There’s something hanging from an apple-tree branch so I walk over to investigate. Howls erupt from all around the square as more locals arrive. A drum beats in the distance, from the direction of the forests. Locals have tucked their kids into their IKEA beds and thanked their elderly parents, parents who did all this themselves back in the ’80s, who know the score, and they have creeped out to gather in this dark square.

I get closer to the tree. To the thing in the tree.

It’s a troll.

A carved pine figure. Humanoid with rope coiled around its timber neck. Swinging in the wood-smoke breeze, its animal tongue, maybe transplanted from a shot hare or a snared badger, falling limp from its painted pine lips. This troll is naked. I’ve never seen one quite like it. Scars and cuts all over its wooden torso. Its breasts are acorns complete with stalk nipples. I walk closer, my mask stinking as the moisture from my breath softens it. The hanging troll’s feet are covered with troll blood. Its fleshy penis hangs low by its ankles.

A man approaches me. Does he know me? Can he see my face through this mask?

He’s dressed in black leather trousers and a black T-shirt. He’s wearing an oversize Mickey Mouse head. He reaches his hand out slowly. Black fingerless gloves.

I retreat. ‘No…’

He places his finger up to his Mickey Mouse lips and says, ‘shhh.’

And then he reaches out for me again, this time with two hands, his huge Disney eyes and Disney smile and Disney ears bearing down on me. He opens his palms and places them centimetres from my chest, so I push him. A short jab. Not sure if it’s his oversize head or what, but he topples backwards onto the wet grass and starts cackling. Laughing like he’s high on something.

I move away but there is no safe place here. No well-lit corner. No open store. When I’ve felt threatened before I’ve headed into a busy café, into a Burger King in London, into a well-lit street with CCTV. None of that here. Just a town square with shrouded streetlights and closed businesses. Hundreds of moaning, howling locals drifting through the fog. Pans outside doors. Bonfires and a giant spinning bee. And now the sound of a single violin.

It makes things worse. I stand beneath an apple tree, this one free of executed trolls. In the bandstand are now two violinists. They are both wearing tuxedos and black gimp masks, complete with shiny rubber balls in their mouths. They are playing violins facing each other, not out at the square. And it’s not music exactly. More like high-pitched squeaks and squeals.