They think I am mad, and perhaps I am. You would be too, if you saw what I saw; or if what saw me saw you. These five years I have been running, fleeing desperately that horror which fixed its eyes upon me that day it came down from the trees, that horrible shambling abomination which tirelessly stalks me.
You look up into the trees and you only think of the sun and the shadows of leaves, of pleasant woodland sights and smells. There are darker, more substantial shadows up there than ever you knew. If they should ever descend to seek that which they should desire—woe to the man who awakens that desire!
Five years unremitting terror. They say that what goes up must come down; I know not whether that thing ever went up, but it most certainly came down. Only in the day am I safe. Night, I dare not go out. I doubt that it receives intelligence from its smaller cousins—it was out of place when I originally saw it, but they cover the sounds of its approach. How the harmless and the harmful sound so much alike!
What ever compelled me to go into this branch of zoology? What ever compelled me to peer into domains into which Man was never intended to look? The wading pools at the edge of that bottomless abyss of the eldritch and bizarre come right up to one’s own door. In I stepped, to my eternal regret.
My investigations which brought me so much pain began with an innocent and touchingly naïve fascination with the creatures in the trees outside my office in that New England university. It is commonly thought that mankind exists, self-sufficient and supreme among the creatures of this world, but I know the truth now. We merely float on a wooden chip of ignorance, merely by chance unbuffeted by a wave coming up from the horrors sleeping in the depths.
I knew that I would never sleep the pure, dreamless sleep of the innocent again, because I had looked beyond that veil which hides the preternatural, occult horror that is the flying squirrel. Their chirps and nearly rodent scurrying ought to have alerted me to their true nature, but how benign and mundane it should seem, that they gather nuts and stash them in places unfathomed by Man.
My university, upon my damnably foolish publication of a survey of the habits of our local flying squirrels, saw fit to plunge me into the primeval depths of the jungles of Southeast Asia to survey the local populations. Braving leeches, mosquitoes, and venomous snakes, I hacked my way through the foliage and I chased after the mundane monstrosities which made up my work. Indochinese flying squirrels, lesser pygmy flying squirrels, Basilan flying squirrels, and even Vordermann’s flying squirrels—I chased them all.
They would look at me with mute ambivalence, as though I were some interloper in a domain far above my plebian understanding. I was an insufficiently abstract nonentity they could not deign even to turn their little noses up at. As I counted flying squirrels and observed their habits, one thing rose from their grotesque huddlings, something that was almost as out of place as I was, but even more so: something that watched me.
The common flying squirrels seemed to pay it no mind, but once it saw me, I saw it everywhere. It was as out of place as a Frenchman on an English train platform. It had its cute little hat and coat like all the men on the train platform, but its hat was so loathsomely European and the cut of its coat so revoltingly Continental. It began to stalk me, that red horror, a Laotian giant flying squirrel! I was mortified and ashamed to wire my superiors to inform them of what stalked me there, and I could not conceive of a way to torch the jungle without appearing excessive.
I took what precautions I could: I began to sleep with an 8-gauge shotgun by my bed and a revolver under my pillow. I concluded my notes as swiftly as I could, but I was forced to remain in the region two extra nights. I took up residence in a well-guarded hotel, and I surveyed the security arrangements of my room. I checked the lock on my door and found that there was only a chain and a deadbolt. Too cautious to tell the hotel staff, lest the allies of the Laotian giant flying squirrel should inform it of my precautions, I would move my wardrobe against the door every night. I kept the window tightly shuttered and bolted, though the nights were sweltering. Still, I heard nightly scrapings at my window. In the morning I always found red hairs. The squirrel had been there.
For my return, I arranged to send my luggage to one airport and myself to another airport. In my desperation I expended my life savings for unofficial travel arrangements necessary to the dimmest chance of escape. My luggage was forwarded to Boston for pickup by my university, but they did not know where I was going: to central Montana, that treeless, trigger-happy desolation which would be hell for a jungle-dwelling Laotian giant flying squirrel.
I arranged to live in an abandoned house on an abandoned, treeless property. I did not know whether the ruse with my luggage would throw the squirrel off my tracks, but I hoped that the desolate place would give sign whether that fiend had discovered me. The first night a demon wind shook the house, and there were diabolical scrapings at the doors and windows. In the morning, I closely inspected the windows and doors and I discovered nothing. The next night, there was no wind, but the scrapings were the same as before. Terror petrified me. In the morning I investigated the doors and windows once more, and I discovered something that I could not possibly mistake for anything else. What I saw was the same, eldritch and grotesque signature of that presence which had unaccountably oppressed me, seen or unseen: traces of red fur from a Laotian giant flying squirrel!
I did not even reenter the house. Immediately I ran to the nearest road and hailed a truck going anywhere. Six months I zigzagged the country, six months hitchhiking with the shabbiest trucks and ill-favored drivers I could find. Always I felt something watching me, and often I found those blasphemously abominable traces of red fur. In motels and hotels, in campgrounds and parks, I subsisted. I slept in the day and kept watch at night. More than once I heard the hideous, evil-meaning scrapings; more than once I saw the ghastly, abominable red fur.
At last I discovered an ample dwelling in the inner-city depths of an urban expanse I shall not name. I stayed there three months without hearing that damnable scraping. Perhaps for now I had lost the squirrel, but I would have to make a stand. It would find me. It did find me. But I had to be ready. As my inner sanctum I chose a windowless interior room of a condemned industrial building with only one door. Through cunning interweavings of subtle contrivances known only to myself, I made that desperate, forlorn-looking door as squirrel-proof as any man in any age could possibly have made it. I secured the surrounding rooms, making them a veritable death trap to anything remotely squirrel-like, people included. What man or woman knows what Laotian giant flying squirrel lurks in their morbidly optimistic hearts?
During the day I prowled the city. Lacking regular income and means of subsistence, I had to take care of my own needs. I learned from my mortal enemy. I learned to leap from high place to high place, in search of what I needed. In the end I became something of a night fear of the city: that wild-looking man who was so stealthy during the day, of what night villainies was he guilty? If only they knew. They thought me terrible, but I knew of a terror beyond their pathetic, narrow, comfortable little minds, and it was as nocturnal as the moon. No, I was guilty of no childish night fear, I was the refugee of a grotesque, preternatural, squirrelly horror beyond the imaginations of the most blasphemous abomination they could ever conceive. When the sun went down, I went in. This mode of existence sustained me, barely, until five years past the day that fiend first laid eyes upon me. Then one day, everything changed.
My cunning contrivances on that inner door held through the months which turned into years, but my daily locking and unlocking of that door wore down its constituent parts, the defenses which were so willing but the steel which was so weak. I should mention that I had begun to hear that scraping again – whether the squirrel penetrated my outer defenses or merely tormented me from the floor above I cannot tell, but my only sure defenses against that damned and damnable thing were daylight and that door.
One night, as I returned from my daily foraging, I went to lock the door, but the longsuffering bolts broke down. Metal rods slid into my hands with the ease of forbidden and excruciating but finally granted pleasures. There is a certain mix of pleasure, terror, and helplessness which combine in situations such as mine. I was as impotent as a Casanova locked into a steamer trunk rapidly plummeting to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, but I felt as though a long-awaited, long desired fate was at hand. As though to torment me further, nothing came for me that night, but I did not sleep.
The next day, I was oppressed as though by a full week of sleeplessness, let alone a single night. That night, through long and careful habit I went to lock the door, but I merely succeeded in breaking what was left of the structure of the door. As I held chunks of board in my hand, I broke down and wept with screaming frenzy and desperation. I threw the pieces of board away: I had long ago abandoned my closest friends and family in order not to draw down upon them this worse than nameless shambling horror and abomination which so sleeplessly and tirelessly stalked me. I had no more money. I did not know any more where to go to find things I needed. If I did not make it in this city, my pursuer would inevitably overtake me.
I shambled into a corner and I put my head against the two walls, and I hyperventilated for perhaps half an hour. Terror so overwhelmed me that I could do nothing other than block out all the world, constricting my vision to just that little corner of the room, and even then closing my eyes. At last, that which I abhorred and despised came to me. With a scraping more careful and deliberate than I had ever heard, something entered the room. I did not dare to turn and face it, but I knew what it was.
At last, there was a scampering, and then the slightest flutter that any man in any place ever heard or ever would hear. I knew where it had jumped. I knew where it was flying to. A soft but weighty thing landed on my head. It gripped my head like a vampire squid coming to terms with a soccer ball. I withered in terror.
I heard it clear its tiny little throat with a guttural resonance more appropriate to an elephant. “I’M A HODGSON’S GIANT FLYING SQUIRREL.”
Nathan Bennett is newly a former English teacher, soon to be an editor for a magazine. He brings poetry and fiction to Spittoon reading nights because, when one goes to a potluck, it is best to bring something to share. He has been in China for five years. His favorite book is Moby Dick. He also runs a podcast on dystopian literature (Food for Thought Police) as a way to explore what it means to be human from a negative perspective: dystopian literature systematically destroys humanity, so whatever chunks left over and deficiencies revealed in a dystopian theme, perhaps it is possible to trace the true shape of humanity. He also puns mercilessly with little or no provocation.
Spittoon Monthly publishes one exceptional short story or set of poems on the first Monday of every month.