Squatters

by Devin James Leonard

Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:

Two months behind on the rent. Ducking the landlord. Unpaid utility bills up the yin yang. Credit cards maxed out and racking up interest. My life was a clogged toilet, full of rising crap, and to think that my oldest pal hadn’t come to me first, knowing I’d do just about anything to earn a buck, I was insulted as much as relieved when he rang me up and told me, after trying and failing with everybody else, that I was his last course of action.

“Remember the foreclosure I bought on Dock Street?” Lee said.

“Ugly house on the riverfront,” I said. “Sure.”

“I’ve got an eviction situation—for lack of a better term—that needs dealing with. Reason I didn’t come to you first, this should have been a no-muss-no-fuss thing. But now?”

“Now you want the rough stuff.”

“The Duff stuff.”

That’s me—Ken Duffy.                                                                             

“What’s the deal?” I said. “Gentrification finally came back to bite you in the ass? Rent’s too high, and now you got squatters?”

“Got nothing to do with rent,” Lee hissed. “I never fixed up the place. It’s an unlivable shithole. There’s no electricity, water, nothing. I got something inside needs getting to, but something’s in there that’s in my way.”

“What is it?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“No—not the thing you need. What’s in your way?”

Lee huffed. “I don’t know how to describe the situation.”

“Whatever I can do to help.”

“Appreciate it.”

“You should have come to me first. Can always use the cash, what with the rent being so high these days.”

“Hey, don’t blame me for the high cost of living. You don’t live in one of my buildings.” Lee cleared his throat, said, “You work this out for me, I’ll pay your next three months’ rent.”

“Six months,” I said.

Lee made a dismissive grunt. “Fine.”

“How come the other guys you hired didn’t work out?”

“Buddy, you’d best buckle up.”

“I’m strapped in.”

“The other guys I hired disappeared,” Lee said. “Might even be dead.”

“Dead?”

“I said might be dead.”

“I might need a year’s worth of rent then,” I said.

You got the sense that Dock Street was a serene, forested lane deep in the country, but it was only a five-minute walk from the raucousness of a small city business district. Shanty Town was what the locals called it, a plot of riverfront property tucked away in an asphalt jungle with one house and a dozen rundown huts on it.

The house was at the back of the lane, an enormous derelict Queen Anne overlooking the Hudson River like a malevolent lighthouse from hell. I arrived in the late afternoon, well before the sun would fall behind this monstrous black tower, with a milk crate of Molotov cocktails loaded in my pickup and Lee’s full permission to burn the place to the ground.

Lee had tried to go into the house himself once, only to turn tail and flee after hearing from one of the dark, windowless openings what sounded like the rustling, skittering movement of a thousand rats. After that, he hired someone from pest control, but whether the man got around to gassing the place was anybody’s guess. The fumigator never returned or checked back. His van was still out front where he’d parked it.

Next, Lee had hired some other exterminators, off-the-books types who used guns instead of gases, but none of those panned out either. Whenever a newly hired man never reported back to him, he’d send someone else over there, and all they’d find was the house still standing and another vehicle added to the collection in the yard.

“My guess is they’re all dead,” Lee had told me over the phone. “You’ll see their rides when you get there.”

Which I did when I reached the house and parked on the overgrown lawn. There were seven vehicles collecting pollen in front of the house, the uncut grass sprouting up around them, swallowing them up like a jungle come to life. My plan then was not to be the eighth vehicle in the lot, but to torch the place, let whatever was in it burn up, including the item Lee needed to get his hands on. As long as it disappeared with the house, Lee had told me, it was just as good as if it were in his possession. As for the squatters? Yeah, they could go, too.

The street, the house, the shanties… the place was a ghost town, no one around, no sounds at all, save for the wind breezing through the grass and the faraway groaning of a traveling barge. Skeletal remains of fish and various unidentifiable critters lay about like litter. The air smelled of guts and wet garbage, a stench so bad you could taste it. The ugly monstrosity that was Lee’s Queen Anne was wilting into the ground like a soggy cardboard box that had been pissed on too many times. Just looking at it from the outside made me grateful that I didn’t have to go inside.

First thing I did, I got my lighter out of my pocket, gave it a couple of flicks, ensuring it would spark, and then I hefted my milk crate of gasoline-filled bottles up the concrete walk and set the first bottle on the front step near the entrance. Walked to the right, set another cocktail bomb on the grass below the first window. Did this all the way around the structure, placing Molotov cocktails on the ground below every opening, about six to twelve feet apart, until I circled the entire perimeter and found my way back to the front with an empty case. Plan was to light the first bottle, chuck it into the opening, and make my way around again, picking up the bottles I’d expertly placed, sparking them and tossing them, until I made my way around the front again and the building was engulfed.

When I finished and returned to the front step, there was nothing there but the cracked, uneven walkway. My Molotov cocktail had vanished. I walked around the side, and sure enough, every bottle over there was gone, too. Circled the back—nothing. Around the other side—more nothing.

Once again, I stood at the front of the house, scratching my head and my ass while all around me dusk was taking a hike and making way for the night. I gazed into the doorless opening of the house, the inside a sheet of black. I saw or heard nothing inside, but felt I was being watched.

“You gonna try to kill them?” a voice called out, scaring me halfway to hell and causing me to jump. Near the river’s edge, a little boy emerged from a tall patch of cattails and stood there like an apparition, staring at me in dumb wonder. Boy was a grimy thing of about ten, his clothes torn or moth-eaten. Kid was so filthy he could probably give tetanus to a clean nail.

“Kill who?” I called back.

The boy pointed toward the junkyard of cars between us. “You come from where they come from?”

“Maybe.”

“Ain’t none of them here now.”

“Where’d they go?” I asked.

“I didn’t say they left,” the boy said. “Said they ain’t here no more.”

The boy started toward me, and I started over to him. Met him in the shin-high weeds. “I watch ’em all try to kill ‘em,” the boy said. “One guy blasted one of their heads off, but it ain’t killed him. Saw him come outside the next night, kind of wandering around.”

My face shriveled from squinting. “Who?”

“The one with no head!” the boy squealed.

“You mean—a person?”

The boy wagged his eyes, as if uncertain, but also as though the answer were obvious.

“Sure, kid. Man gets his head shot off but keeps on keeping on—”

“Never said it was a man,” the boy interrupted.

“Then what was it? An animal?”

The boy shrugged, and I swear to God, I saw dust puff from his shirt.

“Nothing can walk around without a head,” I said. “Man or animal.”

“The things in there,” he said, “they ain’t neither. They’re like cockroaches.”

“Cockroaches,” I quipped.

“That’s right. Hard to kill. Them critters can live for days without their heads. That man got his—”

“Thought you said it wasn’t a man,” I said, giving the boy some sass and side-eye.

“No, they just look like they are. But like you were gonna say, a man can’t get their clock cleaned off their neck by buckshot and expect to walk around a couple days after. But this one did.”

“And where might he be now?”

“Oh, well, he’s dead now. That was weeks ago. He dropped maybe, oh, say, on the third day with no head.”

“And you saw it.”

The boy nodded.

“Then where’s the body?”

The boy pointed to a spot near the abandoned vehicles, started toward it, and I followed him.

“Fell right here somewhere,” he said, pointing to a spot of flattened grass where something large had lain. Could have been a grown man, but there was no trace of this alleged headless figure there now.

“Where’s the body?” I said.

“The others come out and eat him,” the boy said.

That watchful sensation crept up my neck, and I steered my face around the property, searching for whoever was sneakily observing me.

“Where are your friends hiding?” I said.

“It’s just me out here,” the boy said.

“Sure, kid. What happened? You draw the short stick? Lost the bet, and now you gotta be the one to come over here and try to spook me? Meanwhile, your friends make off with my bottles you scooped up while I was setting them down and making my way around the house?”

“Wasn’t me,” the boy said. “Was them.” His eyes moved to the doorless opening of the house.

“All right, then,” I sighed. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Jarvis.”

“Jarvis, you are interfering with my work. I’ll give you this one last opportunity to fess up.” I crouched to the boy, placed a hand on his shoulder, and said, “The gas in those bottles ran me down to my last dollar, and until I do this job, I’m not getting reimbursed. So, you’re gonna tell your pals to come out here and bring me my stuff back, or else.”

“Told you,” Jarvis said, unfazed, “it’s just me here.”

“Okay, then. How about we toss you inside and see what happens?” I squeezed the boy’s shoulder, grabbed his shirt, and started walking, dragging him through the grass toward the house.

“No!” Jarvis wailed. “Don’t!”

“Come on out, kids!” I hollered toward the cattails. “Hurry up before Jarvis goes in the house.”

Jarvis squealed and cried while I tugged him closer to the doorway. He wriggled and swatted at me, his fingers digging into my hand and scratching me from palm to wrist. It burned like cat claws and felt like an infection had already set in the wound. I hissed and let go, and Jarvis took off tripping through the grass.

“You little shit!” I hollered. “Get back here!”

A rotten plank of wood that looked like part of an old fishing dock lay near my feet. I picked it up and swung it like a baseball bat, pitching it across the lawn where it smacked the boy perfectly flat against his back. He gasped a comically high-pitched glug sound and toppled to the ground. I ran over, scooped him up, dragged him back to the doorway, and shoved him straight into the house. I took a wide stance in front of the doorway and waited. Jarvis panted and whined, but I couldn’t see where he was.

“Scared, Jarvis?”

 Out of the darkness, he came reeling toward me like a bottle rocket. He sprinted straight into my chest and arms, as if to embrace me, and I shoved his little ass right back inside the house.

“Better tell your friends to bring my stuff back, or you’re not coming out.”

“Please, Mister!” the boy wailed. “Let me out! They’re in here!”

Once again, the boy emerged from the blackness, running full tilt. I flung him straight back into the dark.

“Give me my stuff, kid!” I shouted.

I heard him whimpering and sniffling, gasping with panic. And then he went quiet, and I heard nothing.

Nothing but the house creaking. The stairs squawking. Feet skittering.

Jarvis’s panting breath grew louder and more frantic. Footsteps thumped on the floorboards, and the boy sprang toward me as fast as lightning, running into my hands. He screamed in terror, eyes bulging like a rabid dog.

I held onto him for a moment, said, “Last chance, you little squirt. Tell your friends—”

A hand struck out from the doorway, grabbed the boy, and tore him from my grasp and reeled him backwards into the darkness. I couldn’t believe what I saw in the split second it was there—that hand, the skin—a flash of pure white, gnarled and brittle, the flaky scales of a dead fish. The smell that lingered now—like rotten meat and excrement baked in a Dutch oven.

The boy’s screams were terrifying and paralyzing. I could hear his little frame being dragged across the floor, his wailing and cries for help unanswered. Next came a crunching noise, like teeth chomping into a ripe apple, and the boy’s cries stopped at once. What sounded like a swarm of rodents came tittering from all over the house, upstairs, downstairs, every direction, and formed into a loud, collective feeding frenzy in front of me. That’s all I heard—munching, gnawing, feasting.

A small object pitched out of the darkness and clobbered me on the forehead. A split second before it bashed me between the eyes and fell to the ground, smacking the back of my head, I saw a twinkle of glass and the fluttering of cloth.

One of my Molotov cocktails.

My eyes were blurry. I stared straight up at the lintel atop the doorless entryway. My face was wet, and my cheek tickled. I slapped myself, thinking a bug was crawling on me, only to be met with a jolt of pain and my hand covered in blood. My blood. The center of my head was leaking. The gasoline on my palm got into my wound and stung the hell out of it. Bits of glass lay on my chest like crumbs from a bag of chips. The cloth that I’d plugged the Molotov with lay draped on my forearm. I was covered in gasoline.

My feet were less than a foot away from the inside of the house. They were in the same spot, perhaps a touch further back, from where Jarvis had been standing when he was pulled from my grasp. The Queen Anne was loud with skittering and tapping sounds, the clicking, scurrying, pitter-patter of movement. Like cockroaches running along the floors and ceiling, rustling through the insides of the walls.

Sunlight fading. Couldn’t say how long I was out. Long enough for dusk to come, short enough that the gasoline all over me was still wet and had yet to evaporate.

Two knotty hands covered in scales and warts slithered out of the darkness and clutched my ankles and tugged. More hands flung out at me, dozens of them, mangy and scab-riddled, and snagged my pants, yanking me further inside the house, into the darkness. I pressed my hands to the doorframe, half inside, half out, and clung for dear life. First, my shoes were pulled off, and then what felt like a thousand razor blades punctured my socks and tore into my bare feet. Felt like I was being eaten alive by a blender, for Christ’s sake.

I howled in agony, commanding my legs to kick and thrash these biters away from me, but there was no telling what my limbs were doing, if they were doing anything besides being devoured. Teeth nibbled through my jeans and pierced my skin and flesh. Liquid flowed and soaked my groin. It felt warm, like I was pissing myself. The pain grew hot, electrifying, and I screamed until I ran out of breath, until blinding anguish washed over me, and my arms weakened.  

My right hand slipped from the wall, and I was wrenched inside up to my neck, the things in the darkness feasting on me like hungry piranhas. Every inch of my body was being pierced by drill bits and needles. I slapped my thigh, searching for my pocket. Hoping I still had a pocket. Praying the lighter was there too. Found it. Sparked it. But there was nothing flammable to light, my gasoline-soaked clothes having already been devoured.

To hell with it, I thought. Rent’s too high these days, anyway.

I let go of the doorframe and let the squatters have at it.

Want another gripping story from Devin James Leonard? Read “King of Hearts” in Horrific Scribes, June 2025.