by Georgia Byng
“Okay,” said Molly. “Let’s do it.”
Molly faced the man who, until a short while ago, had been one of the most powerful people on the planet.
“Primo Cell—you will now answer all my questions,” she told him. “Where is Lucy Logan? Is she safe? Is she alive?”
“Logan—is in—California. She is staying in—the Beverly Hills—Hotel.”
“Wow!” said Sinclair. “So he’s got her nearby to work for him when he needs her.”
“That’s incredible,” said Molly. “But thank goodness for that. We can get to her sooner and dehypnotize her.” Then with the burning question of Lucy off her shoulders, Molly dared ask a darker one.
“So, Primo Cell, how many people have you actually hypnotized?”
“Three thousand,” said Cell, as easily as if he was telling her how many people he’d beaten playing table tennis. Molly reeled back in horror.
She managed to ask, “Don’t you feel sorry for what you’ve done?”
Sinclair sighed. “Molly, I’ve told you, he’s insane. Of course he won’t.”
“Sorry?” Cell hesitated. “A—part—of me—somewhere—somewhere—deep down—does. But—I don’t have access to that—feeling. Davina—Davina Nuttel helped me—contact—my feelings. But otherwise—there’s a wall.”
“A wall?” said Molly.
“A forbiddance.”
“A what?”
“I am forbidden to go to my feelings.”
Molly frowned. Rocky and Sinclair sat up. Like a miner of information, Molly had unwittingly chanced upon an unexpected vein of truth.
“Are you saying, Primo, that someone has forbidden you to go to your feelings?” she asked slowly.
“Yes.”
“Who has forbidden you?” Molly felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle with a strange, horrible excitement.
“My master,” said Cell.
“Your master? Who is your master?”
Primo Cell shuddered as if he was trying to summon up the name but couldn’t. Sinclair and Rocky leaned closer, eyes wide.
“Say it,” insisted Molly. Primo began to shake his head as if he was trying to dislodge an earwig from his ear.
“The answer’s—imprisoned,” he said.
Molly took Primo’s hand and stared at her shoes.
“Sinclair,” she said, “help Rocky so he doesn’t freeze.” As easily as pressing a button on a film projector, Molly stopped the world.
“Now,” she said to Cell. “You will forget all instructions you have received to keep anything secret. No secrets now. Who is your master?”
Cell began to froth at the mouth as he strained to speak the name. “Slackg Clegg,” he spluttered. “Slacgg Cllack.” It was as if the name was locked in his voice box and couldn’t come out. “Slasss Shhludd.” Petula, still as a stuffed dog, stared up at him.
“There’s a password,” said Sinclair, astonished. “The name’s been locked in with a password.”
“There must be some way to find out the password,” Molly said. She spoke to Cell. “What is the password that has been used to lock in your instructions?”
“I cannot tell—you that,” said Cell.
“We’re just going to have to guess,” said Sinclair.
“But that might take a million years,” said Molly. “I mean, there are trillions of possibilities.”
“Make the world move again,” Sinclair said nervously. “I can feel that resistance feeling again. And it’s getting closer.” He looked out of the window at the horizon, from where the strange electric, tingling feeling was once more coming.
Molly nodded, and she released the time freeze. The water in the lap pool began to flow, and outside she heard Forest’s deep voice as he sang to his chickens.
“Whoever it is out there,” continued Sinclair, “controls Cell. And they must be looking for him now.” His expression was fearful. “If they get here, if there’s more than one of them, we’re in real trouble. They’ll want their president elect back.”
Molly’s mind whirled. For all they knew, Primo Cell’s master or masters might be about to break down the door. She grabbed a pen and paper from the coffee table and urgently turned to Cell.
“Okay, Primo, I want you to quickly tell me all the passwords that you have used on other hypnotists, on the stars, on all the people you have hypnotized, so that we can release them.”
“There has only—ever been one—password that—I’ve used,” Cell hissed.
“So what is it?” Molly lowered her pen. The air was thick with anticipation as everyone waited, hardly breathing.
“The password I use is ‘Perfectly punctually.’”
Molly felt as if she’d been punched in the brain. Perfectly punched.
“Perfectly punctually? But that’s …” She couldn’t speak. Those words. Those two unusually joined words had been used on her. Used to wake Molly the first time she had ever been hypnotized. Used by a person whom Molly trusted. And those very same words were the ones that Primo Cell used to control his victims. Those weren’t Cell’s words, they were someone else’s.
Molly’s brain suddenly added two and two and two. Was “Perfectly punctually” also the password that had been used to keep Cell under control?
Without warning, Molly grabbed Rocky and Cell’s hands and froze the world again.
“I order you to tell me who your master is,” Molly shouted at Primo. “PERFECTLY PUNCTUALLY.”
Molly’s guess had been a bull’s-eye. This was not only the password that Cell used, it was also the one that had been used on him.
At once, Primo melted with obedience, and he said quite simply, “Lo—gan—is my—master.”
Thirty-seven
Rocky’s mouth opened so wide, someone could have pushed a large wedge of cheese into it. Sinclair looked as if he’d just swallowed a live eel. Petula looked as if she was growling too.
“You mean Lucy Logan is your master?” said Molly, trying to absorb this ghastly fact.
“Lucy Logan—is my master,” confirmed Cell. “Almost everything I do is because Lucy—has ordered it so.”
Molly felt the resistance to the time freeze again, closer than it had been before. Immediately, she let the cold fusion feeling drain, and outside, a helicopter that had been held in midflight continued on its way.
So Lucy Logan was the enemy. Lucy Logan, the quiet, sweet librarian whom they all thought Cell had hypnotized had actually, all along, been the master of Cell. And if Sinclair was right, it was Lucy Logan who was creeping through the stopped world, searching for her prize automaton—and getting closer every minute. Molly was overcome with shock. That Lucy was the enemy was almost impossible to comprehend. It was the sourest, most hurtful discovery. She’d thought Lucy was her friend.
Everyone felt horribly jumpy. They didn’t know what to do. Should they take Primo and make a run for it before Lucy reached the house? But where would they go? They couldn’t risk a hypnotized president elect being spotted. Molly could practically hear the sirens blaring if they were caught.
But maybe the librarian wasn’t heading toward the Hollywood Hills at all. Maybe she was still completely oblivious to the fact that Primo Cell had been taken. What they did all know was that their best chance of safety lay in finding out as much as they could from Cell.
“How do you know Lucy Logan?” asked Sinclair.
“We met—at college.”
Molly was frantically running a series of impossible thoughts through her head. Had Lucy invented the magpie killer? Had Lucy planned that Molly and Rocky would be killed by it? Surely not. Lucy had wanted to stop Primo Cell’s plans, hadn’t she?
“And where is Lucy Logan from?” Molly asked, hoping madly that there might be two Lucy Logans.
“Lucy is—from Briersville.”
Molly’s head felt as if it was about to explode. This didn’t make sense.
“Why would Lucy send me to destroy Primo Cell if she was behind all his ac
tions?” Molly asked Rocky and Sinclair. “She was the one who made sure I found the hypnotism book and learned how to hypnotize people in the first place. Why would she have bothered letting me find the book if she planned to get rid of me?” Molly turned to Cell. “Do you know why Lucy sent me?”
The hypnotized Cell took a while to think about this; then he speculated, “It may have—been because of the—suspicious circumstances—around Davina—Nuttel. You see—I could not—hypnotize—Davina. And this—was out of the—ordinary. It was—the first—time I had ever failed. Perhaps—Lucy was suspicious—of me then. Perhaps she worried—that her hypnosis over me—was wearing off.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
“Then why couldn’t you hypnotize Davina?” asked Molly.
“There was something haunting about her—her age. Something—that reminded me of—something I had forgotten. I felt—almost—as if—I loved her—like a—daughter. My power was—displaced—by her. I couldn’t hypnotize her, and—once she knew about—me, I couldn’t have—her telling people—about me. So she—had to—be abducted. All this—I did without—Lucy Logan’s orders. Perhaps Lucy sent you to—check that I wasn’t doing other—things without her orders, too.”
“When did you last see Lucy Logan?”
“Eleven and a half—years ago.”
This was amazing. Eleven and a half years ago was before Molly was born.
“You mean she never even came to America to see you? She stayed in Briersville all that time?”
“She never came to see me. She traveled to many other parts of the world.”
“How did she control you?”
“She spoke to me every week.”
“And when did you last speak to her?” asked Molly.
“In—June. Just before I announced—that I was running—for president.”
“But that was five months ago,” said Rocky. “Why should she talk to him every week for eleven years and then stop talking to him in June?”
“Do you know the answers to these questions?”
Primo Cell shrugged.
“Perhaps—she felt—that by June—I could be trusted—and all was safely in—place for the—election campaign—so she felt she could leave me—to it.”
“So once you were president, what was Lucy’s plan then?” Molly asked.
“Her plan—was to become—first lady.”
“First lady? What’s that?”
“That’s the title given to the president’s wife,” said Sinclair, letting out a whistle of amazement.
“My wife,” said Primo blankly. “She planned—to meet me soon. We were to meet at a Books Build Brilliance—charity event and there—we were to fall in love. The—idea of a romantic—president was one—that she thought—would make me—even more popular with—the American people.”
This was such a staggering notion that Molly, Rocky, and Sinclair all sat for a moment looking like their brains had been replaced with molasses.
“She’s brilliant,” said Sinclair in admiration. “All those years ago she hypnotized Primo to do her dirty work. To get rid of any rival hypnotists who might be a threat to her ambitions …”
“Except for you and Sally,” Rocky pointed out.
“Well,” mused Sinclair, “she must have wanted him to have some trained, tame hypnotists on his side—on her side.” He fell glumly silent.
Poor Sinclair, Molly thought. The thought of how his life had been hijacked for one woman’s selfish plan must be horrible.
“And then,” Rocky continued, “she got Primo to get rich for her.”
“He became so rich, he could spend millions more dollars than anyone else on his election campaign, and win,” added Sinclair.
“Because,” said Molly, “she wants to be the president’s wife. She must have reckoned that by the time Primo was president, he’d be so rich and so powerful that it would be safe for her to step in. As first lady, she would travel with him everywhere. She’d be right beside him, breathing down his ear and whispering to him like a snake. It’s not Primo who wants to take over the world, it’s her!” Molly shook her head determinedly, as if to help it digest all the confusing facts that had suddenly piled up there. “All along,” she said incredulously, “Lucy Logan was using me, and in the end she wanted me dead. And”—Molly stuck her tongue out in repugnance—“when I went to visit her in her cottage, everything she told me was lies. Her car crash, her plastered leg, her burned face—she made it all up to persuade me to help her.”
Molly remembered that extraordinary Sunday afternoon. She thought about the rooms full of clocks, the secret, locked room with the bonsai trees on the table and the horrible silk shoes in the glass-fronted case—the shoes worn by Chinese girls who’d had their feet bound. They all went with Lucy Logan. She was a mind binder. Molly thought of the meticulously kept topiary hedges. Now, instead of imagining Lucy as a sweet person tending to her garden, Molly saw her as an insane control freak, slicing away at her hedges—to keep them under control and never let them be their own natural wild selves. Molly remembered the big bird bush. Had it been a magpie? Did it stand for Primo Cell? And the other bushy animals. Did they each stand for a person under Lucy’s power? Then a horrendous thought struck Molly. Was she herself under Lucy Logan’s power? Was she the bush bush baby?
“Do you think I’m hypnotized by Lucy?” she asked Rocky and Sinclair.
“No, I know you’re not,” said Sinclair. “I would have found out at Dune Beach if you were. But it’s amazing that you’re not.”
“It is, isn’t it?” agreed Molly. “I wonder why not.”
“Just count your lucky stars. But …” Sinclair was suddenly aware of how little time they might have. “We’ll think about all that later, Molly. Right now, we’d better concentrate on getting Cell deprogrammed.”
This operation took a while, as they had to make quite sure that there weren’t any extra instructions stowed away in him behind different passwords. There weren’t. Everything was locked by the “Perfectly punctually” password. It was amazing how much of Primo’s life had been controlled. Molly began to feel sorry for him and wondered how he had fallen into Lucy Logan’s web.
“But why did Lucy Logan chose you?” she asked.
“Because she—loved me once,” said Primo. “At the university, she taught me—everything I know about hypnotism. She gave me my crystal. She—had great plans. Plans—to stop the world and to stop—suffering. To bring peace—to the planet. We were happy once.”
“What happened? When did she start to go crazy?”
“After she had our baby,” said Primo.
“Lucy Logan had a baby?” Molly said. The idea of the murderous new Logan as a mother didn’t fit at all. Molly hadn’t seen anything in her house that suggested she had a child. There weren’t any toys or photographs.
“Poor kid. What a mother to have,” said Rocky.
“Has her child grown up and left home?”
“Our baby never—lived at Lucy’s house,” said Primo. “Lucy took the child—to an orphanage. I never saw—my baby. Lucy—made sure—of that.”
“How horrible of her,” said Molly. “But which orphanage did she take her to? One in another town?” Molly’s mind had already sieved through every child whom she knew at the orphanage in Briersville. If the child was thirteen, then it might have been Cynthia, but Cynthia was a twin.
“Hardwick House,” said Primo Cell.
Hardwick House! That was the name of the orphanage before Molly changed it to Happiness House. “Did she have twins?” Molly asked.
“No. Lucy had one child. One—baby girl.”
Molly thought. It couldn’t be Hazel. She’d arrived when she was six. Molly’s heart suddenly throbbed in a thick, achy way, and she suddenly had the strange feeling she was awake in a dream.
“The child—would be eleven and—a half now,” Primo Cell steamrolled on.
Molly felt imaginary arrows pivot all around her. M
entally she tried to dodge them, but however hard she tried, she couldn’t get out of the firing line. The truth had arrived, as suddenly and as surprisingly as an exploding bolt of lightning.
“Was it … was she … delivered in a … in a … in a … in a …” Molly couldn’t say it. She breathed in and tried again. “In a marshmallow box?”
“Maybe,” said Primo matter-of-factly. “Lucy was—very fond of marshmallows—especially when she was pregnant. She ate—boxfuls.”
“M … Moon’s Marshmallows?” Molly didn’t want to believe her ears.
“Yes. They were her—favorite brand,” said Primo Cell with absolutely no emotion in his voice.
“No. No, it can’t be true.” Molly looked away.
Inside her head two voices began to vie for dominance.
Don’t be an idiot—it’s not true, one boomed angrily. Why trust this man? It’s not true.
Don’t be stupid, the other voice yelled. What more evidence do you need? The truth is staring you in the face. Molly put her hands up to her head to stop the deafening noise. Rocky put his hand on her arm.
“You’ve found your parents,” he said quietly. Molly gripped his hand.
“But … I don’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it,” she said, appalled.
Molly felt totally cheated. Like a person who’d been asking for a certain special thing all her life, and it had suddenly been given to her, but on opening it she’d discovered it was wrong. Molly didn’t like her present. Yet she couldn’t return it. It was a one-way, you’lljust-have-to-live-with-it present.
“Look who they are, Rocky. I didn’t want to find my parents here … now … like this. I don’t want them as my parents.”
“You’ve always been looking, Molly,” Rocky reminded her. “We both have. You’re lucky. Now you know who your parents are.”
“But my mother is a maniac!” Molly cried. “I don’t want her.”
Primo stared blankly into space.
“I’m not going to tell him I’m his daughter. I don’t want to,” said Molly, shuddering at the idea. She clutched Rocky’s sleeve. “And I especially don’t ever want to meet her again.”
“You don’t have to tell him who you are,” said Rocky. “You can bring him out of his trance now and he’ll never know. But Molly, it’s probably the greatest sadness of his life that he never met you. Remember, he was only hypnotized not to care.” Then he added, “Do you remember what he said about Davina? He said there was something about her that helped him feel things, even though he was forbidden to feel. He said it was something about her—her age—that reminded him of something he’d forgotten. ‘I felt almost as if I loved her like a daughter. My power was displaced by her.’ Do you remember him saying that? Even though Lucy Logan hypnotized Primo to forget you, Davina reminded him of you. Do you see that, Molly? He never completely forgot you.”
