A Symphony of Cicadas

by Crissi Langwell

  I jammed my foot onto the accelerator and gunned it forward, driving over the yellow line and onto the left side of the road. The truck driver blasted his horn as I passed his truck, my tiny car teetering on the edge of the sloped roadway. I breathed a sigh of relief as I sensed the truck making room for me. However, I didn’t anticipate the cars behind the truck. An older red car appeared out of nowhere, and I only caught a glimpse of the driver’s terrified face before I swerved left to avoid hitting them. All my efforts of staying on the road were for naught as our car sailed over the edge of the roadway, floating towards the sea of green that lay in the forest below.

  We were going down.

  In between the chaos we’d just left on the road above us and the impact we were headed for on the ground far below, there existed a few silent seconds that became little lifetimes wrapped up in the shifting of tides. As memories and thoughts of John and Sam, my parents and sister, and everything I held close to me fluttered in scattered images behind my vision, I looked at Joey’s silent and terrified face. He never made a sound as his eyes met mine. We both knew that this wouldn’t have a good outcome. I reached out for him and he took my hand, squeezing it as if my hold would keep him safe. And it felt like I held his hand for years as we waited in the silence for what was going to come next.

  “I’m sorry,” I mouthed to him, unable to break the silence. He only nodded and squeezed my hand tighter.

  There was a loud bang as his hand ripped from mine, and a searing pain electrocuted my body. I could hear a piercing scream inside my head as it rattled through my chest. The wail that escaped my lips drowned out the muffled crunching sounds of the trees colliding with the metal of our car. I grabbed blindly for Joey, no longer able to see anything. But I couldn’t find him. The world thundered around me, making up for my loss of sight by flooding my ears with an undecipherable static. My voice was silenced by the eruption of sound, and by the gurgling liquid that invaded my lungs and left a copper vapor in my mouth.

  The deafening noises around me began to fade into the distance, and I felt relief at the silence. There was peace within the absence of chaotic sound. The car seemed to have stopped falling, teetering upon what I guessed was a branch or the top of a tree. I couldn’t feel my legs, and my hands were starting to go numb as well. It was like they were sleeping, inviting me to go with them as I faded in and out of consciousness.

  Somewhere far away, a bird tested out the startled quiet with a soft song. It was soon joined by other calls in the forest. Sensing how alone I was, I focused on the cries that surrounded me, letting them become my faltering heartbeat, my labored breathing, the heaviness in my head. Their song wove in and out of my senses, echoing in a dance of sounds. They, too, began to fade away. I yearned for the sound to remain in my ears, knowing that once they disappeared I would be on my own. But the sense of peace grew, wrapping my cold body in its layers of warmth. I felt my head grow even heavier against the car seat, the pain in my body evaporating with the sounds. When the last bird had sung, the whole world became quiet.

  And I was cast into a sea of nothing.

  Three

  I sat up with a start in a room bathed with light. I blinked to allow my eyes to adjust to the images around me. I was in a bed, wrapped in a tangle of blankets. The pattern of the cover was familiar, the same loose weaving of lavender flowers and green leaves I had talked John into buying when we first began living with each other.

  I was in my own room.

  John was sleeping next to me, his back toward me under the heavy mass of blankets. I could only see the top of his head, but felt him stir a little. I unwound myself from the blankets and moved closer to him, spooning him from behind with my arms wrapped around him. I began to place my hand in his, touching my fingertips into the palm of his hand. But he moved his hand just out of my reach.

  “I had the strangest dream,” I told him. “I dreamed that Joey and I died in a car accident. It was so vivid…it was disturbing.” I moved closer to him and brushed my face against his back.

  “How are you doing?” he asked, shifting his body to lift his head off the pillow. His back was still to me, but I sensed a deep concern in his voice.

  “I’m okay,” I answered. “It was just a dream. But it felt so real!” I moved my hand again to place it in his, but he moved his hand away once more. I was confused by this. He felt so far away, almost as if he weren’t even there.

  I sensed another presence in the room. I sat up again, looking over on John’s side of the bed. Sam was next to him, his eyes puffy and red as he lay on his back close to John. He had been crying. I hadn’t felt him come in while we slept, and was concerned to see him in tears; I wondered what could be bothering him.

  John stroked his son’s hair as if he were just a little boy and not a fourteen year old teenager almost as tall as his father, comforting him as Sam kept his eyes up on the ceiling, trying not to cry. His usual look of disdain was replaced by the innocent expression of a distraught child.

  “I just,” he began, and the tears ran down the sides of his cheeks onto the bed, “I just can’t believe they’re gone,” he whispered.

  My hands shook as I tried again and again to touch John’s hand only to have him move it away each time. Neither one of them turned toward me, acting as if they were alone and I wasn’t even there.

  “Who’s gone?” I asked, my voice wavering as I tried to remain gentle. Sam only buried his head in his father’s chest, both of them shaking as they cried together. “Who’s gone?” I demanded. They still didn’t respond. I leapt out of bed and slammed my fist against the wall over the headboard, only to have it sink into the drywall as if it were a foamy meringue rather than a solid surface. No sound could be heard from the angry movement. I pulled my hand back and tried again. Nothing. I kicked at the bed and tore at the covers. But all I could grasp before now seemed to slip through my fingers with ease. It made no sense. I could stand on the floor. I wasn’t just sinking through the earth or floating off into space. And yet, every motion I made in my panic proved fruitless in contact. I gave up and faced John and Sam.

  “Who. Is. Gone,” I demanded through clenched teeth, staring straight at them and willing them to answer me. John leaned away from Sam and looked down at him.

  “I’m going to miss them, too,” he told his son, his voice breaking in sorrow. His face looked about ten years older, the lines more pronounced in the dark circles around his eyes. He hadn’t shaved in what looked like a couple of days, and appeared not to have slept either. I knelt down and peered into his face.

  “Please look at me,” I pleaded with him. “Please tell me what’s going on.” John sighed and moved onto his back, both of them now staring at the ceiling.

  “I still can’t believe this happened,” he said, choking down a sob as he tried to get beyond the tears. “I keep thinking they’re going to walk through the door at any moment, that the police officer was wrong.” He fumbled with the covers, taking several deep breaths in and letting them out slowly.

  “I never thought yesterday was the last time I’d ever see Rachel or Joey again.”

  I felt my heart drop in my chest as the room began to fade away. John’s and Sam’s faces took on an ashen color before they resembled an image off a black and white screen. I could feel a sense of being pulled, my stomach tumbling as if falling in a roller coaster car in a steep decline. I reached out to grab onto something, anything. The room was gone, and all I came up with was air. Looking up, I could see a million stars and galaxies planted above my head in an infinite universe. Floating with nothing to hold onto, I was suspended in this space for only a moment before I was cast back into the world with a flash.

  Pine needles crunched below my feet as I crouched down on the forest floor. I could smell the dampness in the air from the morning dew and feel the fog mist against my skin. It calmed me, though a feeling of fear also remained as I tried to get a sense of what was real and what wasn’t. My ears pricked at the sound of
voices in the distance, and I turned my head towards the trees around me in a search for the source. Men shouted directions at each other, and I could hear the distinct sound of a chainsaw cutting through trees.

  “That’s it, a little more,” a voice said, followed by a crash that echoed through my wooded surroundings. What I couldn’t see before appeared right before me. The voices of the men now matched the scene unfolding in front of me as they worked to extract something from a broken car. I recognized my car immediately, even in its crumpled condition. The windows were just shards of glass underneath the crumpled hood of the vehicle, the tires bent in odd directions like broken limbs.

  “Did you find the other body?” one of the men asked. I could see flashing lights on the road far above where we all stood, a hazy glow surrounding them through the light fog of the late hour. Several cops with flashlights were making their way down the hill, and I could hear dogs barking in the distance.

  “Yeah, they called it in on the walkie about fifteen minutes ago,” an older man said, patting the device clipped to his jacket. “Said he was a boy, about twelve or thirteen. I’m willing to bet that’s his mother inside the car.”

  I was both curious and afraid to see who they were referring to inside the car. I stayed planted where I was, now just several yards away from where they worked to pry off the driver’s side door; but I kept my eyes trained on the car.

  “Were there any others out there?” the younger of the two asked.

  “No, I think there were just the two of them.”

  An emergency team joined them, and I could see them lifting a body out of the vehicle and onto a gurney. I only saw the battered skin on the woman’s arm as they zipped up the body bag, relieved that I couldn’t see her face hidden under a mass of tangled hair. But before the bag was closed altogether, I caught the unmistakable glint of the ring on her finger, recognizing the modest diamond on a band John had presented to me almost exactly a year before the day I left the world.

  As if in recognition, my own body responded to what I had seen, taking on the horrific reality of my earthly body. Wounds and shards of glass appeared on my arms, traveling up to my shoulders. I fell to the ground out of instinct as my legs splintered and twisted in different directions. I couldn’t see my face, but I could feel the warm blood dripping from my matted hair down my forehead and the blood filling my lungs with a sickening taste of copper.

  “Help me,” I gurgled, and my body was healed in an instant. It was as if it had never happened. I lay there shaking, past the pain of being broken and afraid that it would happen once again. But my skin remained unblemished against the muddy ground of the forest. I wondered how Joey was doing, if he were as confused about all this as I was. And that’s when it hit me.

  Joey. Where was Joey?

  Four

  I leaned up on my elbow, a slow panic growing inside me. I turned my head to look around. The gnarled trunks of trees surrounded me in all directions. I was alone, trapped within my forested cell under a canopy of pine that reached up into the fog. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. The workers and the broken car had vanished; it was unclear whether they had evaporated into the forest or had simply gone without my noticing. The only sounds were a few distant birds and the stirring in the creaking trees around me. Even the insects had ceased their buzzing where I sat. I was left with an eerie silence that covered me like a protective bubble, keeping me separate from the world I was no longer a part of.

  “Joey!” I called out. The word hung in front of me, trembling in the air but traveling no further than the space around me. “Joey!” I tried again, only to have my voice swallowed by the thick atmosphere surrounding my presence. I took a deep breath and screamed his name once more, using all of my power to force his name to travel with the wind, hoping it would reach his ears.

  “JOEY!”

  I could sense a sudden release in pressure as my voice shattered whatever was separating me from the rest of the forest. I was joined by a thousand cicadas, casting their deafening mating call in the trees as they, too, screamed for someone they loved. A flurry of birds broke out of the trees, creating a dark cloud in the sky. With each gust of wind, the cloud of birds above the forest rippled and shifted in shape, soaring and dipping through the sky in an ebony wave. I watched as the mass swirled above me. It was like a ghostly presence, the haunting movements of the birds growing and shrinking, becoming small before expanding to a large fog. The cloud above the forest grew darker and darker, pulsing in a hypnotic beat as if part of a dance. The hum of the cicadas around me mirrored the movements, keeping time with an urgency that ebbed and flowed.

  I got to my feet, moving with care not to disturb the dance going on around me. I wasn’t sure what was happening. It was clear that I had affected the forest in some way, but I didn’t know why or how. All I knew was that the increasing energy that surrounded me was mirrored within me. I could almost sense the thought of every living creature reliving the scene around me. I lifted my arms out to my sides, closing my eyes to feel the rhythm going straight through me. The vibrations only got more intense as I submitted myself to the energy. Could they understand me? Could they maybe help me find Joey?

  “Where’s Joey?” I whispered. The sound of my voice sent a murmuring surge through the hum, reaching the skies with a shiver that rippled outward and then inward again before being handed back to the singing cicadas that surrounded me.

  My mind was flooded with a million images and sounds in one instant, a static electricity that blinked rapid visions of the forest, the sky, the sound - everything that was happening right in this moment from copious points of view. Every thought included a small glimmer of light that shone around where I stood, wavering with a comforting brilliance.

  I gasped when Joey’s body appeared on the forest floor, the thoughts around me zeroing in on him like a kaleidoscope before focusing on him as a single image in the exact spot I was standing. I reached my hand out to touch him, forgetting that he was just a thought and nothing more. His body was bruised and cut up beyond repair, though the peaceful expression on his battered face gave the impression that he was sleeping. The image of his broken body sent a shock of pain through my chest as I saw my child hurt beyond repair. To keep from unraveling, I focused on his halcyon expression, willing him to open his eyes and see me, too. Instead, a small spark of light, the same light that had been sent to me earlier, emerged from his forehead and hovered just above him. His body and the encompassing forest glowed under the small glimmer of light, the glow adding a haunting beauty to the entire scene. I held my breath. The light grew in intensity, showering the surrounding area in a bath of white, swallowing it all with its blinding brilliance. And just as sudden as it gained strength, the light dimmed again. Joey’s body appeared once more under the weakened glow from the light, but my focus was on the dying ember hovering above him. It gradually faded altogether, evaporating into thin air, leaving Joey’s body abandoned on the forest floor.

  Peering into Joey’s face, I was taken aback by how unrecognizable he was. Even though it was still the image of the boy I had raised with all my heart for thirteen years, he looked more like a stranger than my son. Tears streamed down my cheeks as this image also faded, the thoughts scattering like leaves in the wind.

  “But where is he?” I pleaded in a whisper, afraid to amplify my voice any louder under the quiet murmur around me. There was no answer this time, only the steady hum of a symphony of cicadas, singing the same song that had been sung now for hours. “Please,” I said, “just show me where I can find him.” The cicadas continued to ignore me, their hum growing quieter as they went about their business. But I was desperate to get an answer, feeling wild in my resolve. “Was he the light?” I begged of them. “Is the light still here? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  It was no use. The hum continued to waver, losing the amplified energy that we’d been drawing from each other before as the sounds of the forest began to take on a
more natural resonance. Fearful this was the last chance I had of finding my son, I took a deep breath and threw my arms out wide.

  “Where’s Joey?!” I screamed at the birds, the insects, the forest. I used all my force, doing my damnedest to ensure I wasn’t going to be left without an answer. A resonating crack thundered nearby, and I jumped at the sound. The trees were blown around by a violent wind that burst through the forest, whipping through my hair before crashing into the trees with great force. The crack sounded again, this time right above me. I moved just in time as a branch splintered from the tree, crashing through the branches below it before landing at my feet.

  The birds burst away from the sky, the cloud they had formed now divided into a million pieces of vaporing ash. As they scattered, the afternoon clouds moved aside to offer a glimpse into the universe. I watched as the millions of stars within this window of space increased in brightness, revealing the planets and their moons, soaring meteors, and swirling galaxies billions of light years away. I stood mesmerized by this mystical image, for the moment forgetting the storm that was brewing around me. But the clouds moved back into place, concealing the heavens with their angry darkness.

  A bolt of lightning crackled from the sky, landing its brilliant tip at my feet with an electrifying sizzle. It sent me to my knees in fear. Flames materialized upon the pine-needle-covered ground, licking at my skin without burning me. The fire grew larger and larger, surrounding me as it tore at the trees around me. I whipped off my sweater and swung at the fire, trying to keep it from spreading through the whole forest. If I didn’t concentrate on the branch of the tree, my sweater sank through it without even touching the bark. But when I focused all my energy on making a connection with the tree, I managed to hit it with a satisfying blow. Unfortunately, the process of trial and error as I re-learned how to do simple tasks left my firefighting skills ineffective. Every time I managed to get one flame out, several more would start up around me. Soon I was engulfed in flames. And while it didn’t burn my body, I still felt the intense heat from the fire against my spiritual skin, and the sting of the heat in my ghostly lungs as I panted from the effort I was making. It felt like hours had passed when I fell to the ground and gave in as the fire closed around me and devoured the trees that once held thousands of humming cicadas.