swarm-glide the splendid night? When autumn trees shower bullions are we that Midas stuff, a leaf-fall that sounds the air in crisp syllables? What, what, oh what are we? And who are you, and I, and all surrounding gasps of dead but undead cries? Ask not for whom the funeral bell tolls. It tolls for thee and me and all the ghastly terribles who nameless wander in a Marley death of chains. Do I speak the truth?"
    "Oh yes!" exclaimed Father. "Come in!"
    "Yes!" cried Nostrum Paracelsius Crook.
    "In," cried Timothy.
    "In," pantomimed Anuba and Mouse and eight-legged Arach.
    "In," whispered Timothy.
    And the ghastly passenger lurched into the arms of his cousins to beg merciful lodgings for a thousand nights and a chorus of "ayes" soared up like a rain reversed and the door shut and the ghastly passenger and his wondrous nurse were home.

Chapter Fourteen
The October People
    All because of the cold exhalation of the ghastly passenger the inhabitants of the Autumn House suffered a delicious chill, shook down the ancient metaphors in their attic skulls and decided to gather at an even greater meeting of the October People.
    Now that the Homecoming was over, certain terrible truths arrived. One moment the tree was empty of leaves in the autumn wind, and then, instantly, problems clustered upside down along the branches fanning wings and baring needle teeth.
    The metaphor was extreme, but the Autumn council was serious. The Family must at last decide as the ghastly cousin suggested, who and what it was. Dark strangers must be indexed and filed.
    Who, amongst the invisible mirror images, was oldest?
    "I," came the attic whisper. "I," A Thousand Times Great Grandmere whistled her toothless gums. "There is no other."
    "Said and done," agreed Thomas the Tall.
    "Agreed," said the mouse-dwarf at the shadowed end of the long council table, his hands freckled with Egyptian spots pressing the mahogany surface.
    The table thumped. Something beneath the table lid gave a laughing bump. No one looked to see.
    "How many of us are table knockers, how many walkers, shamblers, lopers? How many take the sun, how many shadow the moon?"
    "Not so fast," said Timothy, whose task it was to scribble the facts, plain breadfruit or otherwise.
    "How many branches of the Family are death-related?"
    "We," said other attic voices, the wind that crept through the cracked timbers and whined the roof. "We are the October People, the autumn folk. That is the truth in an almond husk, a nightweed shell."
    "Far too