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Something Stirring Underneath

by Laura Downes

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He came in with the rain.

There wasn’t much else for Gideon to do than watch the coffee brew. As each drop landed in the glass pot, it rippled out, distorting his reflection in the dark liquid. Just when he thought he could recognize himself again, another drop fell.

The diner was always quiet this time of night. He didn’t know why Helen insisted on keeping it open twenty-four hours, other than that was the way her mother had done it and nothing ever changed in this part of Mississippi unless it had to. So there Gideon was most nights, just him and the coffee maker and the murmurings from the TV on the counter. Not all that long ago, when he’d been in high school, it’d been a good time to get homework done, but now he didn’t even have that to keep him occupied. The TV was older than he was and only picked up two channels. Both played infomercials this time of night, but he had it turned on anyway, just to hear voices.

—peels and chops onions with just one tap. But what if you need them minced? Well, tap again and—

The bell over the front door was barely audible over the forced cheer of the infomercial host, his smile too wide to be honest as the machine in front of him reduced an onion into smaller and smaller pieces.

“Take a seat and I’ll be with you in a moment,” Gideon said, the rote words rolling off his tongue without him having to think. He’d follow up with an offer of coffee under usual circumstances, but one look at the boy in the doorway told him tonight would be anything but usual.

The boy—young man really, although it was hard to think of him that way as he shivered and blinked in the fluorescent light—seemed to be about Gideon’s own age, his long limbs bearing the weedy look of one who’d finished growing, but whose body had yet to adjust. The height marker next to the door put him at an even six feet, a number that would be easy for Gideon to remember if the stranger thought he was an easy mark and tried to rob the diner.

—The Quicker-Slicer is faster than a knife! And look! No tears—

Although Gideon wasn’t sure where he’d be storing a weapon, seeing as how the stranger was completely naked.

“Jesus Christ!” Gideon swore.

The naked boy blinked at him, his eyes so dark they made Gideon uneasy. Was he on something? That was the last thing Gideon needed, to be dealing with some tweaker in the middle of the night by himself. His phone was charging in the kitchen. Maybe he could make an excuse to go back there and lock himself in until the cops came.

He cleared his throat, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t tip the guy off when the windows lit with a flash of lightning followed immediately by a crack of thunder so loud that it had to be directly overhead.

The boy screamed an animalistic cry of pure fear and dropped to the ground. Before he knew what was happening, Gideon found himself rounding the counter, but running towards the boy instead of the safety of the kitchen.

“Hey, hey, are you okay? Fuck, it didn’t get you somehow did it? Were you touching anything metal?”

The boy’s shoulder was cold beneath his touch, skin slick with rain and so pale it looked almost blue. Strange to be so untanned at the height of summer, but that was the least weird thing about tonight. Gideon willed his eyes not to look lower as his heart thudded in his chest. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched someone like this, skin-to-skin. And someone his own age? And naked?

The spell broke as a rivulet of dirty water rolled down the boy’s neck and a clump of mud landed on Gideon’s hand. Jesus. Had he been out there rolling around in the parking lot or something?

He whimpered as Gideon helped him up and into a booth, one not visible through the large windows that ran the length of the diner.

“Okay, don’t move.” Gideon held out his hands like he was training a dog to stay. “There’s a lost and found in the back. I’ll see if I can find some towels and something for you to wear. Just don’t… I don’t know. Just stay there.”

There weren’t any towels in the lost and found, but there was a pair of sweatpants that had been in there for God knew how long and a T-shirt that proudly proclaimed “Sturgis ‘94”. There was even a pair of blue flip flops, the kind that came from Dollar Tree. He decided that was good enough.

He slipped his apron over his head, but before he walked back out to the front, he plucked his phone off the charger and slid it into his back pocket. The guy hadn’t done anything threatening so far and if he was coming down off a bad trip, the last thing he needed was a bunch of cops throwing him in the back of a squad car. Still, the familiar weight of the phone in his pocket was comforting, just in case.

“Here, you can clean up with this,” Gideon dropped his apron on the table, “and put these on. Don’t forget the flip flops. No shirt, no shoes, no pants, no service.”

Gideon hadn’t expected the guy to laugh at the joke but he’d hoped for a little more than being frowned at in silence.

—The secret is the eight carbon steel blades. Each rotates and chops on a different angle so you never miss a thing—

“You’re a ray of sunshine, aren’t you?” Gideon sighed. “You got a name? Or someone I can call to pick you up?”

The boy frowned even harder then looked from Gideon to the TV and back again. When he spoke, his voice was a cracked whisper.

“Ray?”

Gideon rolled his eyes. “Cute. Yeah sure, whatever. Just get dressed, Ray. You want some coffee? I want some coffee.”

It was less than thirty feet from the booth to the now full coffee pot, but as Gideon’s fingers touched the handle, the front bell rang again. He spun around, cursing as scalding coffee spilled over his hand.

The booth was empty. Both the guy—Ray, Gideon supposed—and the pile of clothes were gone. So was his apron. He cursed again. Helen would be taking that out of his paycheck. Already knowing he’d find nothing, Gideon set the coffee down and searched the diner, just to make sure the guy was gone.

—Call now and as a special bonus, we’ll also include our Quicker-Grater free! That’s a value of over—

A puddle of water pooled on the vinyl seating of the booth, soaking in where the fabric had long ago cracked. The seat and table were littered with clumps of mud and if Gideon looked carefully, he could see a watery trail of footprints leading across the linoleum from the door to the booth and another set leading back out the same way.

Outside, the thunder rumbled again and the rain came down.

---

Gideon had just dumped a basket of fries onto a plate next to a patty melt when he heard the front bell ring. He’d already called out, “Take a seat and I’ll be with you in a moment,” before he realized who it was.

Ray went straight to the booth Gideon put him in the night before. He was wearing the cast offs he’d been given and his flip flops slapped wetly against the linoleum as he walked, the sound filling the near-empty diner.

Gideon sighed as he set the patty melt down in front of Harold’s sweating glass of sweet tea.

“Need a refill on that?” he asked.

The old man nodded. Harold Hull had been coming into the diner longer than Gideon had been working there—likely longer than he’d even been alive. Harold claimed he was too old to need much sleep and came in at least once a week, always sitting on the same stool at the counter and always ordering the same thing: a patty melt with fries, no pickle, sweet tea, and a slice of banana cream pie to take home. He’d sit there for an hour or more, picking at his fries as he read a book. When he finally left, there’d always be a single dollar hidden underneath his plate as a tip.

“Alright, I’ll be back with another sweet tea in a sec.” Gideon took a deep breath as he headed towards the booth.

Even from the counter, he could tell there was something off about Ray, the way he sat just a little too straight and watched the TV with a little too much interest. His secondhand clothes hung off him oddly, reminding Gideon of a crime show he’d seen years before, the detective leaning over a dead body and saying that it was impossible to dress a corpse and make it look like the victim had done it themselves while still alive.

Shaking that thought from his mind didn’t help as it only made Gideon remember what Ray looked like without his clothes instead.

“Didn’t expect you back so soon. Sorry, but the free coffee was a one-time offer,” said Gideon too loudly. “You bring back my apron?”

Ray slowly turned his gaze from the TV to him. On the screen, a weatherman with a Colgate smile warned viewers to enjoy the nice weather while it lasted.

“Coffee?” Ray asked, his voice still as soft as the night before, but without the raspy, unused edge.

“No offense, man,” Gideon said. “But can you actually pay for that? There wasn’t a wallet in those sweats when I gave them to you.”

Ray just blinked up at him.

Fuck it. Gideon had done stupider things for a pair of pretty eyes.

“Fine,” he huffed. Helen wasn’t around and it wasn’t like Harold was going to tell on him. “Just this once.”

—As we look to the weekend, that rain will start moving north, leaving clear skies for the rest of the state. So from Jackson on up keep that umbrella handy, but for the coast—

He went to get another sweet tea for Harold first though. Freeloaders had to wait their turn after the actual paying customers.

“Weatherman says more rain, but it’ll be gone by the weekend.” Gideon said as he topped up the glass.

Harold nodded in thanks but didn’t look up from his book. “I suppose that’ll mean even more cicadas soon.”

“Oh?” said Gideon, his mind already back over in the booth.

Harold hummed and looked at Gideon through wire-framed glasses. He remembered hearing the old man used to be a professor at some college up north but had come back years ago without a word as to why. He certainly lectured like one.

“Rain softens the earth, helps them crawl up out of the ground. You ever done any digging and found fat white grubs on the end of your shovel? That’s them.”

Harold paused to eat a lukewarm fry. “Now what’s interesting is most cicadas only live a year or two underground, then come up, find a nice place to molt out of their juvenile forms into adults, then die within a few weeks. However, some species spend thirteen or even seventeen years underground. Can you imagine? Seventeen years in the earth for only a few weeks in the sun?”

Gideon couldn’t. He looked out the diner windows. The sun had sunk below the horizon and if he focused, over the sound of the TV, the sizzle of the grill, and the hum of the lights, he could hear the sharp shrieks of the cicadas in the trees, crying out for a mate.

“Wait,” he frowned, “didn’t we have some of those seventeen-year ones a while back? I was a little kid, but I think I remember that.”

Harold nodded. “This time next year we’ll be crawling with ‘em. You won’t be able to hear yourself think over the sound of ‘em all, like UFOs coming in for a landing. That’s why they’re so loud this year too. There’s always a few who come a year too early or too late. Doesn’t do ‘em much good. They can’t reproduce with the other species of cicadas, so that’s sixteen or eighteen years underground wasted.”

“Sounds lonely,” said Gideon softly. He knew how they felt. The only one of his kind, surrounded by others who looked like him but were too different to ever understand.

Speaking of different…

“Sorry about the wait,” he said as he finally made his way over to the booth with the coffee pot and a mug. Ray just looked up at him and smiled, his mouth a little too wide and his teeth a little too bright.

“So, where you from?” After this long, Gideon could pour just the right amount of coffee blindfolded, but it was easier to watch what he was doing than look at Ray. Easier too, to pretend the warmth he felt was only from the slowly filling mug in his hand.

“No need to tell me if you don’t want. Only this isn’t the best place to find a job, if that’s what you’re here for. Not this town and certainly not this diner. Helen hasn’t hired anyone in, well, a good long while.”

He was rambling.

—Then in the 10-day forecast we see things really starting to heat up—

Ray was still smiling as Gideon slid his coffee across the table. For the briefest moment, their fingers brushed. Ray’s touch was cool after the heat of the mug, but Gideon’s fingertips still burned.

“No… job.” Ray said haltingly. “From Jackson. North.”

“Yeah? You in college or something? Or on break, I guess.” Gideon wasn’t trying to copy the way Ray spoke, but he couldn’t help it. He worried Ray would think he was mocking him, but while those dark eyes were watching him intently, Ray was still smiling.

“Yeah?” Ray said, his tone a perfect mimic of Gideon’s. “Or something.”

 

It wasn’t until much later, when the diner was empty and the sky was lightening over the parking lot, that Gideon realized Ray had not only mimicked his tone, but his words as well. Yeah. Or something. No. Job. Coffee. Even Ray.

It made him think of the magnets on his mother’s fridge, a whole collection of words you were supposed to be able to arrange to make poems, but there were never quite the right ones.

Something about that pricked uneasily down his spine, but before the thought could fully form, he dismissed it. After all, he’d never said anything about Jackson.

---

Despite Gideon promising himself each time was the last, every night for the next couple of weeks he found himself pouring Ray yet another cup of free coffee.

“Here,” he said one night when he couldn’t bear it anymore. He handed Ray a plastic bag with a smiling Piggly Wiggly on it.

“What’s this?” Ray smiled.

His grin was still a little too much, but it’d grown on Gideon. Ray talked more now too. The first time he said a full sentence, Gideon had just about dropped the coffee pot in surprise, but now when it was quiet he found himself sitting across the booth from Ray, talking about everything and nothing until guilt got the better of him and he found something to clean. Odd as he was, Ray didn’t seem to mind that either, happy to watch TV in silence while Gideon worked.

It was nice.

“Just some old clothes I had lying around that I thought might fit you. Can’t have you stinking up the joint.”

Gideon tried to look nonchalant while Ray examined the contents of the bag. The pair of jeans was old, but he’d gnawed the plastic tags off the t-shirts that afternoon. He hoped Ray wouldn’t say anything about the six-pack of briefs. He’d fought a blush as he’d pulled them off the rack in the store, certain that everyone would see him and somehow know he was buying underwear for another man. The idea made something twist in his gut that blossomed into warmth at the thought that the man he was buying them for was Ray.

After wearing the same clothes day after day, Ray should be absolutely repulsive, but somehow he wasn’t. His clothes, though dirty from assorted wear and spills, didn’t carry the sickly-sweet smell of body odor that always reminded Gideon of high school locker rooms and turned his stomach. Ray didn’t look dirty either. His skin had lost the sickly pale hue of that first night, now healthier-looking and lightly tanned. Gideon didn’t know what Ray did during his days to get so much browner in such a short time—it seemed rude to ask even if he was dying to know—but whatever it was didn’t dirty him up too much. If Ray hadn’t changed his clothes in weeks, Gideon didn’t want to guess how infrequently he’d showered in that time as well.

“Thank you, Gideon,” said Ray, rubbing the fabric of a shirt between his fingers. “You’re very kind.”

Gideon did blush now. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, waving his hand and nearly spilling coffee everywhere. “I’m glad you like ‘em.”

He walked away, certain there was something, anything else he should be doing, but the diner was empty aside from the two of them and the man on the television infomercial. He was selling some kind of cleaner tonight, two for the price of one.

But wait, there’s more! thought Gideon.

—But wait, there’s more!— the man in the infomercial said. —Order now and we’ll include a bottle of our amazing wood polish absolutely free. It restores your furniture and floors to their natural luster. Offer only available to the first five hundred callers so call now! There’s not a moment to lose!—

“I have a shower!” Gideon blurted out. He turned back to Ray who was watching him quizzically. “If you, um, don’t. You’re welcome to it. I mean, you’d have to wait until I finish my shift but it feels better to put clean clothes on after a shower, right? So, you can use mine if you want to… come home with me?”

“I’d like that,” Ray said, and this time when he grinned, Gideon grinned right back.

---

“Your friend’s not in tonight,” said Howard as Gideon set his patty melt on the counter.

“Yeah.” Gideon coughed. “I don’t know where he is. Maybe he’ll be by later.”

It was all lies. He knew exactly where Ray was, assuming he hadn’t crawled out of Gideon’s bed since he left him to go to work. He knew Ray’d be coming by soon too. At least, he had every night so far.

Their walks home at the end of his shift had become Gideon’s favorite part of the day. They’d walk the mile back to Gideon’s trailer in near silence, listening to the night insects quiet as the sun rose. By the time they reached home, the morning birds would be beginning to sing.

However, the drone of the cicadas was ceaseless both night and day. Sometimes Gideon would hear a crunch as he stepped on one of the shells they left behind when they molted, the delicate casings split up the back from where the insects had emerged in their final shapes, leaving the empty husks behind. Howard was right; there did seem to be more this year.

“What about you?” he asked. “Anything interesting?”

Harold scowled. “I’ve been woken up every morning this week by trucks going out to that old Native American site at the crack of dawn.”

“The burial mound?” Gideon asked as he topped up the sweet tea. “I think I heard something about that.”

“Technically, they’re not burial mounds, despite what we call them,” said Howard, back in full professorial form. He put a finger down on his book to mark his place on the page. “What do you know about the ancient Mississippians?”

Gideon shook his head. “Not much.”

“Then you know almost as much as those damned archaeologists waking me up at ass o’clock. About all we know is that their civilization once covered from the Gulf of Mexico all the way up to the Great Lakes, then one day they just disappeared. Later tribes have all sorts of stories, but we don’t know exactly what happened to them, just that they left these great big mounds all over the country.”

“But they’re not burial mounds?” Gideon asked, interested despite himself. Until Ray came in, his choice was either talk to Howard or learn how to make rotisserie chicken at home from the infomercial.

—It’s so easy! Just set it and forget it!—

“Not burial mounds at all,” replied Howard, clearly pleased to have an audience. “They built the mounds for their chiefs to put their houses on. The lowly common Mississippians like you and me had to build their houses on the ground and literally look up at their leaders. Goes to show, some things never change. But you want to know the craziest thing we know about ‘em?”

Gideon leaned his elbows on the counter as he listened.

“They would burn down their villages every three or four hundred years. Burn ‘em right to the ground. All their homes and crops and everything. And then, craziest of all, they’d build right back on top of them. On the exact same spot!”

The old man huffed and returned to his book. “Can’t have been all that impressive if they kept burning ‘em down, but I still got to deal with the damned archeologists trying to dig ‘em back up!”

Gideon was about to ask more, but just then he heard the bell chime over the door and he couldn’t fight back his smile.

---

In bed later, the morning sun trying to creep its way around the blackout curtains, Gideon lay half on Ray’s chest, tracing nonsense patterns into his skin. Ray’s skin was darker than it had been and strangely dry, even as Gideon’s own sweat cooled on his body, making the sheets stick to his legs and back. He kicked them away.

“Need to get you some sunscreen,” he mumbled. “Or lotion or something. Need to keep you young and supple.”

Ray laughed, the sound so rare that Gideon couldn’t help but look up at him. His eyes glowed in the morning twilight and the glint of his teeth was sharper than usual.

“It’s a good idea.” Gideon said as he maneuvered himself up to rest his head on Ray’s shoulder. “You’re moving slower too. Are you sunburned or did I wear you out?”

Ray laughed again and wrapped his arm around Gideon. “I’m just a bit stiff. I’ll be better by tomorrow.”

“Oh?” Ray tried to make his next words sound more casual than they felt. “What do you do all day, anyhow? If anything other than me is making you stiff, I want to know about it.”

Ray rolled his eyes and for a second, Gideon could have sworn that as he did, a light danced across the room like a spotlight, but it must have just been his tired mind making things up.

Ray was quiet a minute before he answered. “You haven’t asked that before. I keep waiting but…”

“I didn’t want to ruin things,” Gideon admitted softly, unable to look at Ray as he spoke. “I know you’ve got secrets but this, you, are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I didn’t want to scare you off. It’s better to have you and not know what you’re keeping from me than the other way around.”

Gideon felt fingers under his chin, lifting until he was looking into Ray’s eyes once more.

“This is love, isn’t it?” Ray asked, his voice so hoarse it reminded Gideon of the first time they’d met. He nodded and Ray nodded back.

“I’ve been getting ready,” Ray whispered. “I can’t—It’s hard to explain. But I’ll show you. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

---

It was hard to leave Ray that evening, cocooned in the sheets so thoroughly that Gideon couldn’t even see the top of his head. But the sooner he started his shift, the sooner it’d be over and he’d learn Ray’s secret. He was afraid the long hours alone in the diner would drive him mad with nothing but the TV to keep him company. Even that wasn’t enough to drown out the screams of the cicadas, louder tonight than ever before.

When the bell over the door rang, he tried not to be too disappointed when it was just Harold.

“Hey, Mr. Hull. Didn’t expect you two nights in a row. The usual?”

Harold nodded and Gideon went off to make his meal. When he set the plate down, he was surprised to see Harold hadn’t opened his book yet.

“I learned some interesting facts from our archeologist friends I wanted to share.”

Gideon bit back that last time he was in, Harold was cursing his new friends. “Oh?”

“Indeed,” said Harold. “After our talk yesterday, I was curious. So, I decided that if they were going to be waking me up at ungodly hours anyway, I might as well get some information out of them about the mounds. I was right when I told you no one knew why the Mississippians kept burning down their cities or where they went, but a lot of legends from other tribes feature a common enemy that might be to blame.”

Gideon sat on the stool beside Harold. This sounded like the kind of story worth settling in for.

“There’s even less known about this enemy tribe, if they even existed, than there is about the Mississippians, but in the stories they’re always referred to as ‘the Moon-Eyed People’. Legend says they only came out at night, burrowing in the ground during the day because the sun was too strong for their eyes. They also say the Moon-Eyed People were strangely pale. Some historians—white historians, of course—think this means they were actually Vikings or other early European explorers, but they would, wouldn’t they? White folk are always putting themselves into things where they don’t belong.”

But Gideon wasn’t thinking of Vikings. Instead his mind was filled with images of cicada grubs dug deep into the earth, away from the sun.

“There’s even a wall running across a mountain in Georgia,” Harold continued. “Thousands of years old. They say it was built to keep the Moon-Eyed People out, so they must have been some kind of threat. Maybe they wiped out the Mississippians. Of course, there’s other legends that they weren’t even human, which I suppose makes sense with the eyes and the living in the ground.”

In Gideon’s mind, the grubs slowly morphed into humans buried in the earth. Or things close to humans, as pale as grubs and curled up like sleeping children. Not just one either, but so many they could bring down a civilization when they finally awoke and clawed their way up.

“Maybe that’s why the Mississippians kept burning down their cities,” Gideon said. His mouth was dry. “To keep them from being… infested?”

Harold nodded. “Could be. Could be. Your enemy can’t destroy your home if you do it first. Or maybe the Moon-Eyed People were the ones that did the burning and the Mississippians were just continually forced to rebuild.”

Harold threw back his head and laughed. “Would’ve been nice if they’d left us some notes though. If every three or four hundred years this happened? Well, that’s about how long this area’s been settled. I guess we’re due!”

Gideon chuckled politely as he slid off the stool. His legs wobbled underneath him as he walked back to the kitchen. The rest of the night he waited, but the bell over the door only rang when Harold left. Ray never came.

---

The walk home was longer than usual and louder too, the cicadas reaching a crescendo as they waited for the sun to rise. When he finally got home, he put his keys in the door but couldn’t bring himself to turn the handle. He sat down heavily on his front steps instead, the aged wood groaning under him.

He thought about Harold’s story of the Moon-Eyed People, almost human but not quite, coming out of the earth every three hundred years only to destroy, then disappear again.

He also thought about cycles. Of white grubs sleeping in the earth, only to emerge when some natural clock told them their time had come. Of them crawling upwards toward a light they’d never seen. Of their skin hardening and turning brown as their own body formed a chrysalis around them. Did they know what they would look like when they emerged? Did they even know they would emerge at all?

As the sun crested over the tree line, he thought about the ones that came too soon. The ones whose clocks were wrong and they arrived to find themselves alone. He thought of having no one around like you. Of being lost amongst creatures that looked the same but weren’t. Of trying to fit into a world you didn’t understand.

He thought of wide eyes and white skin. Of muddy footsteps on linoleum. Of clumps of dirt falling from wet hair. Of learning to speak from infomercials and learning to smile from weathermen. Of how painful a flash of lightning would be to eyes that had only known darkness. Of being both far older and far younger than it was possible to imagine. Of things buried long in the ground, emerging.

Something on the step beside him caught his eye. He picked it up with trembling hands.

It was a single cicada shell.

His hands continued to shake as he opened the door. He didn’t bother turning on the light. He didn’t need it and he wouldn’t want it. As he walked toward the bedroom the name kept repeating in his head.

The Moon-Eyed People. The Moon-Eyed People. The Moon-Eyed People.

It sounded like an infomercial. —The Quicker-Slicer Machine. The Amazi-Clean Spray. The Moon-Eyed People. Need to wipe out a civilization? Have three hundred years to wait? Why not try the Moon-Eyed People! Stores safely in the dirt and you only need to use it in the dark! Bring one home with you today!—

He didn’t stop when he reached the bedroom. Through the light around the curtains he could see a shape on the bed.

Ray’s body was perfectly still, sheets wrapped around him, his hands gripping the mattress like claws digging into tree bark. As Gideon drew closer, he realized that the hands weren’t just gripping the mattress, they were fused to it.

Without thinking, he reached out and touched one. The skin was hard, crisp in a way that made him think of ice cracking or a snapping twig announcing a predator.

A cicada’s chrysalis kept the perfect shape of the insect, but this was something else. The tawny shell had melted into the sheets, cementing the chrysalis in place, fabric and skin merging into a single mass. Gideon could trace the stripes on the sheets where they dipped low on what had been Ray’s back, turning brown and hard before they emerged as fabric again, slick and stained over one bare shoulder. The distended bulk of fused head and pillow made his stomach heave, but he could still make out the delicate, perfect whorls of an ear.

He knelt on the bed and carefully pulled down what sheets he could until the rest of Ray’s face was revealed. Gideon traced his fingers over the features he’d come to love, now frozen and deformed by the shell made of Ray’s own skin. In places, the shell was translucent and Gideon could see the movement of something stirring underneath.

There was a hiss like a can of coke being opened. As Gideon watched, the slightest crack formed at the nape of Ray’s neck. The movement within surged, pressing against the crack again and again in roiling undulations. Each time, the crack lengthened a little further, the hard bumps of spine splitting one by one with wet pops, leaking a milky dew that smelled of damp earth and sweet rot.

A final pop soaked the sheets around Ray’s waist, his entire back split open. What lay beneath paused then, the pale mass quivering and twitching, steeling itself for what was yet to come.

 

Outside, the cicadas stopped screaming. Silence fell, a perfect hush only broken by the occasional whisper of a distant car and the creak of old trees weighed down by summer leaves.

Slowly, Gideon stripped off his clothes. They joined old jeans and new t-shirts on the floor. Then he climbed into bed.

Pulling a corner of the sheet over him, Gideon curled up next to the shell and waited to see what would emerge.

---

Host Commentary

PseudoPod, Episode 922 for May 31st, 2024. 

Something Stirring Underneath, by Laura Downes

Narrated by Matt Simpson; hosted by Kat Day, audio by Chelsea Davis 

---

Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing okay. I’m Kat, Assistant Editor at PseudoPod, your host for this week, and I’m excited to tell you that for this week we have Something Stirring Underneath, by Laura Downes. This story is a PseudoPod original. 

Author bio:
Laura Downes is based in Georgia where she writes southern gothic tales under her own name and historical romance novels under a pseudonym. A dabbler in many genres, she studied writing at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Pittsburgh. Regional Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre has held staged readings of two of her plays and her documentary, Wildlife Waystation, was a “Project for Awesome” finalist, raising critical funds to support an exotic animal sanctuary after a devastating wildfire. Find her online at lauradownes.com.

Narrator bio:
Matt Simpson was born in the swamps of south Georgia where he was orphaned as a child by a pack of wild dawgs. He was adopted by a family of gators who named him Maui Threv which in their language means mechanical frog music. He was taught the ways of swamp music and the moog synthesizer by a razorback and a panther. His own music has been featured in episodes of PseudoPod. He provided music for the second episode ever released across our feed: Waiting up for Father. He has expanded his sonic territory across all 100,000 watts of WREK in Atlanta where you can listen to the Mobius every Wednesday night. It is available to stream via the internet as well, and Threv never stops in the middle of a hoedown.  

And now we have a story for you, and we promise you, it’s true. 

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Well done, you’ve survived another story. What did you think of Something Stirring Underneath by Laura Downes? If you’re a Patreon subscriber, we encourage you to pop over to our Discord channel and tell us.  

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Laura told us this: At the far northwestern corner of Georgia down an unmarked path off a logging road lies the crumbling ruins of a manor that was host to murder and fire. It is only one of many forgotten places in the Deep South, some dating back thousands of years to civilizations that have been nearly lost to time, but it was these ruins I visited in 2021 along with my best friend since high school. The woods were silent that day, save for the calls of the last few cicadas still clinging to their short, summer lives. That eerie place is the final memory I have of us together. A bizarre tribute perhaps, but an apt one: this story is for her.

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When I’m reading short stories, I love little bits of characterisation that tell you everything you need to know about a character. Here:

“Before he knew what was happening, Gideon found himself rounding the counter, but running towards the boy instead of the safety of the kitchen”

Gideon, we immediately understand here, is the sort of person who runs towards trouble, particularly if people are in danger. He thinks help other people first, personal safety later. Not everyone is like that, and perhaps, rationally, it isn’t the most sensible thing to do, but, but it’s who he is. He couldn’t change – he reacted without thinking after all. 

And also, there’s a suggestion of need, here. He needs to go forward, out. He can’t retreat back into the dark. He just can’t. 

When you see one sentence doing this much work in a story, you know you’re dealing with an excellent writer.    

The horror in this piece is one of my favourite kinds: show me a world that’s pretty normal, and then put something… odd into it. And then a little more. Have the old guy tell us that some cicadas spend seventeen years in the earth and then emerge to enjoy only a few weeks in the sun. When the ground is soft. Leave that disturbing little thought in my imagination to… develop, while we get on with the rest of the story. 

While we see a gentle romance develop. 

But yes, something is wrong. Something… is wrong. 

Gideon knows it, he outright thinks it, but he pushes it away because… well, more than anything, this is a story about loneliness, and the unwise decisions it can draw us towards. Especially if we don’t realise that we are lonely. Then… that spark of connection can be so very, very powerful. Lightning in a bottle. Utterly impossible to resist.  

Even as you realise, can’t not realise, that you are, still, lost amongst creatures that look the same as you but are not. That the person you’re with now isn’t… well, they’re not what you dream them to be, in your head. But you can’t let them go. You can’t do it. The connection has formed and it’s so, so strong. It won’t be broken lightly. Gideon certainly can’t break it. 

He understands the monstrous harbinger that the man he loves truly is and he chooses him anyway. He doesn’t run, or hide. No, he curls up next to Ray and waits. 

To see what will emerge. 

Such a desperately sad, beautiful and yes, horrific story. Fine work from Laura Downes. 

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Oh, by the way, trillions of cicadas are due to emerge in the Southeast and Midwest of the United States this year. Apparently it’s part of a rare double-brood event that hasn’t happened in over two-hundred years. It should happen sometime from mid-May and through late June. So… round about now, in fact. Warm rain will likely trigger it. It’s just a natural phenomenon. It’s probably fine. 

Probably.

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Next week we have… Too Little, Too Little, Too Much by the wonderful John Wiswell. Narrated by Paul Cram.

And finally, PseudoPod, and John Berger, know….

“Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.” 

See you soon, folks, write your poems, and your stories, stay safe.