The big Rolls moved on through the checkpoint, but the image of the two men remained burned on Wolf’s retinas. What was going on here? Why were his agency chiefs apparently attending the same mysterious gathering as the very target they had directed him to eliminate earlier that day? Wolf generally never questioned the reasoning behind his directives, but this was weird. It seemed to suggest that they were all somehow involved together – though in what, Wolf had no idea. And if that was right, then it meant that Wolf had unwittingly become mixed up in some kind of plot to eliminate one of their own. But one of their own what?
Wolf drew away from the checkpoint. He kept well out of sight as he worked his way around the side of the big house, threading through the trees. Karswell Hall was a hell of a grand old country pile, a real billionaire pad, its scores of windows lit up like a starship with exterior floodlamps casting a glow over the immaculate lawn that sloped down from the rear towards a gleaming dark lake at whose centre was a small wooded island, all wreathed in shadow. The guests, maybe fifty of them, were visible through the windows of the manor, standing in groups, talking, sipping drinks. The gathering was obviously a formal event, judging by the sombre suits and ties of everyone present. Wolf noticed that there was not one woman among them.
Crouched down low and invisible among the trees, Wolf used his compact but powerful telephoto lens to search for Abbott among the guests, but couldn’t make him out in the crowd. Maybe Wolf would get an opportunity to take care of Abbott that night, or maybe not. He kept waiting, and watching.
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.
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.
Wolf had seen many terrible things in his life. Some of them, he’d caused to happen personally. He thought he’d seen everything. Thought that he was too hardened and jaded for anything to get to him any longer. But the scene he was witnessing now made his mouth go dry and his hands shake. He steadied his grip on the phone and kept watching and filming, despite himself.
Solemnly, gravely, the High Priest handed his staff to one of the other men. Then he turned to face the girl, reached out to her and ripped away the white smock with a single violent jerk. The crowd screamed. She was naked underneath. The incomprehensible chanting of the crowd became even wilder.
Now the High Priest stepped closer. He raised the dagger to show the crowd, its long curved blade glittering in the firelight; then in a fast left-to-right movement that made Wolf flinch, he nicked the girl’s neck with the edge of the blade. The blood trickled down her throat and chest. The High Priest bent in front of her, and for a few moments Wolf couldn’t tell what he was doing. Then he stepped aside, and Wolf saw the five-pointed Pentacle drawn in blood on the girl’s stomach.