I’m a city boy at heart, but nothing recharges me more than a walk in the woods. Granted, city life makes that difficult without a car, but peek enough times around your surroundings and you’ll soon stumble across a slice of nature that’ll almost make you forget you’re one of millions.
The concept of millions has never been clearer than it was on my last, if not final, visit to one such sliver.
I live within walking distance of our city’s river, arguably the main reason it’s the size it is in the first place. A long history of commerce, manufacturing, and consequently environmental violations. But time marched on and inscribed itself into the river’s limestone, twisting itself into that uncanny mix of urban and bucolic that feels like home.
Living near the river puts me in close proximity to several small parks and boat launches. Some are more scenic than others, sure, but all have the water in common. I started my walk in the early evening and the sun was beginning to set when I arrived at one such park. This one is by no means dense with green lushness, but it has its charm. It boasts a mid-sized field house with an odd number of walls alternating between sheets of metal, brick, and glass jutting into the sky. If you catch it at sunset from the other side of the water, the building gleams and shimmers, casting its shine on the river. On its side are two green overhead doors, at the foot of which is a long, gently sloped poured concrete ramp leading towards the small dock along the river.
It’s a small park, so it’s easy to take most of it in at once. There’s only one bench in the entire park, and tonight there seems to be a couple sitting there, but it’s hard to tell without my glasses. I decide to sit near the dock and take the steps along the ramp to get there. Walking down, I unzip and reach inside my backpack, and as my hand enters I see a large something flying at me. I jerk and flail away from the path of a cicada and run down the rest of the steps, putting as much distance between it and me. I wouldn’t say I’m scared of bugs, but I avoid them if I can. Certainly when they’re barreling towards me.
I reach the bottom and sit facing the river in one of the few spots not covered in goose shit. I survey the area once more before popping in my earbuds, lighting my bowl, and settling my eyes on the water. The smoke mingles with the warm air before drifting towards the river like a haze, and I drift with it suspended in sound. It’s amazing how easy it is to mimic isolation.
After what feels hours but was realistically only 20 minutes, a lull in my soundtrack shakes me awake, so I start packing up to head towards my next destination. The sun has nearly set and the two lampposts in the park have turned on. I reach in to put my things away and don’t notice the fluttering until I’m inside. At once yanking my hand out and launching my bag towards the dock, I recoil from the shock and the thought of how close I’ve been to whatever is in there. My skin crawling, I stare at the bag until, barely visible in the darkness, what looks like a cicada crawls out, flicks around in a circle, then flies towards the river. It must have been the bug I ran into on the stairs, must have gotten in while I was walking down. It takes several moments to get over the ick before I scoot down to grab my bag, just as the lull in my ears begins to fall apart.
You know how there is no such thing as silence? Even in so-called quiet places, there’s an ever-present hum and ring to the air. Some say it’s the sound of our nervous system, the fluids in our ears, or the blood flowing through our veins – or all at once. It’s the sound you hear when you pop in earbuds right before pressing play. And it’s a sound that I shouldn’t be hearing right now. The music in my ears was beginning to build, and yet I could hear that sound as if there was nothing on at all. Except it was different. It felt amplified and piped in, deep and wet. And that ringing. These background sounds were somehow cutting through the music in my ears, which by now has reached peak-time drive.
My mind pondered what it could be. A short in my cable, a barge coming up the river, the rumble of traffic, but it’s clearly neither. I wanted to pull out my buds, but something wasn’t letting me. I turned the volume down halfway and the sound doubled in intensity. My skin goosebumped instantly as the vibrations coursed through me. The hum shifted into an aquatic pulsing drone, like slowed-down splashes, while the ringing sounded like thousands of playing cards stuttering against the spokes of a wheel. Anyone else still in the park would be hearing this, but the mounting dread in my stomach kept me from looking at anything else besides the dark river.
Finally, I turned the volume all the way down. I was submerged in this morass of thick, guttural sound now pressing, straining against my earbuds. It was insistent, as if tuned for maximum discomfort. If the sound was this punishing with headphones, it could surely burst my eardrums I paranoidly thought. Although my curiosity was building, eventually fear won out. I kept my eyes on the river and ears away from uncertainty. But they were there, and even if I couldn’t hear the sounds clearly, I was definitely feeling them. If I couldn’t yet remove my earbuds, I should at least turn around.
As I was about to, a cicada landed on my backpack. It spun around before flying onto the sidewalk a few feet from me and just a few short inches from a second and third cicada. I stare at the group for a few seconds before I spot movement out of the corner of my eye. Cicadas four, five, and six swirl around frantically before settling on the dock, where they meet cicadas seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve. I had been so distracted by the sounds and the river that I didn’t notice all the cicadas now surrounding me. Had they been the sound all along? The stuttering cyclical ring and the droning hum could just be the buckling of cicadas. But these are no ordinary chirps. I know what cicadas sound like and, while similar, there is something off about this sound. The rumble is too deep for a creature of its size. And something else I hadn’t noticed until one danced on my backpack was that while its body looked similar to a cicada, its many wings were long, sharp, and thin, and its eyes were nearly nonexistent. These deep croaks surely belong to something else, some other inhuman thing. The only way to know for sure was to look.
Slowly and with eyes fixed forward, I started to pan my head to the left, and as I did, cicadas number…I’m not totally sure. In the dark and without glasses, the mass of wings could easily number in the hundreds, and with their grey bodies camouflaged by the grass, it could be thousands. I turned my head as far left as it could go, allowing me to see about halfway up the ramp, as well as a few hundred more cicadas hopping on the concrete. It took everything in me to not jump into the river, but the thought of disturbing them terrified me, so I slowly faced forward again, took a few deep breaths, then panned right. This side of the park is darker than the rest, making it difficult to tell if the lawn was likewise alive with the critters. Eyes still fixed, I moved my head towards one of the lampposts, and once my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I could see hundreds of black little spots flying in and out of the light. Turning towards the second beam revealed a similar sight. This park was swarming.
By this point my heart was racing and I felt trapped on all sides. I took a few deep breaths to steel my nerves for the inevitable trek through the cicadas (or whatever they are), and once my heart slowed a bit, I once again noticed how loud their gurgles and clicks were. One throb subsided only to be replaced by another more menacing tone, writhing, bubbling, creaking. In a flash I remembered the couple that I had seen earlier. Surely if they were still here, they would be just as trapped, and they may not have noticed there was someone else here since the bench is angled away from my direction. They also wouldn’t have been able to see what I have not yet had the guts to: what is behind me. No matter what is happening, the only way I can get out of this is to turn around and face it.
With eyes still fixed on the dark river, I reached for my bag, slowly rose to my feet, and just as slowly turned around.
By now it is dark out. The only light in the park is the two lampposts. The beams fall upon my back, casting a shadow on the ramp towards the field house. My eyes instinctively land on one of the large green doors, and then travel to the jagged metal-mouthed opening in its corner. It looks as if something blasted through it from the other side, leaving behind a gash of crinkled metal. Was it like that when I arrived? If not, how could I have not heard it, earphones be damned? A million questions flood my mind as I begin to walk towards the door. My foot lands and crunches. I shoot my eyes to the pavement and manage to catch the beginning of my shadow dispersing around my foot. At once the air fills with that grotesque creaking, its frequencies pricking my anxious flesh, its croaking rumble sending shock waves through my body, my sight, and somehow the ground. I realize that my shadow is bubbling, that the ground is oscillating in apparent concert with the sounds splashing against my screaming skin. I am surrounded by cicadas, or locusts, or click beetles, or whatever the hell these pests happen to be, an uncountable amount made all the more unfathomable, unseeable in the darkness. Run.
Run towards the bench. The thought enters my mind after my feet have already begun taking me there. Every step atop this writhing floor brings forth a blast of static. My pounding pulse manages to drown out most of the crunches. The distance from here to there is no more than 100 feet but feels ten times that. A hundred times. A million. Millions. But even if it was that much it would be worth it because I could clearly see the shapes of two people sitting on the bench. There is almost no light on that side of the park so it is difficult to make out anything beyond their frames. Chances are they were as terrified as I was, but somehow the thought of being eaten alive by millions of chattering teeth with others was comforting. I scream out to them.
My feet reach the bench and my frantic cries are met with silence. They do not budge an inch. Any relief I briefly felt is replaced by dread. There’s hardly any insects on this side of the park it seems. Panting, I manage to squeak out another shaky greeting. Gradually, the person on the left begins to stand with a too-smooth fluidity. A subtle arm movement follows, and then the sound of cracking bone. The arm slowly, mechanically rotates perpendicular to the ground. And then it begins to melt away. The flesh and bone is now dripping off its body. The rest follows, unraveling in one thick thread into the night. I stare in horror until the last bit of body disappears into the sky – and there is still one more.
It has not moved from position once since I arrived, but that’s not exactly true. It’s breathing. A jerky offbeat breath, more akin to convulsions. Fluttering like the pavement. The breathing suddenly stops, and a small hole begins to form in its torso. Insects fall off onto the ground and bench as the void enlarges, and they crawl back onto the limbs once they right themselves from the tumble. The body grows and grows, and then it begins to stand. A living shadow. The fierce clicking reaches a fever pitch and sets my skin aflame. When the form fully erects, it remains still for several beats. At once the head snaps left with a crack. Just as quickly it snaps 180 degrees to the right, then creaks slowly forward again. After a few endless seconds, the head slowly, painfully rotates to face me. The face is faceless. Nothing but a writhing mass of insects like the rest of it. Like the thread of flesh I just saw float into the sky. The only thing stopping them from engulfing me and drowning me is them. They could eat me at any moment. I know this because the face became a face. The fallen insects have crawled onto its head and have started to form ridges and valleys where brows and crevices would be. A nose fell open, teeth materialized, and a sharp jaw threatened to crush me in its maw. The rest of the limbs fell away and joined what is now a skull. The insects rapidly scurry across it, twisting the face into a buzzing, creaking, skittering, screaming living Munch. The face distorts and warps until it suddenly collapses into itself, creating a tsunami of insects that comes rushing towards me. This is what it took for me to finally run screaming from the park. The pounding of my feet, the crunching of the insects, the crackling of my joints. I ran and ran and ran as far from there as I could.
The next few nights were filled with nightmares of me in a sea of insects, of cicadas eating people to the bone, of death’s shadow stalking my own. It’s hard to sleep and even harder to find the courage to leave home, but it’s getting easier. Maybe it would be easier to get over this if I knew what I saw. I have since looked into insects related to locusts and cicadas, and none of them quite match what I saw that night – and especially not what I heard. I have not visited any one of these parks since this happened, but I have not heard about anything unusual having happened then or since in the area. It’s hard to find places where I am comfortable, especially in today’s uncertain existence, and it hurts to lose so many at once. I can see them so clearly in my mind, the familiar vistas now tainted by a menacing yet all too real body that shouldn’t be. I truly miss them, but it’s just not time to go back. Not just because I’m not ready, but because I know when I am, I will stop at nothing to find out the truth. Just not now. For now I am fine to stay here, where I at least recognize the insistent voices inside.