He had no idea what he was soon to witness.

At the stroke of midnight, the ceremony began.

It was like watching a surreal dream unfold. First the lights went out and Karswell Hall fell into darkness, illuminated only by the pale glow of the full moon that hung over the lake. Minutes later, a procession of figures slowly began to emerge from the rear of the house and wind its way down the lawn towards the water’s edge. But, as Wolf realised, there was something bizarrely changed about the figures. All fifty guests were now wearing strange robes, long, dark, and hooded. Their faces were obscured by black masks. Wolf felt a tingle of apprehension as he saw they were animal masks – no, bird masks, with curved, sharp beaks that reminded him of the head of the old man’s cane.

The procession assembled at the lakeside. They stood shoulder to shoulder with their backs to the trees where Wolf was hiding, all looking out across the water towards the dark, wooded island at its centre as if full of anticipation for something about to happen there. He scanned the crowd, still searching for Abbott, but it was impossible to tell whether he was among them or not. The hooded men were unrecognisable, all except for the thin, stooped figure that walked with a noticeable limp and leaned heavily on a cane. The old man.

Wolf breathed, ‘What the f—??’ He knew that he had to capture this on video. If he didn’t film what was happening he’d have a hard time convincing himself afterwards that he hadn’t been dreaming. He quickly set the phone camera and hit the record button.

Now a low chanting broke out from the crowd. Soft at first, building into a crescendo whose weird sound sent a chill down Wolf’s neck. It wasn’t English. It wasn’t any language he had ever heard before. Then, as the chanting reached its peak, a pyrotechnic burst of flames erupted into life on the island and lit up the trees – and Wolf swallowed hard and blinked in disbelief as he saw the giant effigy that until now had been hidden in shadow. Forty feet tall, carved out of stone, a quasi-human figure with the body of a man and the head of a bird, long-beaked like a heron or an ibis. The monstrosity appeared possessed with a life of its own as the flames made the shadows dance and cast their flickering reflection across the water.

The chanting of the crowd went on rising in pitch and intensity, the same incomprehensible phrases being repeated over and over like some hypnotic religious catechism that had taken hold of their minds. More flames illuminated the billows of smoke rising above the treetops.