Prologue: Dark Appetites

The smell was enticing as it was repelling.

The squirrel was a simple animal. When it was hungry it ate, and it had a natural preference for certain foods. When all resources were abundant there were things that it preferred over others, such as nuts and seeds. Later, in the harsher times of winter, it was forced to be less choosy, consuming eggs, insects, and even the meat of things like young birds and small rodents. Right now, in the near height of summer, there was an abundance of sustenance for it to choose from, so there should be no temptation to consume the source of the scent that had drawn it.

And yet . . .

The scent had attracted the squirrel’s attention when it had been up in the tree nearby, the smell rising into the air and tickling its nose had filled its head with a strange mixture of yearning and revulsion. Drawn by both hunger and a wild sort of curiosity, the small grey animal had climbed down until it saw the source of the strange fragrance, a long strip of meat lying against a tree.

Had a human seen it they would have noticed details that the squirrel couldn’t understand, such as how long and thick the strip was, suggesting it came from a large creature. Additionally, the end of the strip was caught upon a low branch poking out from one of the trees with the rest of the meat running from there. It only required a little deductive reasoning to guess what had happened, namely that some of the flesh had been caught on the branch, and then the rest had been pulled off as whatever creature it came from had moved away.

The strip was large easily as wide and thick as a store-bought beefsteak, but nearly three feet in length, its colour a dark red with veins of black running through it, all of which would have set off alarm bells in the head of any human that saw it. To lose such a large chunk of meat was not something a healthy creature would do, regardless of size, and the appearance of the leftover flesh was anything but healthy, it looked diseased, even unnatural.

A human would have been afraid or disgusted. They might have sought help, might have tried to isolate the meat and transport it away to determine what it was and where it came from. Or, if they wanted more urgent action, they might have made a fire and burnt it right there and then.

The squirrel, though, was not a human. The scent that had lured it in was pushing upon the old and primal buttons in its head, playing to its primal drives. Some part of it knew there was something wrong, something unnatural, about the source of the smell, but hunger and interest overrode such instincts, burying them beneath older ones, those that said to never turn down an easy meal.

However, as it drew closer the tree-climbing animal found that it had not been the first to be drawn in. A young wild boar was chewing upon the bottom part of the meat, biting off mouthfuls and swallowing them almost without chewing. In short order, almost half the strip was gone, but despite the large meal it had consumed the boar seemed to want more. As the squirrel watched, the beast reared up as best as it could and seized the remaining length in its mouth. It tore the strip from where it had been caught, pulling almost the whole thing down with it. The wild hog took another couple of bites out of its prize, then trotted off into the woods, the remains of the strip still clutched in its mouth as it dragged it along.

Through all of this the squirrel waited, its claws gripping the wood beneath it, its eyes fixed upon the boar, biding its time until the larger animal moved on. It didn’t know why, but the closer it drew to the meat the more it desired it. When it saw the boar taking the remains of the strip with it, the small animal had almost attacked it in an attempt to steal some, regardless of the absurdity of such an action. However, it had held back when it spotted something.

There, where the length of flesh had initially caught on the branch remained a smaller strip, still caught on the wood. For the boar, it would have been a pitiful amount, barely a mouthful, but to a squirrel, it was a bounty about the size of its own whole torso. There was no need to endanger itself when all it had to do was wait. So, it did. When the hog was gone the small grey tree climber skittered down to the branch and pulled the meat from where it had been caught.

For just a brief moment, as it held the black and red flesh in its forelimbs, the squirrel hesitated, instincts at war as one set screamed at it that the food it held was tainted, poisoned, diseased, and unnatural, while another set clamoured at it with the hunger it suddenly felt, how delectable the meat smelt, and how good it would feel to consume it. Old instincts, bred into the bones over thousands of years, tried to pull it one way and then another, but in the end, hunger won. If this proved wrong, if it killed the squirrel, then that just meant it was too stupid to live and it would die before passing such deficiencies to the next generation. If it proved right, then it would live, and the next generation would benefit. It was a brutal way, but nature was not a gentle kingdom, and the small animal was a creature that lived by those instincts of old.

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As soon as the squirrel took its first bite, though, something changed. Hunger, an appetite that had nothing to do with simple bodily needs sprang into being in its eyes as it tore into the food it held, tearing off hunks and swallowing them nearly whole. Had anyone been there to see the gorging that ensued they would have thought the squirrel to be starved, that could be the only understandable reason for the sheer speed and desperation with which it was consuming the meat. Had they watched for longer they would have been horrified to see that the squirrel’s belly was swelling and distending from the sheer mass that it was consuming. Such a growth couldn’t be healthy. Indeed, the creature might be causing internal damage due to devouring more than its innards could hold, yet despite it all the squirrel kept eating. Droplets of blood started to spill forth from the corners of its mouth, but it kept eating, cramming the food in until it had consumed the entire thing!

The grossly engorged squirrel seemed to pause then, its eyes goggling out of its head as though being pushed by internal pressure, blood trickling from its mouth, nose, ears and eyes. For a moment there was something that might have been called confusion on the face of a human, as though it had just realized what it had done, and couldn’t understand why it had acted as it had.

Then it tipped over and fell from the branch.

Had things been different, the fall would have been largely inconsequential to the creature. Squirrels might be natural climbers, but it was almost inevitable that something would go wrong. A loss of balance, a surprisingly fragile branch, a rain-slicked leaf, all sorts of hazards could send them falling to the ground. So, the species had adapted to being able to survive falls. Like cats, they were adept at landing on their feet, at spreading themselves out to lessen the impact or rolling to bleed off momentum. Additionally, the perch it fell from was only a few feet in the air, low enough that it could have jumped down if it wished, so even if it fell it should not have been hurt.

However, when this squirrel fell, it fell prone, no attempt to twist or land was made, it simply plummeted headfirst. Then there was the way its body was engorged, swollen to the point of near absurdity. Lastly was the fact that when it struck the ground it did not land upon soft leaves or damp earth, rather it fell upon cold unforgiving stone with enough force that small cracks could have been heard as its bones broke.

For some time the small, broken form of the squirrel just lay there, body twitching, bloody foam bubbling up from a mouth that seemed to open and close from simple spastic motion rather than any sort of conscious desire. It might have been trying to moan in pain, but if it was then those attempts at sound were choked by the bloody foam. As more time passed even those few movements ceased, and the broken form simply went still upon the rock.

Minutes and then hours ticked by, and the sun slowly moved across the sky, but as the celestial orb reached its zenith a sunbeam passed through the canopy of leaves to brighten the stone the small furry form rested on. Almost as though the sunbeam had been some sort of signal the body suddenly twitched. The first movement was a full-body jerk, but then individual limbs began to move. Small cracks and pops were audible as broken bones were suddenly forced back into place. The wide protruding eyes that had been staring out sightlessly at the world suddenly blinked, and in the instant that they were hidden behind their eyelids, something changed. The small beady eyes no longer had the feral gleam of an animal. Now there was something else there, something that wasn’t intelligence but was close to it. There was a hint of hunger, of predatory instincts that should not exist in such a creature, but which had suddenly taken root.

The squirrel seemed to roll its neck, and again the sounds of broken bone mending and snapping back into place were loud enough to echo around the small hollow of trees. Now fully mended the tree climber rolled over onto its feet and lay upon the rock, a prisoner of its distended belly, now so large that the small animal was unable to move easily. The sight might have been comical, were it not so pitiful.

Then more cracks and snaps could be heard coming from the squirrel, but this time it was not due to it healing.

Limbs lengthened, teeth and claws extended and sharpened, fur grew longer and darker, muscles grew thicker upon its body as the distended belly seemed to deflate like a balloon that had the air let out of it. The still undigested meat breaking down to fuel the ongoing changes. Before long a new creature rose where the squirrel had been. A creature that bore only a vague resemblance to the animal it had once been, but was now as different as a man was from a monkey.

For a short time, it just stood there, its newly sharpened eyes surveying the woods around it, its newly elongated and pointed ears flicking about as it tracked sounds. Then its head cocked to the side as an almost insectile-sounding chittering emerged from its throat.

Then it was off, darting into the brush, its speed so great it was almost a blur. For a moment there was silence, then there was a single short and sharp squeak as the changed creature found another being to serve as prey and sustenance to continue its change.

It sounded like it might have been another squirrel.