“You know, looking back now I can nail the
exact moment everything around me changed.
What’s funny is, I noticed it right away, but it
never really registered. I just didn’t get it. Not
until later, after I realized vampires existed.
Know what it was? Cicadas. The moment it
happened, the cicadas silenced. I’ve not heard
even one, much less the thousands that filled
every single summer night since I was a kid.
They were my white noise, and they’ve gone.
Fled. And it’s annoyingly quiet around here.
How effed up is that?”
— Riley Poe
Part 1
Disturbances
I am not afraid to die having thought of the issues of a dying hour.
Savannah, Georgia
Bonaventure Cemetery
August, after midnight
“Poe, you wiener, get your ass over here!”
“Shut up! I ain’t a wiener!”
Broken, adolescent male laughter echoed through the night air, and if I hadn’t been so damn mad, I’d have laughed, too. Something about hearing a group of idiotic pubescent fifteen-year-old boys say wiener just cracked me up. But right then, I wanted to strangle all four of them — especially the wiener. My younger brother, Seth. That little butthead knew I’d check up on him — especially when his plan included sleeping over at Riggs Parker’s house. Yet there I was, after midnight on a Friday night, peering through the fence surrounding Bonaventure Cemetery. After I’d worked all day. With the moon a waning crescent, shining through the canopy of trees, I could vaguely see their skinny little Levi’s weave and dart through the aged headstones and shadows.