dutky's Journal: The Creeping Horror, The Song out of Time

We are beset by a multitudinous terror. They have arisen from the long sleep to reclaim the world we, mistakenly, call our own. The stride a century as if it were a week. Their long, slow march treading patiently back into dark prehistory and forward to the unknowable future. A crawling horror with a million legs, lofted on chitonous wings. Their red eyes peering from every corner and crease, from the sky above our heads and the ground below our feet.

In other words, the periodical cicada are back. I saw the first nymphs emerge last Wednesday (May 12) with the bulk of the brood emerging on Thursday and Friday: the discarded skins of the nymphs adorn tree-trunks, grass and flower leaves, walls and most any other vertical surface, like holiday ornaments designed by H.R. Geiger.

The song was first audible on Thursday, but has built, since then, to a continuous uulation, ringing over the distant hills from all directions: omniprsent and opressive. The song sounds like nothing more than the Phaser sound effect from the first Star Trek series, except for its duration. Mercifully, the sound effect only ever lasted for a few sends on the television show, here it goes on for hours, from dawn till mid-afternoon. It is most noticable outside, but can still be heard indoors.

There is, also, a noticible odor. It is not, yet, very strong, but it will get stonger as the brood reaches its peak. It is mildly offensive, sweet and cloying, like the stench of rotting leaves in the fall. I have been told it is the smell of dead cicadas, of which there are plenty, but have no way of knowing if it is true. It may be the smell of their discarded skins, or some effluence of their bodies, but it clearly associated with and unique to this brood.

Here are two more links that I couldn't fit comfortably in the text above. Both links are especially pertinent to the emergence I am describing, since I live in Silver Spring, Maryland.