Chapter 71
Leonard Levesque was crouching by the supply closet when Kaspar Filipowski passed, his toothbrush and toothpaste in one hand, a towel in the other.
Leonard caught Kaspar before he made a sound.
While the two boys walking behind Kaspar could not have failed to notice, they acted as though nothing had happened and Kaspar Filipowski was never there.
Leonard Levesque was a law unto himself.
Leonard closed the door with his foot, hit the LED light, and pushed Kaspar against the wall. He put the heel of his right hand against Kaspar’s neck and pressed gently: not hard enough to choke or hurt, but hard enough to let Kaspar know that choking and hurting were not far away.
“What did you see?” he asked.
Kaspar shook his head. Leonard increased the pressure, causing Kaspar to splutter, inadvertently spraying Leonard with spittle.
“Do that again,” said Leonard, “and you’ll get worse than spit from me.”
He relaxed his hold. He wanted the boy to be able to talk.
“Tell me,” said Leonard.
“You won’t believe me.”
“That’s for me to decide. I won’t ask you again.”
Kaspar accepted that any victory here could only be relative, and leaving the closet unhurt would be a triumph against the odds.
“I saw three boys,” he said, “two short, one taller. But they weren’t there, not really. They were like shadows with no one to cast them. And they smelled.”
“Of what?”
“Rotten stuff, like old roadkill.”
Leonard leaned in.
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know.”
Leonard Levesque’s fingers, unwashed and uric, reached into Kaspar’s mouth, gripped his tongue, and twisted.
“Liar, liar,” said Leonard. “Little Shitstain speak with forked tongue. Tell. Me. The. Truth.”
The pain brought tears to Kaspar’s eyes, but more than that, there was the humiliation of being bullied once again by Leonard Levesque, and the pain of being abandoned to this boy’s whims by parents who should have cared for him, who were supposed to love him but did not.
Yes, Kaspar had lashed out, but not at them, not really.
The world was very confusing to Kaspar, and if it got really bewildering he had to retreat from it, retreat fast, fighting all the time at what was coming for him; when he did, he forgot who and where he was, so that when he came back, it took a while to readjust, and he re-entered the world as scared and confused as when he’d left it.
The last time it happened, he had blood on his hands when his vision cleared, and his stepmom was holding her nose, redness dripping through her fingers, while his father had gashes on his face where Kaspar’s nails had gouged parallel paths.
And no matter how often Kaspar said he hadn’t meant it, or how hard he tried to explain about the scariness of the world, they wouldn’t listen, which is how he’d ended up being driven to Spero and left there.
That was weeks ago, and he’d had no word from his dad or stepmom since.
Fucking Leonard Levesque. Fucking Mom and Dad. Fucking Spero.
Leonard released his tongue and Kaspar Filipowski screamed.
His small, hard fist struck Leonard close to the left eye.
Had it impacted directly, it might well have burst the eyeball, but instead Kaspar’s thumbnail snagged on the corner, close to the sensitive tear duct.
Leonard stumbled back and his right foot caught the leg of a chair, sending him sprawling.
Then Kaspar was on top of him, punching and yelling, while Leonard held his left hand to one eye and tried to fend Kaspar off with his right.
Even as he struggled against the smaller boy, Leonard thought: First Anthony Marshall clocks me a good one, now Kaspar Shitstain. I just can’t catch a break.
As suddenly as the attack had commenced, it was over. Kaspar Filipowski got to his feet, brushed himself off, and calmly stared down at Leonard.
“If you ever touch me again,” he said, “I’ll stab you in your sleep.”
And Leonard believed him unhesitatingly. Leonard Levesque might have been rotten, and recognized himself as such, but Kaspar Filipowski was patently nuts.
“But maybe I won’t have to,” Kaspar continued. “You’re right: I lied when I said I didn’t know who the boys were. I know who one of them was. It was Scott Theriault, or what was left of him.”
Kaspar’s eyes sparkled with delight.
“And I don’t think he was looking for me,” said Kaspar. “He came for you.”