I did my best not to think the shelter felt even slightly like a trap. The downpour must be weighing on the trees, which looked bent on dragging the rock walls together. The prematurely nighted sky appeared to have narrowed the cutting and blocked it in both directions with blackness, closer than the railway station. I stood under the middle of the arch beneath the untravelled road and tried to be soothed by the incessant liquid murmur of the rain, rendered stereophonic by the bridge. I was finding reassurance in the inability of the storm to touch me when I began to hear a voice.

I snatched out my phone, but it stayed mute. For a distracted moment I wondered if I could be hearing an announcement at the railway station. Might someone be listening to a car radio nearby? I strained my ears to make out the voice through the downpour. It sounded almost as thin and as randomly shaped as the rain. Was it whispering “Must” or “Master”? No, there were more than two syllables, although not quite either of those. “Mist tells”? Not that, and I peered down the slope, where the sounds almost indistinguishable from the rush of rain appeared to come from. Perhaps they were just part of the downpour, like the twin globules of water that swarmed down a patch of lichen to lodge above an especially prominent outcrop of fungus, two thick piebald ledges pressed together. The rain was rousing the plump fungoid strips, causing them to twitch apart and extrude a swollen greyish tendril like a relic of a tongue. The spectacle appeared to locate the whisper and lend it substance. “Magister,” I was almost sure it said. “Magister Stellarum.”

I tried to believe that only the rain was shifting the fungus, however allied to the syllables the movements seemed to be. Perhaps the movements were making me hear words where none were to be found. I couldn’t help recoiling when the left-hand globule either lost its hold or burst, streaming down the wall, to be followed at once by its twin. The fungus drooped as though exhausted by its efforts, and then I caught sight of another pair of globules that had come to rest above two lips of fungus, much closer to the bridge. Moisture eased the protrusions apart, and I heard the simulation of a voice. “Magister Stellarum.”

The downpour was abating, and I could no longer mistake the voice for rain. It sounded soft as rotten fungus and similarly liable to collapse. Although the wind had dropped, I was seized by a fierce chill. I couldn’t move or look away from the unnatural activity on the wall until it fell apart, the watchful globules drooling down the lichen as the strips of fungus sagged. Ought I to have felt reassured? Not when I feared the presence was simply moving on and about to reappear.