The Cricket's Summer Song

The first chirps meant nothing.

A summer night. An open window. A lakeside breeze. A cricket’s merry song. 

I kicked off the quilt to luxuriate in the night. Maggie snored lightly on the other twin bed. The cottage was quiet. Alex, Sydney and Mia slept downstairs.

2:17 a.m. 

I remember checking my phone in a drowsy haze, hoping for several more hours of sleep. My eyelids grew heavy with the cricket’s chirps.

And then, the chirps changed. 

My eyes snapped open, body rigid. Shriek. Desperation. Help. 

And this — the rhythm never changed.

It was still a cricket’s chirp.

Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

I ran to the window but saw nothing in the dark. I pulled the cord on the overhead light and scanned the room. Nothing. Heart pounding, I opened the door.

“Kate…what’s going on? Are you ok?” Maggie sat up in bed blinking.

“What is that?” I felt my breath shallow, rapid.

“What is what? What are you talking about?” 

I scanned the room, putting my hands over my ears. 

“That noise! The cricket!”

“Cricket? What?” Maggie pushed back the covers and went to the window.

What wasn’t she getting?

“I don’t know! I don't know what it is! Something’s hurt — I DON’T KNOW WHERE IT’S COMING FROM!” I shouted to be heard over the cries. 

Then things went hazy. I have this sense of worried voices, arms around me as the chirps (screams? cries? I never know what to call them) went on. 

When I woke, sunshine filled the room. I could hear children laughing outside. Maggie was perched on the daybed with a magazine, peering at me. 

“Kate? Are you awake?” 

“Ummmm…yeah.”

“How are you feeling?” 

“Ummmm — ok? What time is it?” 

“1:30.” She went to the door and called out. “She’s awake!”

I heard feet on the stairs. Alex, Sydney and Mia appeared, looking serious.

“Are you ok? How are you feeling? What happened last night?” 

Oh God, there it was. I could hear the cries again. Different this time. More like an echo. My face felt hot.

“You didn’t hear anything?” They all shook their heads. 

“Nothing.”

“It was really calm, super-quiet.”

“What did you hear?”

I tried to explain, but I could see the doubt in the glances that slid toward each other. 

“Do you hear anything now?”

I did. 

“No.”

Maggie shrugged. “It was probably just a nightmare.”

“You didn’t take anything, did you?” Alex asked. 

“No. Nothing.”

The nightmare explanation seemed to satisfy everyone. We went out to dinner, shopping on the boardwalk, ice cream, sunset, wine around the fire. All the while, the cries echoed through me. Steady, relentless, but more distant somehow. 

2:17. 

They came back. Shrill. Plaintive. Urgent. Where were they coming from? I ripped the covers off my bed, crawled underneath, pulled the curtains off the rod, threw everything out of the shower and looked down the drain. I ran downstairs, outside. Pulled bushes apart, dug through the dirt. But nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. 

“You must hear it. You have to!” I shouted at my friends who — I think — trailed me at a distance.

I remember covering my ears. Begging the sound to stop. As the sky began to lighten, the cries started to fade, little by little. But never entirely.

When I woke in the afternoon, no one was in the house. They’d left a note. “Went sailing, get some rest.” I went back to bed, tears running down my face. 

Sunday was our last night in the house. Maggie slept downstairs. I didn’t sleep, frozen in the dark, waiting for 2:17. I don’t want to write it again. You know what happened.

The drive back to the city the next day was quiet except for the cries echoing in my mind. I closed my eyes, pretending to sleep.

That night, back in my own apartment, I paced. I watched TV. I sat on the couch. Waited for 2:17. It came and went with the cries remaining muffled, almost sounding like cricket chirps. The same happened the next night. And the next. And the next. It was going away, I was going to be ok. Still, I saw my doctor. He referred me to a psychiatrist. Conclusion: “generalized anxiety.” They sent me home with Xanax. 

I met up with my friends. They smiled, laughed, looked relieved and for a time, everything seemed close to normal. What I didn’t tell them is that I still heard it in that haunting, echoing way. 

We went back to the lake house the next month. No one mentioned the incidents, but I noticed Maggie stayed downstairs. I climbed into bed tense, heart pounding, window closed, lights on. Earplugs in. Oh, the cries were still there, living in me, always in the background, but damned if I wasn’t going to live with it. “It’ll be fine. It’s just anxiety. You’re fine now. It’ll be fine.” 

2:17. 

The cry shrieked. Over and over again. Even louder, even more desperate than before. The closet? For a second, I had the sense of watching myself rip open the closet door and throw everything out of it, scratching and pulling at the drywall. “Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?” Nothing. Nothing. Always nothing. But the sound was deafening. 

I stared at the destruction. My fingers shook so hard that I almost couldn’t call an Uber. If the others were awake — how could they not be — they didn’t stop me. By 3 a.m., I was gone. The further we were, the more the cries faded. But not entirely.

That was thirty years ago. 

I never heard from my friends again. I never returned to that house. I never heard those cries again, not like that. Still, I heard them constantly. Distant, calling. Some moments are as innocent as a cricket’s chirp, and others shrill and desperate. Why don’t you try therapy? I can hear you asking. Oh friend, come look at my dresser covered with bottles, half-filled with pills that never worked. Can you see the stacks of folders and books lining my walls, filling the tables? That’s decades of research on all of it. Can you see that I moved about as far away as—

What’s that? 

Can you hear it? 

No, of course you can’t.