by Georgia Byng
“The man is a genius….”
“That was where he spoke to me.”
“And me.”
Molly looked at Rocky, who had joined her. They had to go upstairs.
Twenty-four
Molly, Rocky, and Petula waited in the main hall for an opportunity to get to the upstairs corridors without being seen. Partygoers were still arriving, and the stairs were busy with people coming and going. The security guards kept a watchful eye on the scene. Eventually they were distracted by a journalist who was trying to gate-crash. As quick as a couple of chipmunks scrambling up a nut-laden tree, Molly, carrying Petula, and Rocky shot up the stairs and turned right. In a moment they were panting behind a pillar, halfway down the corridor. For a minute they watched the landing to make sure they hadn’t been spotted. Then, with their hearts knocking in their chests, they sneaked down the hall and round a corner. Seconds later, they came face to face with a security guard, but Molly soon zapped him, and they walked on.
They found endless bedrooms—all of which seemed to be occupied, as the different clothes laid out on the beds testified.
“He obviously likes having guests,” whispered Molly, touching an embroidered silk bedspread. “This place is like a castle, isn’t it?”
“Not as cold, though,” said Rocky. “And I hope it doesn’t have a dungeon.”
“It’s like an art gallery, too,” observed Molly as they walked quietly along. A series of airbrushed pictures of rabbits in the headlights of cars lined the wall. These were followed by portraits of people whose heads were spinning off their bodies.
“It’s what he dreams of,” whispered Molly, “that everyone he hypnotizes will lose their heads to him.”
“Do you think he painted these?” asked Rocky.
“No. He’s a collector. But these suit him, don’t they? They show what he’s like underneath.”
They had reached the farthest end of this wing of the house. Beside a closed door, a blue neon sign flashed the words A STITCH IN TIME SAVES NINE. They guessed they were about to enter Primo Cell’s quarters.
Rocky tried the door. It wasn’t locked. Behind it, green marble stairs led upward.
Molly felt that this was like some sort of witch’s tower, where a sinister spinning wheel stood waiting for them. Shutting the door behind her, she followed Rocky up the stairs. They entered a small sitting room with yellow leather walls and a lit fireplace. The burning wood smelled of limes, and the flames made shadows and light dance across the ceiling. It felt as if the room was watching its guests.
Molly went over to the desk, which was covered with paperweights—each one a dandelion flower in a hard ball of clear resin.
“Don’t touch it—it’s probably alarmed.”
“Rocky, we’re not going to find out anything if I don’t.” Molly rattled the drawers of the desk. They were locked.
“This must be where those two Cell worshipers said they had tea with him,” she said.
There were two other rooms. One had file cabinets and wall cabinets in it, but these were also locked.
“Should have learned how to pick locks from Nockman,” whispered Molly. But Rocky didn’t hear her. He was already in the room opposite, eager to get out as soon as he could.
This next room was a small library, lined with wooden shelves from floor to ceiling. There were all sorts of books—novels, encyclopedias, reference books, biographies, art books, plays, and books of photographs. Two cream armchairs sat on either side of another lit fire. On a low table was a sculpture of a hand trying to grasp a heart that was flying away. Two more strange pictures hung on the walls. One was of a magpie wearing a crown and a blindfold. The other was of a magpie in flight, suspended by strings attached to its wings and tail.
Molly read the words that were woven around the rim of the brown carpet under her feet.
“Knowledge is power Knowledge is power Knowledge is power Knowledge is power.”
She followed the words along the floor. At one point the carpet had an odd bump in it, as if something was underneath. Molly bent down and felt the lump. Smiling, she lifted the carpet to reveal a brass key. Molly looked at the desk. The key was too big for the locks in its drawers—it looked like a door key. Perhaps it was for the door they’d just come through. Then Rocky saw where the key belonged. Silently, he pointed to a spot in the middle of the wall, where some hairline cracks gave away the position of a concealed door. Near the floor was a small keyhole. As quietly as she could, Molly tried the key in the lock and turned it. It clicked smoothly and the secret door swung inward. Whatever they found behind it was something that Primo Cell didn’t want anyone to see.
The hidden room was another library. This one was a lot smaller than the first. In the middle was a maroon leather-topped desk with a high-backed chair. Molly, Petula, and Rocky crept in.
The walls were completely lined with books. But unlike those in the previous room, they were all the same size and the same thickness. And their bindings were all the same color—maroon. Some were bright, some were faded, but Molly got the impression that all the books had originally been exactly the same color. Molly recognized the color, but she couldn’t quite place it. But when she read the gold writing on the spine of one of the books, she knew, in a horrible flash, exactly why it felt so familiar.
“I don’t believe it!” she gasped.
For there, on every single shelf of the room, were copies of the same book—a book that Molly and Rocky knew very well.
H
Y
P
N
O
T
I
S
M
“I thought the Briersville book was the only copy left in the world,” gulped Molly.
“So did I,” whispered Rocky. “But lots must originally have been printed.”
“How do you think he got all of these?” asked Molly. “They must all have belonged to different people.”
“Different hypnotists,” said Rocky.
Something that Molly had thought only happened in cartoons now happened to her. Her legs began to shake so much that her knees actually knocked together.
“I wonder where they are now.”
Rocky said nothing.
“Dead?” Molly blurted out in a hoarse whisper like a donkey’s cough. Petula whined in sympathy.
“M-maybe he just made them forget everything they knew about hypnotism and sent them back to where they came from,” said Rocky, not wanting to acknowledge how evil Primo Cell might really be.
“They’re like trophies,” hissed Molly. “They’re like shrunken heads of all the hypnotists he’s overpowered.” Her hands were sweating as if she was in a sauna. “I don’t like this. We’ve got to get out of here.” Cell’s overwhelming collection of the book that had changed her life had completely unnerved her. Her own skills felt like plastic toys compared to Cell’s hightech machines. She pushed away all ideas of searching for Davina. All she wanted to do was get out of the building safely.
They locked the room, rehid the key, and cautiously made their way out of the terrible house.
Downstairs, Primo Cell was pacing. For him, this was just another power-building opportunity. He liked being the center of attention and being on intimate terms with so many of Hollywood’s biggest stars. They were all people he considered “his,” but their devotion to him made them less interesting. The guests who interested him were those he hadn’t met before, and right now, the person who intrigued him most was that plain-looking child Molly Moon.
In New York she’d been headline news with her part in Stars on Mars. Her support could be very useful to him on his children’s channel. He already used the pop star Billy Bob Bimble, but a famous girl would really help Cell win the hearts of American children. It had crossed his mind that the child was a hypnotist. Her sudden rise to fame, her mystery, her ordinariness and yet her stardom—all had the stamp of a hypnotist. It was always a thrill to meet his own kind, alt
hough, of course, adult hypnotists eventually had to be disposed of.
Cell sighed as he thought of Davina Nuttel. He had planned to have her spearhead a big promotion campaign for Fashion House girls’ wear. He didn’t understand why she’d been impossible to hypnotize. Worse, it was as if something within Davina had weakened him. Molly Moon would probably be easier to hypnotize—though he’d have to be careful. She could be the new face of Fashion House.
Where was Molly Moon? Primo scoured the balcony and the garden below. An owly old screenwriter was standing by the door smoking a cigarette.
“You know that kid star Molly Moon? Have you seen her?” Primo Cell asked.
“Yeahhsssss,” the man replied. “It goes like this. Pan across hall to oaken front door to see girl and friend squeezing through crowd to leave. Close-up on girl’s face. She smiles uncomfortably. Someone has recognized her. Focus on girl’s pug dog. It follows kids through door. Fade.”
“How long ago was that?” asked Primo.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“They’ll be in a cab by now,” Primo said to himself, pressing the pad of his thumb up against his sharp incisor.
“Next time,” suggested the screenwriter, exhaling a column of smoke, “maybe you ought to hire a children’s entertainer.”
Molly and Rocky walked down the drive and out of Cell’s front gates. They decided that it was simpler to walk all the way back to the Château Marmont.
Primo Cell’s secret library had scared them both badly.
“I mean, why should we have to sort the Primo Cell problem out?” said Rocky. “We’re never going to stop him. He’s too powerful.”
Molly agreed.
“It’s really a job for some sort of trained agent,” she said, looking across the road at a poster for an action movie. “The idea that I should be able to do it is ridiculous.”
“And not fair.”
“Not at all fair. Why doesn’t Lucy wait until she’s better and then come and do it herself?” said Molly.
“Here we are in one of the most amazing places on earth,” complained Rocky, “and we go to a party that most people would cut their right foot off to go to, but we have to miss the fun and instead snoop about and risk getting caught by Mr. Weirdo. It’s not fair.”
“Or reasonable.”
Grumbling like this, the two friends walked through the chilly night.
Back in their bungalow, Rocky made drinks—proper Shirley Temples. Molly reached into a cupboard for a packet of marshmallows.
“When are you going to call Lucy Logan and tell her you can’t do the job?” asked Rocky.
“It’ll be seven in the morning there now. I don’t think I should wake her up like I did last time. I’ll call her tomorrow.” Rocky knew that Molly was putting the moment off, but he didn’t comment.
Molly put a marshmallow in her mouth and let it dissolve. She wanted to forget Cell and think about something nice, but she couldn’t. It was impossible to get him out of her mind.
“If you were him,” she said, giving up, “what would you be planning?”
“I wouldn’t stop,” said Rocky, drawing squirly, hypnotized eyes on the faces of people in the newspaper in front of him. “I’d want to control the whole of America, so that everyone did as I said. I’d want to become president.”
“Why stop there? What about world domination?” said Molly. “Lucy thinks he’s planning that. What’s for sure, he certainly isn’t going to just skip off into the sunset. I bet he wants it all.”
Molly looked at the familiar Moon’s Marshmallows bag in her hand. The moon on it was a round white marshmallow. The earth below it was drawn like a blue marble. When Molly was little, she’d thought the moon was made of marshmallow and that all the marshmallows in a bag of Moon’s Marshmallows came from the moon. She’d also thought that babies turned up all over the world in cardboard boxes or baby carriages, like she and Rocky had. She’d thought they zoomed in from outer space in flying cardboard boxes and baby carriages.
“Do you think we’re the only people in the world who know what Cell’s up to?” she asked.
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Rocky. He stopped drawing and began to tune his guitar.
Molly cupped the package of marshmallows so that the little planet earth was nestled in her hands.
“Imagine if we don’t do anything about him, Rocky. Imagine if he starts to do really, really bad things.”
“We could always see what happens. We can sort things out later if we need to.”
“Later will be too late,” said Molly.
Molly felt most peculiar. The more she looked at the small globe on the bag, the more she felt herself part of the problem of Primo Cell. If she was the only person who could do something about him, but she did nothing, then she would, in effect, be helping him. She would be behaving as if she wanted him to succeed. And she didn’t want this. She thought of all the billions of people living in the world, all the freethinking people Primo would like to control. The small blue planet in her hands seemed to tug at Molly’s heart. She couldn’t let Primo win. It was totally out of the question.
“It’s now or never,” she said to Rocky. “We have to try to help Davina. We have to find the secret of how Cell makes his hypnotism permanent. If we knew that, we could release his victims. Then his power would start to crumble. That’s what we must do. We’ll never forgive ourselves if we don’t at least try to stop him.”
Rocky looked longingly at his guitar and groaned.
“I suppose we’ll have to go back to the house. When?”
“Tomorrow,” said Molly. “Before we completely lose our nerve. You know what they say about falling off a horse? You’re supposed to get right back on before you lose your nerve.”
“My nerve is already the size of a pea,” said Rocky.
“Mine’s the size of a lentil.”
Twenty-five
The next morning, Molly and Rocky woke to banging on their doors. For a moment both panicked, thinking that Primo Cell had come to get them. Then they heard Gerry’s voice begging to let him in.
“Come on, you two. Wake up,” he shouted. “We’re goin’ to Knott’s Berry Farm.”
Blearily, Molly opened her door. Warm morning sunshine poured in, along with a bouncing Gerry.
“It’s an amusement park. They’ve got the Perilous Plunge. Gemma says it’s the wettest roller coaster in the world. And there’s the Boomerang ride and another one called the Jaguar. Mr. Nockman’s takin’ us all an’ even Roger’s comin’, but we gotta go soon or there’ll be big lines.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten or somethin’, I think, so get your clothes, ‘cause we gotta go now.”
Molly shook her head.
“We can’t, Gerry. We’ve got to do something for the Benefactor.”
“Again? Oh, that’s so stupid, Molly. This is going to be brilliant fun.”
Molly sighed. “I know, don’t rub it in. Believe me, we’d love to come with you, but we can’t. But look, we will another time.”
“Okay,” said Gerry disappointedly.
“Have a great time. Don’t eat too much cotton candy or you’ll go all buzzy like a fly—remember last time? And don’t take your mice. They’ll fall out of your pockets in the rides and get hurt.”
“Okay,” sang Gerry over his shoulder, already halfway down the path.
Molly and Rocky tried to cheer themselves up by having a nice breakfast outside on their patio, but it was difficult when the Knott’s Berry Farm roller coasters beckoned them and the Primo Cell business squatted, unmovable, in front of them like an ugly fat monster.
Molly finished her omelette and poured herself a concentrated grenadine syrup. Rocky opened the papers and began to study the sports pages. All at once, Molly felt slightly peculiar. She looked at her plate and hoped that she hadn’t just eaten a bad egg, but in that very second, an icy chill swept through her. It wasn’t nausea, it was—something else. Insti
nctively, Molly resisted it, and in amazement she watched as around her the world stopped still. Rocky froze as he scratched his head.
For a moment, Molly thought she must be dreaming. But she wasn’t. This was real. Molly looked fearfully toward the hills. Whoever had caused this time stop was somewhere over there. Quite far away, but not far away enough.
Molly scooped a still wasp from the air and sat forward and listened.
The world was so quiet. Apart from her anxious breathing, there was no noise. No traffic, no music, no vacuum cleaners, no lawnmowers. Just silence. For this moment, the whole world was silent. No one was laughing or crying or shouting or singing. The winds and the seas were quiet.
Then, suddenly, as if the pause button on the world’s video player had been released, everything started again. The wasp in Molly’s hand began buzzing. Molly let it go.
“What are you doing, you idiot?” said Rocky. “Want to get stung?”
Then, because Molly had her green-frog-sittingunder-a-rock look, he asked, “Are you okay?”
Molly leaned toward him, anxious in case the world stopped again. She told Rocky what had happened.
It was hard for Rocky to believe her.
“Perhaps time stopping happens naturally, like an earthquake,” he suggested. “This is the place for earthquakes—maybe it’s like a timequake. Maybe the earth did it by itself.”
Both considered this geological possibility. Molly didn’t know what to think.
“And another thing,” Molly added, very perplexed. “Feel my diamond.”
Rocky touched it. “It’s freezing.”
“It’s not normal for diamonds to go all cold like that, is it?” she asked. “I mean, everything around the diamond is warm. My skin’s warm. Shouldn’t the diamond be the same temperature?”
“Maybe the diamond gets charged up with cold when you get the cold fusion feeling. Maybe it holds the cold like, you know, metal holds heat when it comes out of the oven.”
After breakfast Molly and Rocky dressed themselves in jeans and T-shirts. Molly couldn’t stop thinking about the strange time stop. She decided that this time it would be best if Petula stayed behind.
