We drove over a wide bridge. The wind filled up the car with a fierce sound. Everyone laughed, because there wasn’t too much else to do. There weren’t too many other cars.

At the end of the bridge, hovering above the water was a ball of silver. It writhed and struggled like a creature in agony. When we drove closer to it, it rose higher and towards us. It wasn’t really silver. Everything glitters from a distance, and all that. It was powdery grey smoke coming out of a plastic tub from the water below. It was dense and foul smelling.

We tried to lean over and see what was being burnt. It was a toy – like a doll or a stuffed bear. There were probably more ingredients in this smoke show because it seemed unlikely that a soft toy would put that up, just by itself.

All the made-for-TV horror shows would suggest that this was a concrete case of black magic. We wondered, as we drove away coughing, if there was a child somewhere far away bleeding from its ears or shrinking into a lump of flesh. Or if the only thing coming out of this was an asthma attack.