The Cicadas

We called it the Summer of Cicadas.

The noise was unbearable at times—waves of it, rising and falling like breathing. They sang from the trees, from cracks in the soil, from the air itself, it seemed. If you stopped talking, stopped thinking, it filled your head completely. A constant, high-pitched reminder that something massive was happening just under the surface.

I hated it then. But now…I’d give anything to hear it again.

That summer was blistering, like the heat had decided to sit down on the earth and never get up again. The air was thick and still, the sky that strange bleached blue you only get when there are no clouds, no shade, no mercy.

We were staying in my grandparents’ cabin near Bellwood Ridge. Not far from a lake that had mostly dried up by then—nothing but cracked mud, stubborn cattails, and the canoe we never used anymore. There were six of us, all teenagers, bored out of our minds and desperate for something to do that didn’t involve melting.

We climbed trees, built forts, pretended to be soldiers or fugitives or explorers. You know, that weird age where you’re both too old for games and too young to let them go completely.

Everything smelled like sap and sweat and the brittle dryness of grass that hadn’t seen rain in weeks. We ate melted popsicles on the porch and dared each other to go farther into the woods than the last person. Someone always chickened out.

I remember there was this one night—late July, I think—when the power went out. No storm, no warning. Just…gone. The fans died, the fridge started sweating, and the radio we’d been playing music on cut off mid-song.

We lit a few candles and took them outside, away from the stifling heat of the cabin. The stars were incredible. No city lights to drown them out. It felt like the whole sky was tilting toward us, heavy with secrets. We lay in the grass and made up constellations. Giraffes, skateboards, an ice cream cone someone insisted looked like a spaceship. I told them about how cicadas only come in cycles—like thirteen or seventeen years, depending on the type—and that this was supposed to be a big one. A brood emergence, I think it was called.

“Maybe they know something we don’t,” I’d said.

“Like what?” someone had laughed. I didn’t know how to answer. Just a feeling in my chest, hollow and loud, like the sound that came just before thunder.

A few days later, we saw the first of them.

Not the cicadas—the Husks.

But we didn’t call them that yet. Back then, we just thought it was a weird animal. A deer that had been out too long in the heat. Mangy, stumbling, thin. Except its eyes didn’t blink. And it didn’t make a sound, even when it opened its mouth. We watched it from the treeline, half-curious, half-concerned, as it wandered along the lakebed. Its hooves sank into the mud, but it didn’t seem to notice. Just kept moving. Straight toward the center of the lake.

Then it stopped. Stood still for a long time.

And then sank. Slowly, like it was being pulled under. Not panicking. Just gone.

That night, the cicadas stopped.

We didn’t notice at first. It’s like when a sound you’ve lived with disappears—it takes a minute before your brain catches up. The quiet was wrong. Too big. Too sharp.

I couldn’t sleep. None of us could. The air felt too thin. I kept waiting for the noise to come back, but it didn’t.

In the morning, one of us, Nour, found an emergency radio. One of those crank-powered ones my grandfather had kept in the supply shed. When he turned the dial and hit a patch of static that wasn’t static, there was a voice. Garbled, distant, barely more than a whisper through the crackle. But it was saying something. A warning, maybe. Or a list.

Then it cut out. We decided not to dwell on it for too long.

A few hours later, Max came back from the gas station past a few hills. He’d biked there to grab more ice but returned empty-handed—with three strangers in tow. Two women and a man, all older than us, maybe in their late twenties. Dusty, sweaty, alert in a way that made the rest of us feel stupid.

None of them said where they came from. They didn’t talk much at all. One of them had a map. Another had a rifle. We didn’t ask questions.

That night, there were sirens in the distance. Not police—not exactly. More like alarms. A sound that wormed its way into your ribs and set your teeth on edge. It lasted for hours.

Then came the dreams.

Not for all of us. Just some. I was one of the unlucky ones.

I dreamed of standing at the edge of the lake, but it wasn’t dry anymore. It was full—black and shining, like oil. And there was something beneath the surface, shifting. Watching.

In the dream, I couldn’t move. I just stood there, frozen, while the water rippled and bubbled. The deer came back. So did other animals. A raccoon with its skin peeling back. A coyote missing half its jaw. They stood beside me like we were all waiting for something.

And then something rose.

I woke up gasping, sweat soaked into my sheets, my heart thudding so hard it felt like it might break.

I wasn’t the only one. One morning, Lily, the youngest of us, was gone. Her bed was empty. No note. No sign of struggle. Just gone. We searched the woods for hours. Days. No trace.

Then the strangers left too. Took the map. Left the rifle.

One of us said we should go back to town. Try to reach someone. Anyone. Another said, “What if it’s worse in town?” So we stayed. Huddled close. Ate what we had. Spoke in whispers. Watched the lake.

By August, the lake had filled again—not with water, but something darker. The mud hardened into a black shell, slick and trembling like skin. We stopped calling it a lake.

One night, I saw lights in the woods—flickering, dim. Not fire. Not flashlights. They moved wrong. Like they were searching. Or hunting. Sometimes we’d hear things just outside the cabin. Whispers. Breathing. It sounded uncanny.

By late-August, there were only four of us left. We’d stopped talking about “after.” Stopped pretending someone was going to show up with answers. We kept to the shadows and kept the curtains closed. The world beyond the cabin faded. Radio static. No planes in the sky. No hum of distant highways.

That was the two summers before everything ended. Or changed. Or whatever you want to call what happened. People left cities. Power grids collapsed. Things walked in places they shouldn’t have. And everywhere, people saw strange, impossible creatures rising from cracks in the earth. From pits. From lakes that hadn’t existed in decades.

They didn’t attack—not at first. They just watched. Like they were waiting. Sometimes I still see lights out over the trees, flickering just at the edge of vision. Sometimes I hear a hum beneath the earth, like a sound trying to become a song. There’s no more internet. No more TV. No more official names for anything. Just whispers. Groups that live underground. Places you don’t go after dark. The old cities are ghost cages now, humming with whatever replaced us.

But sometimes, when it’s hot, and I’m lying still enough, I think I hear them again.

The cicadas.