§ § § -- June 9, 1985
The appointed time for the Komainens' arrival at the main house came and went without any sign of them. Roarke and Leslie waited for another ten minutes in the hope that their guests were only running late before Leslie's anxiety proved to be too much for her to handle. Roarke decided her worries were justified and took her with him to the Hilltop Bungalow.
Roarke knocked on the door; when there was no answer, he opened it and stepped inside with Leslie on his heels. The scene that greeted them therein made them both stop short and drew a loud gasp of horror from Leslie. The entire main room was a shambles: smashed knickknacks and ornaments, broken lamps, overturned tables, chair and sofa cushions all over the room, and in the middle of it all, breakfast plates lying upside down on the floor. The bungalow seemed to be deserted. Leslie's hand went to her mouth and her eyes filled with fear; even Roarke's eyes widened in amazement at the level of damage.
"Mr. and Mrs. Komainen?" he called out. "Teppo? Is anyone here?"
There was no reply, so Roarke took the three steps down into the room and picked his way across the floor, around the carnage. Leslie was barely a step or two behind him. At the back of the room, French-style shutter doors flanked by frosted-glass panels led to the spacious bedroom; Roarke tapped on one of those doors, and again received no response. The doors were outfitted with European-style handles rather than knobs; now Roarke pushed down on one handle and let the door swing slowly open.
The bedroom was nearly as big a disaster area as the main room. This time, however, they saw something far more ominous: Jaakko and Tellervo Komainen both lay insensate amidst the wreckage, he on the floor and she across the bed. Leslie loosed a half-strangled cry; Roarke rushed in alarm to Mr. Komainen's side, knelt and felt for a pulse. There was a fairly strong beat, but the man's breathing was shallow and rapid. "Call an ambulance, Leslie, quickly," Roarke ordered urgently, moving to check for Mrs. Komainen's pulse and finding one in her as well. Leslie ducked out the door to the main room and fortunately found the phone under the first sofa cushion she overturned, punching out the island's emergency number.
As soon as she had hung up, she pushed back into the bedroom. "Are they all right?" she demanded.
"They are alive," Roarke said, "but they both seem to have sustained serious injuries." He straightened up and studied Leslie with some sympathy. "Perhaps, my child, you should search for Teppo," he suggested gently.
She glanced at the sheer draperies that covered an entire wall of windows, one panel of which opened out onto the deck. "Lempo must have taken control of him again," she said and stared at Roarke helplessly. "I might know where to find Teppo, but if Lempo's got the upper hand, there's no telling where he could be."
"Your friends have returned to the island for the summer, haven't they?" Roarke reminded her. "I'm sure they'd be willing to help you look. But the fact remains that Teppo must be found as soon as humanly possible, in order to minimize any further harm that Lempo may cause through him. I will stay with his parents and get news to you when I know anything."
"All right," Leslie said finally, turned and ran out of the bungalow. The car, with its keys in the ignition, waited at the bottom of the hill; Leslie leaped in, started the engine and pulled out onto the Ring Road in the direction of the Japanese garden. If time was of the essence, as Roarke had implied, she would only waste precious minutes trying to track down her friends to form a search party. Besides, she reasoned, sweeping her gaze anxiously from one side of the road to the other and back again, in all probability, the fewer people who confronted Teppo under the god's influence, the better.
She had driven almost halfway across the island before deciding to take the Old Swamp Road turnoff, which cut directly across the island from north to south and would take her to the southern side of the island more quickly. The road, so named because it crossed a thick marshy area, had been impassable until recently, when Roarke had had the bridge rebuilt. The original had been destroyed many years before in a storm, and Leslie remembered it chiefly for its being a rendezvous point at which she and Roarke had met a couple of small-time crooks who had kidnapped Tattoo, trying to extort ransom out of Roarke. As she sailed across the new bridge, going ten miles an hour faster than she properly should have, the memory assaulted her again and she smiled briefly.
Back on the Ring Road, she again searched both sides, wondering how in the world she could possibly find one person in all the lush greenery. Then, almost too late, she saw someone leap out into the road, waving his arms wildly. Leslie slammed on the brakes and managed to stop just in time to keep from hitting him. It was one of their non-fantasizing guests; he was dressed in wet swim trunks and appeared to have just climbed out of the pool. "Miss Leslie!" he shouted. "Thank God you've come by. Something's happened at the pool and you need to do something about it!"
"Oh God," Leslie moaned, mostly to herself, and left the car sitting in the road with the engine still running while she followed the dripping vacationer up a broad dirt path to the pool. When she got there, she had to fight back a wave of nausea at the sight. No fewer than three other vacationers were stretched out flat on the cement, being given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by still others. Two tables had been overturned, and the umbrella had come loose from one of them and was now floating in the pool, where a few swimmers were struggling to get it out. Near both tables lay empty trays, shattered drink glasses and half-evaporated puddles of beverages.
"Did you get help, Frank?" someone yelled.
"I got Roarke's daughter," the man who had stopped her shouted back.
"I need to know what happened," Leslie interjected urgently. "It's very important. Have you called for help yet?"
Frank nodded. "The bartender called as soon as that…thing started whipping through here. I hardly got a look. It was like some escaped lunatic from the nut house. He shoved people into the pool right and left – I guess those three over there couldn't swim – flipped over those tables like they were toys, and threw everything within reach before he spun out of here."
"He moved like the freakin' Tasmanian devil," the other man remarked, shaking his head. "Wham, he was here, and wham, he was gone. Couldn't've been more than two minutes, but he did all that."
"Which way did you see him go?" Leslie asked. "I'm already trying to track him down."
"Out that way," Frank said, pointing at the corner entrance, which Leslie knew led to another path that eventually wound up back at the clearing beside the main house. "But he's long gone. I don't know if you're gonna catch up with him, to be honest."
"I have to," Leslie said grimly. "He's not himself and he'll be horrified when he learns what he's been made to do." With that cryptic explanation, she started back toward the entrance that led to the Ring Road, intending to take the car back around to the main house.
"But Miss Leslie, he didn't go that way," Frank's friend protested.
"He'll come out near the main house," Leslie said. "I've got a car. That'll get me there faster than taking the path. Here come the paramedics." She dodged around several figures bearing stretchers and ran full-tilt back to the car.
Within five minutes she screeched to a stop in a cloud of dust beside the fountain and jumped out of the car, darting around the side of the main house and peering into the small manicured clearing beside it. No one seemed to be around, and there was no sign that anyone was at the house. She turned back toward the car, stymied and increasingly frantic, and was trying to decide what to do next when she heard a shout.
"Leslie, have you heard?" It was Myeko Sensei, with Michiko Tokita right behind her. Leslie had never been so glad to see her friends in all her life. Myeko continued breathlessly, "There's a nutcase on the loose. He's been creating havoc all over the place all morning."
"I know," Leslie said, to their astonishment. Her eyes were wild and her nerves were shot; she was all but ready to collapse with fear and worry. "Please, you two, you've gotta help me find him. He's one of our guests this weekend and his fantasy…" She swallowed a sob. "Come on, I'll explain on the way to Amberville." It was the only good-sized town on the island, and she supposed Teppo would head that way sooner or later.
"You're really worried about this person, aren't you?" Michiko exclaimed. "Maybe Myeko or I should drive. You look like a nervous wreck." But Leslie refused, and she hurriedly summarized Teppo's identity and problem to her two friends as she gunned the car towards Amberville.
"Oh my God," Michiko breathed. "Of course we'll help you look for him. Poor guy…and his poor parents." At that precise moment Leslie roared around a corner, and both Michiko and Myeko let out shrieks and grabbed onto their seats.
"Cripes, Leslie," Myeko complained, but carried it no further, seeing the panic gleaming out of her friend's eyes. Fortunately, the next curve led them directly into the town, and Leslie swung the car into the first open parking space she saw and leaped out. Michiko and Myeko followed suit, and the three girls scanned the town square. It was quiet; there were some residents out walking, but the shops hadn't opened for business yet.
"I don't see him," Myeko finally announced.
Out of nowhere, something landed on Leslie's shoulder; her only warning was a loud flapping of wings, and Michiko and Myeko both shrieked again and ducked away. Leslie herself tried to twist away before she heard an odd voice cackle, "Reach for the sky!"
"Pepper!" she cried. The parrot flapped for a moment and settled down as she steadied herself, then grabbed a lock of hair in his beak and spread his wings as if to take off again. "Hey!" she exclaimed. "Cut it out, Pepper, that's my hair."
Pepper let go and flapped around her in a tipsy circle, squawking. "Beach boy!" he cawed. "Beach boy!"
"What's he talking about?" Michiko asked.
Myeko watched the parrot orbiting Leslie. "Heck of a time to talk about music."
Pepper repeated his new phrase and flew toward the town square some distance before wheeling around and landing on Leslie's head. "Beach boy," he said insistently. Once again he took off and returned.
Something clicked in Leslie's brain, and she gasped. "The beach," she blurted and broke into a run, startling Pepper off her head. The bird flew out ahead of the three girls as they pounded across the square and down a small dirt lane that ended two blocks past the last building at a flight of stone steps which led to the beach. Pepper soared out over the sand and veered off to the left; Leslie pelted after him, with her friends trying their hardest to keep up.
They followed Pepper around a small outcropping covered with palms and wild rosebushes, and that was when they saw the small crowd, gathered in a wide circle and most brandishing sticks or rocks. In the middle of their circle, looking much the worse for wear, was Teppo.