Molly Moon Stops the World (25 page)

“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. Mentally 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.”

Molly nodded, but she was too upset to speak. She picked up Petula and left the room to think.

*   *   *

For the next half hour, Rocky and Sinclair finished deprogramming Cell. They told him that he now had access to all his feelings, that he was completely out of Lucy Logan’s grasp, that he was free. Rocky left Primo with all his knowledge of hypnotism. And then they took him to Sinclair’s bedroom and told him to sleep.

Sinclair looked at the prone body of Primo collapsed on the circular bed. “He’s dog tired because of what’s happened to him,” he observed. “He probably feels like sleeping for a century. We must let him rest for as long as possible, so that when he wakes, his mind has properly absorbed the deprogramming. And Rocky, as far as the rest of the country goes, Primo Cell is still the president elect. We must keep him hidden in here, because if Lucy Logan was to get to him
before
he announced that he was not going to be president, she’d still have a chance of carrying out her plans. We’ll lock him in my room for safety. When he’s conscious again, and his head is clear, we’ll get him down to Iceberg Studios and he can declare on TV that he no longer wants to be president. As soon as we’ve done that, Logan’s lost.”

So they closed the door on Cell and turned the key. Rocky felt sorry for the man. When he woke, he’d have to come to terms with the fact that Lucy Logan
had stolen eleven years of his life and used them for herself.

Molly reeled from the succession of shocks that had battered her. That Lucy had betrayed her, that Lucy was behind Primo Cell, was a bad enough shock. The fact that Lucy was her mother, a mother who had wanted her dead, and that Primo was her father, was a shock of such high voltage that Molly wasn’t quite sure how to cope. Rocky couldn’t help her. She needed to be alone. She went upstairs to sit in the sunlight, on the roof of Sinclair’s house.

M
olly spent the next few hours with Petula, sitting quietly on the warm sun deck on the top of Sinclair’s house. She did her best to come to terms with her mammoth discoveries.

She tried to breathe deeply and calmly. She shut her eyes and drifted off, just as Forest had taught her, and in her imagination, she looked down on herself. In her mind, as she floated far above Los Angeles, a thick red line connected her to Primo Cell, and another glowing red line joined her to Lucy Logan, wherever she was. Molly realized that these lines had always been there, but she hadn’t seen them before. Molly hated the line that joined her to Logan. But no amount of wishing could make the line go away. Molly was connected to her, whether she liked it or
not. That ruthless, evil woman was her mother.

To make herself feel better, Molly imagined special golden lines connecting her to the people whom she knew and loved best: Rocky, Mrs. Trinklebury, Gemma and Gerry, and little Ruby and Jinx. Molly sent silver lines, bronze lines, green, purple, and blue lines swooping away from her. They all helped blot out the horrible red one that shot toward Lucy Logan.

Lucy Logan. Molly hated her very name.

When Logan found out that her plans had been foiled, she would definitely try to pull everything back on track. She’d try to make Primo her puppet again. She’d try to hypnotize him. She’d try to hypnotize all of them. Molly dreaded to think how strong her hypnotic powers were.

Molly let herself fly all the way up into space, until she was aware of her body as a microscopic cell on the surface of the earth. It was as if her mind was drifting, looking down at the spot where her body, her Molly Moon body, was. From her lofty vantage, she imagined where Logan’s body might be. She shut her eyes and concentrated hard, but at the same time, she let her mind relax. Molly looked down across to the hazy San Gabriel Mountains, but she had no sense of Logan being there. Molly looked southwest to Santa Monica Beach, but her instinct told her that Logan wasn’t there
either. Now she swiveled her mind’s eye directly below her, to Hollywood. She felt a kind of radarlike certainty that Logan was there. And, as if turning the lens on a telescope, Molly focused her imagination. She zoomed in on the place where she could picture Logan. Her mind became brighter. Sunlight and a bird’s-eye view of green trees filled it. Then her mental vision conjured up a view of the top of Logan’s head. Molly breathed in and let the strange apparition expand. She saw Logan walking up a path flanked by geranium bushes and pepper trees.

All at once, Molly knew that she had imagined the path to Sinclair’s house. And in the next moment, as she opened her eyes, she realized that the vision in her head was not imaginary but true.

The front doorbell rang. Molly could hear Sinclair’s voice answering the intercom.

“Hello?”

“Sinclair,” came a woman’s deep voice. “Sinclair, I wonder whether you might come downstairs. I’m an old friend of your father’s, and I’d like to get in touch with him. My name’s Lucy Logan.”

Molly sat up as if she’d been stung and put her hand around Petula’s mouth in case she should bark.

“I’m sorry,” she heard Sinclair reply. “But if you’d like to get in touch with Primo Cell, I suggest you make
an appointment with his secretary.”

“But, Sinclair, I have to speak …” The intercom clunked as it disconnected. Molly heard a frustrated sigh from below. Lucy had been left on the doorstep. Molly craned her neck and heard crunching steps walking away from the house. And as soon as she thought there was no risk of being seen, she scuttled through the hatch of the sun deck and bolted it behind her, and she and Petula sped down the steep stairs into the safety of the house.

At the bottom, they bumped straight into Sinclair and Rocky. Molly jumped.

“Molly, I’ve got—”

“I know. Bad news. She’s here, I heard her.”

“She must know Primo’s here,” said Sinclair in a panic, pacing forward and backward on the spot. Molly had never seen him look so scared. “Did you see where she went?”

“It sounded like she was setting off through the garden,” said Molly.

“Is Primo’s bedroom locked?” asked Sinclair.

Rocky tapped his pocket. “You locked it yourself.”

“I’ve locked the back door too. There’s no way she can get in. You two had better keep away from the windows.”

“Maybe we should wake Primo up and get him out of
here right now,” said Molly.

“Far too risky,” Sinclair replied instantly. “He’ll still be semiconscious. We might damage the deprogramming. Anyway, who knows what we might meet on the road.” Sinclair started rubbing his fingers together as if he was fiddling with a piece of invisible putty.

The minutes passed. They stayed where they were, outside the entrance to the sitting room, all fighting the fear that was crawling up their spines.

“Do you think she’s got other people out there?” asked Molly, chewing her sleeve. “I mean, she may have a small army, ready to ambush us.”

All at once, Molly and Sinclair felt a coolness on the surface of their skins beneath their crystals, and a chill flickered through their bodies. Molly grabbed Rocky and, as the world froze, she helped him resist it. Outside, the traffic on the road in the valley ceased. The water in the fountain that fed Sinclair’s lap pool stopped in midflow. Petula was still. Everywhere was silence.

“What’s she up to?” Rocky said.

“The feeling’s coming from over there.” Molly stepped into the sitting room with Rocky and pointed to where the trees hid the road farther down the hill.

“I think we’ve got to grab Primo and leave now,” said Rocky. “If she’s on the far side of the house, we can get
him into the car without being seen. Probably.”

“Maybe we should risk it,” Sinclair agreed.

Just as suddenly, the world started moving again.

“Whatever it was that she needed to stop time for, she’s done it now,” said Molly. “I’m not sure we should leave. I mean, she doesn’t know Primo’s here. She doesn’t know Rocky and I are here—she thinks we’re dead. If we leave now, we might come face to face with her or some cop she’s hypnotized. She’d have Primo taken from us. And who knows what she’ll do with us? We’ll have more of a chance if we wait for her to come to the door. Here, we have the advantage of surprise. I can use my eyes on her.”

They all perched uncomfortably at the back of the room on some star-shaped, wire-mesh chairs that weren’t really designed to be sat on. Everyone expected the doorbell to ring again at any moment. Rocky picked at a hole in his jeans, making it twice as big. Sinclair scrolled through numbers on his cell phone as if looking at them would give him the answer as to what he should do next. Molly stared at the narrow channel of water that ran along the side of the huge room to the fountain where it was filled. The constant fountain splashed quietly but did nothing to diffuse the tension. Ripples from the opposite direction met the fountain’s flow and made the water swish against
the edges of the lap pool. Molly’s eyes followed the channel as it curved toward the window, and she realized, with a nauseating lurch, that there was an entry to the house they had all overlooked. Then she saw, to her horror, where the ripples were coming from. Someone was swimming in the lap pool. Like a duck in a fairground’s shooting gallery, Lucy Logan’s head was forging its way through the water, toward them.