‘What are we doing?’

The witch stares at me through inscrutable black eyeholes. ‘The votes are in.’

I’ve never seen Fred’s website, only the videos on Lux’s hard drive. Just the same, I have a sense of what he might be talking about. The dread is like quicksand, slowly swallowing me.

I pull the mask over my face. The eyeholes aren’t quite in the right places. My peripheral vision is gone. When I glance at Donnie, I find myself looking at Frankenstein. The square jaw and heavy brows go well with his thick neck.

As soon as Fred starts fiddling with the locks, the screaming stops. It’s as though the people inside can tell it’s him just from the way he unlocks the door.

The door creaks and groans as he drags it open and hits a switch. Fluorescent lights flicker on one by one, illuminating a stained concrete floor, rusting steel walls, a small space heater and a hulking machine, with a broad chute bolted to one side and a spout mounted opposite. Inside the chute I can make out jagged shapes designed for cutting and tearing. I guess the machine is left over from when this was a functioning farm. Whole pigs go in one end, slop comes out the other.

Fred touches a second switch. Heat lamps come on, lighting up the rest of the slaughterhouse. It’s divided into several half-rooms, each with one wall cut away, like a movie set. There’s a fake pharmacy. An industrial kitchen. A hotel room. A cinema. A locker room. A church confessional. Some of the sets have foreign power outlets. Through one of the room’s phoney windows, I can see the Eiffel Tower.

There are three women and three men, each chained to a separate movie set. They keep their eyes to the floor, trembling as if current is running through their bodies.

I recognise some of the sets from recordings on Lux’s hard drive. Fred isn’t getting these videos from all over the world at all—he’s just making it look like he is.

Donnie walks into the slaughterhouse, hands behind his back. His footfalls are slow and measured, like he’s browsing in a furniture shop, trying to decide which sofa to sit on. The soft scuffles echo through the space. Each prisoner looks terrified as he approaches and relieved when he passes them. They all tense up again as he reaches the other end of the slaughterhouse, turns around, and starts walking back.

‘The votes have been counted,’ he says, his voice muffled.

Someone whimpers.

My breaths are hot inside the mask. I glance at Fred. He’s leaning against the wall, his face hidden behind the witch mask.

‘Scammer,’ Donnie says finally.

A man in a dirty white coat, middle-aged, Asian American, hunchbacked, starts weeping into his claw-like knuckles. There are sweat patches under his arms, despite the cold. ‘Oh no. Please, God, no …’