Make It There

About twenty minutes later of walking, we stopped in front of a gated mansion.
"So this is where this guy lives at?" I asked Pekka.
Pekka nodded his head. "Yup." He opened the gate and we walked across the long round-a-bout and up the white steps. "Hey, you're gonna have to go alone."
"Why?" I gave Pekka a weird look.
"Well, I remembered that I need some food and I saw a really great place to get it."
"Do you think that this is the right time to do your grocery shopping?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Tuukka, it's hard to go to a grocery store from where I live. And that I don't have a truck..."
"Oh." I sighed. "Alright, fine, go enjoy your shopping."
"Thanks. I'll see you later." Pekka patted my back and zoomed off.
I began to hear someone playing the piano inside the mansion. I immediately felt peace and calmness flow through me. I knocked on the door and waited patiently for someone to answer.
The piano didn't cease, but the door still opened.
A lady appeared at the doorway. "May I help you?"
"Oh yea, hi." I waved. "I'm here for..." Oh shoot. I didn't even know his name. "Ohhhmygosh, I don't know the guy's name I want to meet with!" I chuckled and slapped my forehead.
"Well, I can't help you find who you are looking for if you don't know the person's name."
"Okay, let's do this." I paused for a moment. "Does anyone live here that knows a guy named Kari very well?"
"Kari Lehtonen?"
"Yea..." I nodded my head. "Him."
"Yea. He's here. And you're looking for a 'he,' right?"
"Yea."
"Well, he's the only 'he' in the house. Come in." The lady let me in. "Just go down the hallway to the left and turn right into the last door on the right."
"Alright, thank you." I followed her directions down the dark hallway. When I entered the room this guy was in, I was like...Whoa.
I walked into a huge room. The wall in front of me, which was so far away from me, was just a huge window, including the ceiling. There was a piano next to the window and surrounding the piano were guitars of all sort on their stands, including some woodwinds. On the left was a sofa with a wooden table.
On the piano was a guy playing a nice song. So that was were the piano music was coming from.
The guy played for a few more seconds then stopped with a nice ending. He turned around, looking at me. "Well, hello there."
"Oh, hi."
"Did anyone let you in?"
"Yea."
"Therese," he muttered under his breath. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
"Uh, yea..." I stepped a few steps inside the room. "First off, nice music you were playing."
The guy chuckled. "Thanks."
"Can we talk?"
"Uh, sure." The guy got up and walked over to the sofa. He grabbed a pitcher of a translucent brown drink from the table and poured a little bit in a glass cup. "Sit down."
I walked over and sat down next to him.
"You want some?" He held out the pitcher to me.
"No thanks," I told him. "So, um, what's your name?"
The guy gave me a weird look. "You found me yet you don't know my name?"
I chuckled. "Yea...I managed to."
"Henrik." The guy held out his hand, giving me a goofy face. "Lundqvist."
I rose my eyebrows. "Tuukka." I held his hand. "Rask." I gave it a good shake.
"So, what would you like to talk about?" Henrik took a small sip. "You sure you don't want some? It's pretty good."
I shrugged. "Okay."
Henrik began to pour some into another glass cup. "Don't worry, I didn't poison it or anything." He chuckled. "Here." He handed me the cup.
"Well, is it okay if we talk about Kari?"
"Kari..." Henrik looked up and thought deeply for a moment. "Kari?" I looked back at me with his blue eyes. "Doesn't ring a bell."
My heart dropped. Oh no, please don't tell me that I got the wrong person... "Kari...Lehtonen?"
"Kari Lehtonen--" Henrik stopped and stared into space for a moment. "Ooo..I know who that guy is..." His eyes narrowed when he said 'Ooo...'
A wave of relief washed over me. Good. I got the right person. "How do you know about him?"
"Well, believe it or not, but he was my roommate in college."
I raised my eyebrows. "Really?" I took a sip. Brandy.
"Yea. He was good overall. But there was this one time that got me. Got me bad."
"How?"
"Well, he was great at science. Very great. He wanted to do...the impossible. He strived to be better, be famous, well, you get the point, right?"
I nodded my head.
"I remember, almost every night, he would stay up late, making a racket and all that stuff. He would tell me that he was making the formula to make the supernatural real. In other words, to make superheroes or give superpowers to people."
"So, what happened? Did he succeed?" Yes. Duh.
"Well, he would always ask me if I could be his guinea pig, but I was like, 'This could kill me, I am not gonna risk my life for some out-of-school project, so no.' But did he listen? No! Does he ever listen? No! He only thinks about himself, not the others."
"He's like that."
"He still is?" Henrik rose his eyebrows.
"Yea..."
Henrik groaned. "Well, any who, he did the experiment on me. In my sleep." Henrik scoffed and shrugged while making a worried look. "Who on earth does that?"
"Kari."
"Yes! Yes, Tuukka, you're right! When I found out, which was like three seconds after it happened since the syringe hurt me, I was like, 'What the hell, dude?! Didn't I clearly tell you that I am out? That I didn't want to be your guinea pig?!' But like what I just said, he doesn't listen."
"Wait...syringe? He-he doesn't use that anymore--"
Henrik held his hand out towards me, signaling me to quiet. "I'll explain that right now. I got so mad that I knocked him out and I trashed all his work, all his planning--every single thing. Nothing was able to be recovered. I destroyed everything."
"So, he had to start all over again and he got a different method to transfer powers to another person?"
"Yup. That's why you were confused about the syringe thing."
I nodded my head. "Do you know if he has powers?"
"Yea. He has like this light power thingie." Henrik made some hand motions, imitating Kari shooting energy light from his hands. "And he has telepathy."
Telepathy. "I know about the light, but telepathy. He has telepathy?"
"Yup. He can control people. That's why he is able to recruit so many people to his side."
"He controls people?!"
"Tuukka, telepathy does not only include reading people's mind--telepathy also has the ability to manipulate people as well."
"So he can turn a person evil and murderous?"
"Yup. If he desires to, that is."
Jonny. "How?"
Henrik shrugged. "I'm not him, I don't know how."
"Is there a way to save a person who's under his control?"
"Yea. There is. But...it's hard to accomplish. It depends on the person, not you."
"How? How do you save 'em?"
"Well, let me first explain how Kari's controlling thing works. So, he first goes into the person's mind and opens a door to another, complete different world where everything is perfect just for that person. It's something no one would turn down. So they would go into that realm and BAM! Now that the body is unoccupied since the person is gone into that world, Kari takes control of it without any worry of the person fighting back for his body. You get it?"
I zoned out for a moment. "So he gets the person's soul, puts it in some other world, and he takes over the body. So whoever is under Kari's control is not actually them! You're actually interacting with Kari!"
Henrik snapped his fingers and pointed at me, smirking. "Bingo."
"Whoa. That's crazy."
"I know." Henrik chuckled. "Tell me about it."
"So...do you only know about this other than Kari?"
"If he didn't tell it to someone else, then yea."
"Oh...How do you know about this?"
"Let's just say that I played cat. I snooped around some of his stuff to know what he's actually doing."
"But what if that's not how it works since you ruined everything?"
"Believe me, it's still the same. Same ol' thing." Henrik took another sip. "Can't think of another way to accomplish the same thing."
"How do you save the person?"
"It's up to them, not you. First off, you need telepathic powers, if the person that is controlled doesn't know how to get out themselves. But let's just say that that person who is under control knows how to get out."
"What does that person do?"
"What you would do to escape from this life."
I thought for a moment. "You don't mean that...you have to kill yourself...right?"
Henrik nodded his head. "Yup. That's what you have to do. Hey, you wanna escape, right?"
"Doesn't it affect your real self, though?"
"No."
"Huh. What if the person doesn't know how to escape?"
"Well, like what I said, you have to have telepathy. You have to go into that same world he's in and convince him to get out."
"Convince him to kill himself. Okay, I get it."
Henrik raised his eyebrows at me. "Tuukka, I'm not kidding about this. It's the only way to get out."
I sighed. "Okay, okay, but I mean, that method seems a bit...intense."
Henrik shrugged. "I wasn't the one who made this all up--talk to Kari about why he did all this."
"Trust me, I would love to know why he's doing all of this."
"Wait...why do you want to know about his stuff?"
I took a sip. "Because...I have a friend who I believe is controlled by Kari."
"Oh really? How do you know?"
"He tried to kill me."
"Yup. You guessed right."
I chuckled. "I guess I can't save him now, since I don't have any telepathic powers." I sighed.
"Maybe I can save him," Henrik piped in.
I froze for a moment. "You? Now how can you save him?"
"You're a good guesser. Guess."
"You have telepathic powers..."
"Bingo." Henrik snapped and pointed at me with his signature smirk.
"You got 'em from Kari, right?"
"No, Tuukka, I got it from the purple cow from outer space. Of course I got them from Kari! I still have 'em from when he tried his experiment on me!"
"Purple cow from outer space." I chuckled. "That's the first time I heard that."
Henrik laughed a bit. "I'm sorry."
"No, no, it's fine. Must be from that drink."
Henrik let out a burst of laugh. "Now, that's a good one!" He took another sip. "So, all your answers got answered?"
I nodded my head. "Yea...thanks."
"Hey, are you free?"
Pekka can't be done with his grocery shopping this quick. I still have lots of time left. "Yea."
"Let's go down to the beach. Clear our heads, talk more--Is that fine?"
I nodded my head. "Yea, that sounds cool. Let's go."

Notes