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 now Wolf swallowed hard and blinked in disbelief as he saw the giant effigy that until now had been hidden in shadow. Twenty 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. The chants were joined now by the harsh, rasping blare of musical instruments, like hunting horns, that sounded from the island and echoed over the lake. More flames illuminated the billows of smoke rising above the treetops.

That was when Wolf should have left. Should have just turned and run, got the hell out of there and just 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 four robed and hooded musicians – if the dissonant blaring from their horns could be described as music – appear as if out of nowhere through the smoke and assemble at the foot of the statue, two on each side. Moments later they were joined by three more figures that likewise appeared to have materialised by magic. 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.