Lord of the Nutcracker Men by Iain Lawrence Read Free Book Online Page A

rising shrill and cackly, and I stared between my feet at my sick little fire, at the tattered pink remains of my precious whizz-bangs. Beyond them, over the black bulk of the stone wall, a fizz of sparks gleamed from a distant bonfire. A rocket shot up and exploded, and a flower of red light opened in the sky. A faint howl of voices came over the fields from Cliffe.
    I thought of all the wonderful Guy Fawkes Days I'd spent in London, the shrieking and the laughter as a dozen boys danced our guys around fires so high that they towered above us. I remembered the heat and the roar of the flames. Far away, another rocket blossomed into orange.
    “Auntie?” I said. “Can we go to Cliffe? Can I take my guy to the fire?”
    “Certainly not,” she said. “I'm not walking all the way to Cliffe to see a lot of hooligans.”
    “Please?” I said.
    “You can go yourself,” she told me.
    I stamped out my little fire, the worst I'd ever seen,and went off alone to Cliffe. I carried my guy for half a mile, dragged him a bit, then carried him again. The night was very black, and the fireworks flared in red and yellow and silver. Whizz-bangs exploded, and jumping-crackers rattled like gunshots, and I thought of myself trudging up to the front. The sound of the crackers, the faint smell of powder, made me think of my father, and how he'd seen the guns blazing in the distance.
    I had left the farm behind me, and was passing the woods. In the flashes of the rockets I could see the bare branches of the trees tangled against the sky. Across my shoulders, the guy lay like a wounded man. And I carried him all the way to the village, to the old stone church at its center.
    There the bonfire raged. Its flames soared up from an enormous pile of wood and branches, licking with yellow tongues at a great cloud of shimmering sparks. Around it ran the boys, their guys leaping and tumbling like gangly creatures that chased them through the heat and roar. The adults and the girls stood in a ring facing the fire, and the light made their cheeks a dazzling red, their eyes as black as voids. In their dark clothes, standing absolutely still, they looked a village of dead people, their faces only skulls.
    “Guy, guy, guy,” the boys chanted. “Stick 'im in the eye.”
    They circled the fire as embers exploded into bursts of sparks. The roar and the popping, the sharp cracks of whizz-bangs, made me think again of the war. The boys were like soldiers running through shell bursts.
    “Guy, guy, guy. Stick 'im in the eye.”
    They shrieked and laughed. The fire raged.
    “Hang him on a lamppost. And there let 'im die.
    ” One by one, the guys went soaring up, flung by the boys to the top of the bonfire. Their stuffed legs seemed to kick at the wood and the flames. Their arms groped through the sparks, and their masked faces grinned as the fire swept over them. They sprawled on the wood and burst into fire themselves. Their bodies tore open, spilling out smoke. One came hurtling down, wrapped all in flames, rolling over and over as his arms beat at the fire in his burlap body. I dragged my own guy forward and heaved him up with the rest.
    He seemed to sit for a moment at the very top, his huge head flopping forward. His arms seemed to lift and beckon to me, to all of us. Then the fire took hold of his ankles and crept up his legs. Smoke welled from the body, thick coils of gray that swirled around his monstrous head, around his tiny little cap. The boys laughed to see him, my poor sad guy. But I looked at him almost with horror as the clothes my father once had worn blackened and twisted, then burst into flames. The smoke thickened. My guy's body split open and Mr. Tuttle's rosebushes tumbled down into the heart of the bonfire. His head tipped back, and a split appeared for his mouth, holes for his eyes. They jetted smoke, then turned to fiery red from the blaze of twigs inside. He seemed to glare at me, to shout in the roar of the fire. Then his strings