§ § § - August 19, 1990
Jolted out of his trance by Leslie's faint, Arthur Laursen stared stupidly at the young woman lying in a senseless heap before him. His head snapped up when the older woman spoke in a disgusted tone. "Foolish, weak girl. How my son could have ever chosen her…"
Laursen made a split-second decision to play along with the woman for the moment, until either help arrived or he himself could find some way to get himself and Leslie out of this place. "You know her, master?" he queried in his Igor voice, perfected after countless childhood Halloweens of portraying the character.
"She was my daughter-in-law," the woman said. "She has the key to bringing my beloved Teppo back to life." She reached out and caressed the dead man's cheek, as if she expected to feel life and warmth beneath it; then she turned sharply to Laursen. "But she is no use to me lying there like a pile of rubbish. Take her to that chair and tie her in it so she doesn't fall out, and stay by her side in case she awakens." She pointed to the corner, where a plain, hard wooden chair stood.
"Yes, master," Laursen replied and gathered the unconscious Leslie into his arms, depositing her into the chair. He found a length of twine on a counter and, holding Leslie seated upright, began to wrap it around her, feeling all the while that he'd walked into a heck of a lot more than he had expected from this fantasy. Just who was this woman, anyway, and what kind of name was "Teppo"? He hoped Leslie would come to soon so that he could get some answers and try to come up with a plan.
Outside there was an enormous crash of thunder, as if the storm that had been threatening for the last few hours had finally broken. To Laursen, it was fitting, if utterly clichéd. He had no way of knowing, or even judging, the time, since there were no windows in the room. For a while his "master" paced the floor, now and then pausing to smooth the dead man's hair or run a finger along his cheek. Laursen peered curiously at the body, which was oddly well preserved, and wondered how long the young man had been dead.
It wasn't long before the woman's patience ran out and she stalked over to the corner where Laursen stood guarding Leslie. "Enough waiting," the woman snarled, and with that she delivered a ringing smack across Leslie's face. The younger woman's head snapped aside but she wasn't roused, and Laursen winced when the second blow yanked Leslie's head the other way.
Unable to watch any more of this, he suggested, "Master, some water might work."
She seemed to consider this, then nodded and picked up a full beaker from a nearby workbench. This, she proceeded to upend over Leslie's head. The contents gushed out like a waterfall, cutting off Leslie's breath for a moment or two. It was long enough to bring her back to consciousness, and she shook her head in an attempt to avoid the cascade.
Laursen had to force himself to stand and watch in silence while the older woman knelt and grasped Leslie's chin in a painful calipers pinch between her thumb and forefinger. "Look at me!" she spat when Leslie's eyes finally opened. "Where is that vial?"
Leslie, still groggy, slowly registered the identity of the graying woman who glared into her eyes. "What?" she muttered, trying to make sense out of the situation.
"Wake up, you little fool," the elder woman snapped, in a boiling temper. Without warning she slapped Leslie again, hard. Leslie sat gasping through her clenched teeth, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain. When she dared open her eyes again, her attacker was still there.
"You were…" Leslie began, then cut herself off, mindful of Laursen standing nearby. "How did you get out?"
"Are you truly that stupid?" the other demanded. "I've waited long enough, Leslie. I came here with Teppo to find you, because you're going to help me resuscitate him. You were there and you saw him die, and you did nothing to help him. I'll never forgive you." Leslie's face had gone pure white, and Laursen leaned down to peer at her in fascination. She was so pale he thought she might faint again, but she only stared at the older woman in motionless horror.
"You brought Teppo here?" she whispered at last, unable to quite grasp the idea.
"See for yourself, foolish girl." She straightened and snapped at Laursen, "Untie her, Igor. It's time she saw what she has done to my son." She stalked away in disgust, going over to lean across the dead man and talk to him as if he were merely sleeping. She spoke in a strange language that Laursen couldn't make head or tail of.
He crouched next to Leslie as he unwound the twine. "Who the hell is she?" he asked.
"Her name is Tellervo Komainen, and she was my mother-in-law," Leslie replied, pain glinting from her eyes as she spoke. "The man on the table is her son and my late husband, Teppo. They're from Finland. Tellervo is insane, and she was in a sanitarium in Finland when I left there. She was in a completely different mental state then…babbling nonsense all the time and unable to recognize her own children." Leslie's still-stunned gaze drifted over to Tellervo and Teppo, the former crooning to the latter. "My God, she must have exhumed Teppo."
Laursen gawked at the pair in horror. "Holy sh…" he began, then cut himself off out of an archaic sense of chivalry towards Leslie. "Christ on a crutch, the woman really is nuts."
Tellervo's spine snapped up straight and she whipped around to glare at Laursen and Leslie. "Igor! Hurry up and bring that girl over here, now!"
"Sorry," Laursen whispered at Leslie before prodding her to her feet and marching her over to the table. As soon as they reached the table, Tellervo seized Leslie's arm and shook her. Leslie winced in pain but made no sound.
"Give me the vial," Tellervo demanded. "You have it, and I need it!"
Leslie tried to yank her arm free of Tellervo's grip, but was unable to. "What are you talking about?"
Tellervo's glare blazed and she raised her hand; Leslie ducked the blow this time, but in response, Tellervo grabbed her other arm and began to shake her hard. "Give me the vial!" she screamed. "GIVE IT TO ME!"
In desperation Leslie lashed out with her foot and managed to connect with Tellervo's shin; the older woman released her and leaped back in surprise. Leslie grabbed the table to steady herself. "I don't have the vial," she yelled. "What on earth do you want it for?"
"That vial contains my son's tears," Tellervo snapped impatiently, obviously convinced that Leslie must be an utter idiot. "Damn you, girl, don't play stupid with me. I know you remember. Give…me…that…vial—or so help me, you'll join my son in his grave."
"You think using a few tears is going to bring Teppo back to life?" Leslie exclaimed in disbelief. "Good Lord, Tellervo, you're truly crazy if you believe that."
"Tears don't contain any DNA," Laursen said, astonished by this idea.
Tellervo Komainen's face looked comically bewildered as her attention swung to Laursen for a moment. "Is that true? You said before you don't know much about DNA."
"Well, I know that," Laursen retorted. "Geez, lady, Frankenstein and his revived monster are only stories. It'd take a heck of a lot more than a jug of tears to bring a dead man back to life. I hate to tell you, but you went to a boatload of trouble for nothing."
A tense silence settled over them and the moment hung suspended. Leslie and Laursen waited, neither daring to move, seeing Tellervo's eyes changing with every passing second. When the explosion came at last, it was Leslie who bore the brunt of it. Tellervo sprang two huge steps forward and seized the unprepared Leslie by both arms, forcibly backing the younger woman away from the table and to the wall. "For the last time, where is the vial?" she demanded in a quiet, ominous tone that somehow seemed more frightening than her previous screaming.
"I don't have it anymore," Leslie said calmly, staring Tellervo straight in the eyes. "The day before I left Finland, I took it to Teppo's grave and poured the contents on the roots of the rosebush we planted there."
Her quiet announcement seemed to disarm Tellervo's rage, and even from where he stood, Laursen could see the older woman descending into the madness from which her purpose had temporarily lifted her. Though she stood there with her head shaking rapidly as if in denial, words of protest in her native tongue tumbling over one another in their haste to come out, she still had Leslie pinned to the wall. Her last word in English was a strangled-sounding "no!" before she switched to its Finnish equivalent. "Ei, ei, ei," Tellervo moaned over and over. To Laursen's horror, she began to bang Leslie's head against the wall with every "ei", and he leaped over to yank the insane woman away.
Her grip on Leslie was so strong that it took him nearly a full minute to get them apart, by which time Leslie was half unconscious from the beating she had taken. Once Laursen pulled her aside, she seemed to realize she no longer had her human punching bag and turned into a screaming, struggling dervish. It was all Laursen could do to keep her from attacking Leslie yet again, and he knew Leslie was in no shape to help him restrain Tellervo.
At that point thunder detonated so close by that the entire chateau shook right to its very foundation, and the room instantly went pitch-black. Startled by the bolt and the sudden absence of light, Laursen lost his grip on Tellervo, who promptly surged off into the blackness. Half a second later she crashed into one of the tables, which overturned from the force of her collision with it and sent everything on it to the floor in a musical explosion of glass beakers and tubes. Over the noise he could hear Tellervo's nonsensical shrieking in a language only she understood. Laursen huddled to the floor right where he was and waited quietly for the world to end.
Once the lights went out, Leslie's head seemed to pound even more painfully with the loss of her vision. She had no idea what was directly in front of her, but she was beginning to see stars. Or were they? Slowly she lifted her face to what should have been stygian dark, but was in fact a gently shimmering light. It hovered just above her before resolving itself into none other than Teppo's face. She stared, afraid to look away or even blink for fear he would vanish.
"Leslie, kulta," Teppo's voice spoke softly, but quite clearly. The Finnish endearment made her eyes fill with tears, and she blinked in order to keep his face in focus. He smiled at her. "I think you saved me."
"I couldn't save you," she whispered. She ached everywhere: her eyes from straining to keep him in her sights, her head from its beating, her heart… "Tellervo says it's my fault. That I should have helped you and I didn't do anything but stand and stare."
"There was no warning, kulta," Teppo said, and his hands appeared from the mist and reached for her. She actually felt a gentle warmth radiating against her face where he "touched" her. "I didn't know that clearing was the birthplace Lempo warned me about. No, my Leslie, it was never your fault. If anyone was at fault, it was Mother. She stood there across the clearing looking at me, and I naturally started to go after her. I think that's what drove her fully into madness. She knew in her heart what she had done, and it pushed her over the edge. This whole crazy scheme was her way of trying to atone for it."
Futile though Leslie knew it was, she couldn't help but try. "Your spirit is here, your body is here…" she began, and this time the tears spilled over. "Oh, Teppo, kultaseni, come back to me, please." Her voice broke on the last word and she began to shiver.
Teppo's features wavered and distorted just for a moment; then he seemed to solidify, and suddenly was kneeling on the floor in front of her, radiating a strange glow that he never would have had if alive. Yet she could actually touch him, and she did so without hesitation, letting her shaking hand drift gently over his face and into his hair. He smiled regretfully at her and clasped her hand in his own before pulling her into his embrace. "I wish I could," he said softly. "But there's a much stronger force in control of all this, and I can't do anything about it. I think I've been granted a few moments to be here with you, because we never had a chance to say goodbye to each other, thanks to Lempo."
"It's been hell without you," Leslie managed, beginning to cry. "I came home because…because…" She lost control of her voice and gave in to her grief.
"I know," Teppo assured her. "I know, kulta, and I understand completely. You did what you had to do, and it was the best thing you could have done." He lifted her head, smoothed her hair and smiled. "You did save me, you know. There's no way of knowing what Mother would have done if you'd still had that stupid vial. As it was, you did just the right thing with it. Now I can go on, and you can go on, and you'll remember me with smiles instead of tears one day. And I'll be waiting for you. In the meantime…" He glanced somewhere overhead, at something Leslie couldn't see, and then grinned at her. "Tell Mr. Roarke that my will requested that I be buried here on Fantasy Island. That should settle the whole matter."
She giggled through her tears, and he chuckled with her. "That's my girl," he said. "I love you, my Leslie."
"I'll always love you," she vowed in a shaky whisper, "as long as I live. Longer than that."
He tilted her head back again and kissed her; then his touch was suddenly gone. Her eyes flew open just in time to see his last smile before his image faded into darkness.