When Devils Sing(15)

“What’s going on?” Isaiah repeated, struggling to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Please.”

“It’s the cicadas, baby,” Grandma Bee said, but she didn’t take her eyes off the tree line.

Isaiah looked between his grandparents. Their faces were grave. He hadn’t ever seen them look so … afraid. He followed their line of sight, looking into the trees, expecting something to happen.

For a moment, nothing.

Then the cicadas began to scream.





CHAPTER 5NEERA





By the time the police arrived at the Colonial, an ungodly sound had descended upon Carrion.

Neera had heard cicadas all her life, but the awful shrill coming from the surrounding pine forest was the sort of sound she hadn’t heard in years. Not since she was small—the first time her mom brought her to Carrion. To the Colonial. Even as a child, she had known the shriek of the cicadas was wrong.

One moment, she was standing outside the motel with her mom, watching firefighters tend to the burnt remains of the Cadillac. The next, a neon-red sun peeked over the horizon, and with it came the screaming from the woods.

At first, Neera thought it was a jet engine flying overhead. But it didn’t pass.

Every thirteen years, the town held a festival to herald the arrival of the periodical cicada brood. In South Georgia, regular cicadas, or annual cicadas, could be found quite commonly every summer, but the thirteen-year creatures were something else entirely. The massive, winged insects swarmed up out of the ground in late June by the millions, each one as big as a grown man’s thumb. Masses of chittering legs and writhing, grubby bodies scrambling over one another in their bid for freedom and fresh air.

Neera had only been five the last time a brood had emerged, but she’d heard the stories long after. The insects blanketed the town all summer long. Nanaji took to fishing them out of the Colonial’s swimming pool every morning, and ladies leaving church each Sunday could be seen shielding their heads as they walked to their cars—lest a pair of cicadas fall out of a tree, mid-copulation, and get stuck in their hair.

Neera didn’t fully understand why the town pretended to love them, why they celebrated them—the nuances of Carrion traditions were as foreign to her as the Singh family’s culture was to the town.

As the only South Asian family in a hundred-mile radius, they never quite belonged. Her family had immigrated to Carrion from England in the midnineties. Back then, as British-Punjabi immigrants, they were regarded with disdain by much of Carrion’s population. And now, over twenty years later, Neera didn’t think it had much changed. She found that rural Southern towns were often smaller in mindset than size.

But she supposed Carrion’s celebration of the cicadas was better than the other option. They were creatures better worshipped than damned, or else they’d probably bring the plague with them.

Kiran, wincing from the noise, jerked her head toward the hotel lobby. Neera nodded and followed her mom across the parking lot.

The glass door of the lobby thudded shut behind them, and it was like putting in earplugs. The buzzing of the cicadas could still be heard—no longer a piercing siren shriek but a dull, ominous drone that made the thick hairs on Neera’s arms prickle with unease.

Nanaji was already in the lobby, talking with the two cops who’d been sent to the scene. The sight of the police made Neera’s skin crawl. She kept her eyes trained on the ground as she ducked behind the front desk, keeping her distance.

The last time there had been cops in the motel lobby was a night she’d spent the past three years trying to forget.

“So you’re sayin’ the car just caught fire randomly?” one of the officers asked her grandfather, chewing tobacco like it was bubble gum. Neera recognized him from that night years ago—Sheriff Buckley. His partner, Officer Taylor, listened along with his arms crossed over a protruding potbelly.

“Yes,” Nanaji said. “It is an old car. Bad engine.”

Kiran tensed, shooting her father a look. “That’s not true. We think it was arson.”

Officer Taylor raised his eyebrows. “That’s a bold claim, ma’am. You got any evidence?”

“Parked cars don’t catch fire,” Kiran said evenly.

Nanaji clicked his tongue, holding his hand up at her. “No, it was not arson. My daughter knows nothing.”

Kiran opened her mouth like she meant to fire something back but stopped herself. With a sigh and a shake of her head, she stalked off, disappearing through the door that led to the kitchen. Neera watched her go, wondering exactly what she knew about the motel’s debts.

“So which one is it?” Sheriff Buckley kept probing Nanaji. “Accident or arson? We don’t got all day.”

“Accident,” Nanaji said firmly, his British-Punjabi accent in sharp contrast to the deep-fried Southern men before him. “Nothing more.”

The smell of warm cloves and cardamom carried through the room. A moment later, Nani stepped out of the kitchen carrying a small silver platter with two cups of chai resting on it. She gently placed the cups before the officers, nodding once, then stepped back. It was a kind gesture, one that the officers were not deserving of, but that was Nani’s nature. Kindness in the face of unkind things.

Officer Taylor sniffed the glass. “You got any sweet tea instead?”