That was when Wolf should have left. Should have just turned and run, got the hell out of there and kept running and not looked back. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Transfixed by the spectacle, almost willing to believe he was being gripped by some nightmarish hallucination, he couldn’t help but keep watching.

Then it got worse. And it became too late for Wolf to turn away.

There were people on the island. Still filming the scene with the zoom of his phone lens wound up to maximum magnification, he saw the figures appear as if out of nowhere through the smoke. Two of them wore the same robes and masks as the chanting crowd watching from across the lake, and carried flaming torches. But the third was something entirely different. It was a female figure, a blonde, clad in a plain white smock dress. From this distance and in the smoke and flicker of the flames Wolf couldn’t make out her features clearly, but enough to tell that she was young, perhaps still in her teens, more a girl than a woman.

But what was instantly obvious to Wolf was that she wasn’t there by choice. The two hooded, bird-headed men who accompanied her were clutching her by the arms and drawing her towards the base of the statue, which appeared to be some kind of altar. She was struggling, but weakly, and her head lolled limply from side to side as though she was inebriated – or drugged. The hooded men thrust her against the altar, pulled her arms out wide and tethered her wrists to what Wolf supposed must be iron rings set into the stone. She hung there as though crucified, her long blond hair obscuring her face. As the hooded men who’d tethered her stepped away, another appeared from the smoke.

He was robed in crimson with some kind of gold hieroglyph symbol emblazoned on his chest. His mask was more elaborate than the others’, like a ceremonial headdress or a bishop’s mitre. Except that a bishop’s mitre didn’t have horns. They were curly like those of a ram, rising into points that gleamed in the firelight. In his left hand he held a staff or sceptre. The right hand clutched a long, glittering dagger.

The masked crowd at the lakeside were going wild, baying and howling like a pack of bloodhounds. The horned figure in the red robe stepped dramatically in front of the tethered captive, raised his hands above his head and addressed the assembly from across the water, speaking more words that Wolf couldn’t understand. His head was spinning and he felt sick as he began to understand what he was witnessing, and what was about to happen. The figure in red was some kind of High Priest presiding over the twisted ceremony. And the crowd of lunatics who’d gathered here tonight on this spring equinox were his worshippers.