text: I haven’t been to a bonfire since I was twelve years old. For the last eighteen years I’ve avoided them, stayed late at work on Bonfire Night, squeezed my eyes tight at the sounds of fireworks. All because of what happened that night all those years ago; I still hear the screaming of my friends, see the jerking movement of shadowy figures between flickers of dancing firelight. We had no idea how specific the rules were, we figured it was just a bit of fun. Stuff a few old clothes with straw, make a passable effigy of a person and call it the Guy. Shove him on the fire and watch him burn. Now I think about it, the whole thing couldn’t fail to have a dark and twisted background could it? More so than the treason thing I mean. Everyone knows the story. Guy Fawkes wanted to bring down the Protestant King and his government, in order to restore the monarchy to the Catholics who’d paid for and organised his attempt. Some people (wrongly) think of Guy Fawkes as some kind of freedom-fighter anarchist, much like they think of Che Guevara, the squalid killer and totalitarian tyrant, as an idealist for social equality. But that’s their choice, after all ignorance is bliss, and the truth of it is probably lost to the mists of time. It hardly matters. The only truth that really matters is the one that plays out every November 5th. I didn’t find out the truth for many years after it happened, but now I understand. I’ve been working in local government - a very specific department of local government - for many years now in a position open only to a few. Open only to people who have seen the things I’ve seen. And that’s how I know what I need to tell you. So I’ll tell you what happened to me first, because it’s the same thing that could happen to you. To anyone. To your kids, after they tell you they’re doing one thing and actually do something completely different. I’m not saying you need to watch them 24/7, but I am saying you need to watch them on the night of November 4th. My parents knew we were having a sleep-over at Tommy’s house. They just had no idea his parents were away. How could they have known? I was pretty adept at lying through my teeth about such things at that age. In any case, we snuck out at about 11.30pm, which to us was ridiculously late, and set about making our own bonfire. Our guy was made from Tommy’s clothes. There had been a vote, of sorts, and he’d lost. We figured his parents wouldn’t notice his stuff missing because he had the most clothes. Kid-logic, I guess. The straw had been taken from the bales up on the fields behind the houses and we enthusiastically stuffed the old jeans and jumper with straw, and tied the two bits together with string. We stuck a large stick through his neck so it protruded out, and the sack filled with yet more straw was then shoved ceremoniously onto the stick as his head. We thought it was brilliant. A life-size Guy all of our own. Before long the fire was blazing, and we started to worry that it was too big. Although we were pretty far from the town, through the woods and up on the fields, we wondered if people would spot us. Specifically, our parents. We were too young to think seriously about the police or fire brigade, or anyone else for that matter. And, now I think on it, I am astounded that no one came to investigate the fire that must have been like a beacon in that dark night, even through the woods. I had no idea that what we were doing was deeply, deeply dangerous. And not just because of the flames and the stupidity of being a twelve year old far from home on a dark night. I warn you, the next part of this is not pleasant, but I must tell you anyway. I am not likely to be allowed to live having disclosed this truth, but disclose it I must for your sake. Tommy and Ross were making the final adjustments to the Guy, fiddling with the cheap shoes that wouldn’t stay on the straw sticking out of the jeans and trying to fit the gloves at the end of the arm. I was standing a little further back, gazing in rapt awe at the leaping tongues of flame lapping at the dry wood we’d piled up. I remember the cracking of old sticks, the showers of pretty embers as larger logs split apart glowing briefly against the black grass. Shadows flickered all around us. And then the screaming started. I turned at Ross’s first panicked cry, and froze at the sight. The glove he’d been struggling with had his wrist in a vice-like grip, and Tommy was staggering back clutching his nose, reeling away from straw-man’s leg which had clearly just kicked him. Blood showed between his fingers, and for a moment I was transfixed by the sight, before my eyes were torn away by the terrified cry Ross made as the Guy took hold of his other arm and hurled him into the flames. The scream he uttered was something that has stayed with me my entire life, a howl of desperate, disbelieving horror and agony like the squeal of a petrified animal, and then lost in the crackle of flames. I only just managed to snatch Tommy out of reach as the gloved hand grabbed at him, and I dragged him back as the lurching nightmare lumbered forward on unsteady legs. It was its silence that almost cost me my life, that implacably relentless malice so unlike any threat I could have imagined with my childlike brain that it nearly rooted me to the spot with unfocused, confused terror. I hadn’t even had time to process what had happened to Ross, and I think the screaming in my ears was my own. The creature took another staggering step, its misshapen filthy bag-head wobbling unsteadily on its pole, its arms swinging as though ready to fall off. Tommy ran at it, tears streaming down his blood-splattered face, and shoved it hard in the chest, trying to push it into the fire. He was screaming too. The thing was knocked back, its arms flailing, but it didn’t fall into the flames. Instead it snatched at Tommy’s hand, pulling him down with it. Tommy fell on the other side of it, so that the writhing straw-man’s back blocked him from sight as it rolled over. I tried to move, to answer Tommy’s ghastly screams for help, but I couldn’t. I was motionless, impotent with fear. Tommy’s screams became gurgles as the thing made odd, frantic movements with its arm, which I realised with a hideous dawning horror were the motions of a man stuffing a Guy with straw. Somehow at that thought my mind cleared, and I ran forward, and saw what was happening to my friend. The sight has never left me. Tommy lying by the fire, his hair catching alight, his eyes staring unseeing at the stars overhead. Orange light and black shadows playing over his dead face, his features frozen in a look of unutterable horror. And the straw-demon, forcing more and more straw into his chest cavity, not caring that my friend was already gone. Again and again its gloved had thrust more straw inside him, as though oblivious to all else. I don’t know what I was thinking. All rational thought had long since gone from me. But from somewhere far away I saw myself dive at the monster, yelling in that primal terrified way humans have always yelled when fighting a last stand against a superior foe. But the thing was unbalanced. Hunched as it was over the body of my friend, it was unable to steady itself, and it fell easily to the side, knocking into the hungry fire. It was instantly ablaze. The old straw burst into flame with an almost impossible speed, the brilliant light and heat consuming it within moments. I stepped back, watching in grim horror as the thing writhed and danced, flailing uselessly at its tormentor, before collapsing, lying like just another guy burning on a bonfire. I turned and fled, I’m not proud of that. I left Tommy and Ross up there, and I didn’t look back. I spent the night outside Tommy’s house, because I didn’t have the keys. In the morning my parents found me, sitting motionless by the front door, my arms around my knees. I managed to garble out what had happened, and from that they and the police figured we’d been attacked by someone or something. They didn’t believe the story as I told it, of course, and put most of it down to a child’s shock. The remains of the bonfire were searched, but no sign was ever found of Tommy or Ross. Somehow or other news of my story eventually found its way to the ears of the innocently-named Department for Fire Safety at the local Council. It’s their job to make sure such things don’t happen, and before long I’d been inducted into their ranks. That’s where I learned the truth, and was forbidden to tell it. But tell it I will, if only to keep you safe. Or possibly to get my own back a little. I have no love for my erstwhile employers, as you’ve probably deduced from all this, and I don’t agree with their methods. The point is the first “guy” of the year, the first one completed on November 5th, contains the restless and tortured spirit of the man himself. Fawkes. Condemned eternally to return and be punished over, and over, and over again. It’s ghastly. It’s horrific. But that’s just how it is. I’m so used to it now the story doesn’t affect me anymore, which I suppose is part of the reason I hate my job. For what it’s done to me. Anyway, the Church has always known, and back in the old days firewood was hard enough to come by as it was, so no one built their own bonfires. It was all controlled by the churches and they largely made sure people were safe and the punishment went on and on, year after dreadful year. But as times changed, the secular authorities like the one I work for took over, and the job became less about keeping people safe and more about keeping the awful truth a secret. We make sure the first Guy built on November 5th is made by people who knew what they’re doing, in a controlled environment, and that when he returns he burns quickly without taking anyone with him. After all he does not return to the flames without a fight, as Tommy and Ross learned to their tragic detriment. Unfortunately for us, we’d built our guy shortly after midnight on 5th November, in a spot coincidentally between the Council patrols. No one stopped us finishing that effigy, no one checked with the lab whether it was safe. It sometimes happens. And the clean-up operation is usually a logistical and public relations nightmare, with the focus almost entirely on hushing it up. I can’t stand it anymore. The witness relocation programmes, the hush-money. The 24/7 surveillance of survivors. It’s wrong. I think people would rather be trusted to face the issue themselves. So now you know. Remember remember, the 5th of .