by Georgia Byng
Davina looked away. In a shaky voice she said, “I don’t know how you’ve done it. You may have won everyone else over, but you won’t win me. You’re just a pimply, ugly country girl.” Breaking down in loud sobs, Davina stumbled away.
Molly was exhausted from the confrontation. She had never expected to meet someone who had the gift, and she was shocked at herself for not being prepared. She should have guessed that other people like her existed. Molly wondered how many people there were in New York who, like Davina, unconsciously used their hypnotic powers to get ahead. Then Molly wondered how many there were who had those powers and knew exactly what they were doing. She speculated on how many copies of the Logan book there might be. Maybe there were people out there even better at hypnotism than Molly! All these thoughts were very unsettling. She was relieved when a knock at the door distracted her and Rixey Bloomy poked her plastic-looking face into the changing room. She smiled sweetly. “Are you ready to rehearse, dearest Molly?”
That night The New York Tribune had shocking headlines.
BROADWAY BRAWL
Davina Nuttel makes way for a new kid on the block
Professor Nockman bought his copy of the paper and read it eagerly on a street corner. So she was called Molly Moon, and she was starring in a Broadway musical. Fantastic! At last there would be no more hunting in the dark. Such a bright spotlight shone on this Molly Moon, he couldn’t possibly lose her again. This was brilliant! Professor Nockman couldn’t wait to meet her.
It didn’t take Nockman long to discover that Miss Moon was living it up at the Waldorf. He parked his rusty white van on the other side of the street from the hotel. All night he waited, huddled up in his sheepskin coat, trying to warm himself with a small heater plugged into the cigarette lighter socket, chewing his long nails to bits as he waited to spot his prey. He slept fitfully, obsessively checking the hotel entrance.
Around nine thirty in the morning a silver Rolls-Royce pulled up in front of the hotel. Nockman shook himself awake and wiped his steamed-up windows to get a better look. A porter was opening the hotel door for someone. Nockman squinted, and at last he saw Molly Moon.
Down the steps toward her car she came. She was dressed in a soft white mink coat with a fur cap to match, and her feet were in cream-colored, knee-length, low-heeled leather boots. Under her arm was a flat-faced pug. The girl looked like a starlet—altogether different from the scruffy kid Nockman had seen in Briersville.
Nockman was beginning to respect Molly. He was amazed and impressed by the speed at which she’d arrived. She had exceptional talents, and he was sure he was the only person in New York who knew her secret.
From that morning on Professor Nockman kept close track of Molly’s movements about town. He followed her as she went shopping accompanied by bodyguards, watching as more and more smart bags and boxes were loaded up into her Rolls-Royce. He waited as she went into amusement arcades and spent a fortune. He sat outside fabulous restaurants as she tasted the cuisines of the world with Rixey or Barry. And the more he watched her, the more convinced he was that he was right about the power of hypnotism. This Molly Moon obviously had everyone under her thumb.
Nockman had been looking forward for years to learning hypnotism himself—ever since he’d heard about the hypnotism book from a rich old lady he’d met in a coffee shop. He’d found out that the ninety-year-old woman was related to Dr. Logan, the great hypnotist, and what was more, she’d inherited his money. In her grand apartment she’d showed Nockman an intriguing letter from the librarian at Briersville, describing the hypnotism book.
“Why, if that book ever got into the wrong hands,” the old lady had said, “who knows what might happen in the world.” Nockman instantly hoped those wrong hands might be his. He became convinced that if he could get his hands on the book, he would be able to carry out the most ambitious crime of his career. For Nockman was no intellectual with a studious interest in hypnotism. He wasn’t a real professor but a professional crook. With a lot of experience under his belt.
Nockman had hours to while away in his van; hours to mull over how pleased he was that all his efforts had been worthwhile. In a way Molly Moon finding the book had been a good thing. Because now, once he got his hands on her, he could very quickly rocket himself into the Super League of Crime. Nockman licked his lips greedily. He knew now that he was going to become the greatest criminal of all time.
As he dozed in his van, he imagined how much money Molly Moon must be making, and he murmured to himself approvingly. He flitted in and out of sleep, fantasizing that he, too, had hypnotic powers, dreaming of how powerful he could become. He had visions of himself in old-fashioned golfing clothes on a lawn beside a huge mansion, with a maid bringing him tea. He saw himself on a grand yacht, with a uniformed crew of ten, sailing around New York. He imagined himself sleeping on a pile of money, holding the book Hypnotism.
One day, at dawn, Nockman woke to see a huge poster being pasted up on the side of the skyscraper near the Waldorf. The picture on it was a giant photograph of a hundred-foot-tall Molly Moon, in an astronaut outfit, holding her dog, who was also wearing a space suit. Nockman chuckled. This girl was a genius! And the better she was at hypnotism, the better it was for him.
Nineteen
All over town, people were gossiping about Molly Moon, speculating about who she was and where she’d come from. Her mysteriousness made her more and more interesting, and everyone wanted to see pictures of her in the papers. One paper nicknamed her “The Cuckoo,” because she had stolen Davina Nuttel’s part, and TV shows sent camera crews to try to interview her, without success.
Davina Nuttel went on television and complained about how badly she’d been treated.
Charlie Chat called the Barry Bragg Agency, again and again, to beg for an exclusive interview with this Molly Moon on his Chat show. Barry Bragg said it might be possible if the money was right.
As Nockman’s mind spiraled away in his van, a red rash broke out on his neck and face. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on Molly. But it was proving very difficult to get close to her at all.
There were always people wherever she went—bodyguards, journalists, photographers. It was exasperating. All he could do was watch and wait for an opportunity. Maybe after the opening night Molly would start giving interviews and he could pose as a journalist. Nockman tried to relax but was impatient by nature, and the situation was driving him crazy. He worried that someone else would discover Molly’s secret. He sat in his white van smoking, eating cheesy potato chips, and looking suspiciously at other parked cars. The van was full of garbage. The discarded packaging, from all the junk meals he’d eaten, smelled disgusting. And Nockman smelled worse than ever. Now, on top of the smell of burgers and tobacco was the reek of cheap aftershave, to cover up the smell of old sweat.
He had mixed feelings for Molly. He was jealous of her, because she had found the hypnotism book first, and she had learned the tricks of hypnotism, but also because she was living the life of a star, while he was slumming it in this stuffy van. At the same time, he was in awe of her and her talents, and since he saw her as his property, he also savored her rise to fame. To keep himself sane, he’d stroke the golden scorpion that hung around his neck and say a mantra over and over that went,
The better it is for her, the better it is for me,
The better it is for her, the better it is for me,
The better it is for her, the better it is for me,
The better it is for her, the better it is for me.
As for her dog, he hated her dog. That pug, it was so smug; a smug, ugly pug, trotting around behind her. Nockman thought jealously about Petula’s luxurious bed and her fine dinners. Why, that dog was Molly Moon’s partner, and her best friend. She would probably do anything for that dog…. And then, as Nockman thought about Petula, he began to have a brilliant idea. His manipulative nature began to ooze with pleasure, oiling his thought and helping the idea grow. Why hadn’t he seen the
value of the dog before? Why, that dog was the key to Molly’s heart! Nockman smiled and stroked his double chin. He picked at a scabby rash on his neck, flicking a piece of it onto the dashboard of the car. Then, thinking of Molly, he smudged the flaky skin across the plastic and his mind hatched a nasty plan. At last he could see a way forward.
Twenty
November rolled into December, and temperatures in New York dropped as winter sank its teeth into the city. Molly hadn’t had time to think about Rocky, since when she wasn’t working hard on the show, she was busy enjoying her fame and fortune. She’d been very busy about town, always with a bodyguard who kept journalists away from her. She had spent happy hours shopping, going to the movies, and seeing the sights. She’d been to an exclusive salon and had her hair cut properly, so that she no longer looked like an orphanage kid, and she’d made ten visits to a beautician, where she’d been steamed and pampered until her skin shone. Although her hands still sweated, they now looked much better after expensive manicures. Her nails were shaped into perfect, polished crescents.
Molly loved her new life. She loved the attention she was getting and the way people treated her with reverence. She couldn’t see, now, how anyone could live life in any other way. It was so much easier when everyone adored you. And the more Molly lived this life, the more she reckoned she deserved it. What was more, she began to feel that it wasn’t just because she’d hypnotized people that they admired her. She suspected that, actually, she did have “star quality.” Everyone at Hardwick House had simply been too uncultured to notice it.
After three weeks of concentrated rehearsals, the opening night of the new production of Stars on Mars arrived. The pink neon sign on the front of the theater now read:
SATRRING
MOLLY MOON
AND
PETULA THE PUG
Behind the scenes Molly sat in her cluttered dressing room, with Petula on her lap, feeling very nervous. Both were dressed in space suits. Molly’s face was thick with stage makeup, so that her face wouldn’t look washed out under the strong theater lights. Her eyes were defined with black eyeliner, so that they stood out, and her cheeks were sprinkled with glitter. Petula had been groomed, and both she and Molly had sparkly powder combed through their hair. Their other costumes, space wet suits and their sequined space dance outfits, hung on a steel rail. Vases of flowers covered every available surface, sent by everyone who loved Molly. Rixey knocked at the door and popped her face around.
“Curtain up in twenty minutes, Molly. How do you feel?”
“Fine, fine,” Molly lied.
“Well, break a leg, although you don’t need it. You’re a star, Molly, a sparkling star, and everyone will see it tonight. New York’s gonna love you.”
“Thanks,” Molly said, her stomach heaving. Rixey disappeared.
“Oh crikey, Petula, what have I done?” Molly moaned. Now the idea of making her fortune by being in a Broadway musical didn’t seem like fun at all. Her nerves were a thousand times worse than they had been before the talent show in Briersville. The thought of the audience tonight was truly terrifying. An audience made up of cosmopolitan New Yorkers, hard to please and ready to be dismissive. She knew the audience out there would be skeptical, critical, aggressive, and very, very difficult to excite … but worse than that, difficult to hypnotize. Molly remembered how Davina had been such a challenge to win over. Maybe there’d be well-practiced hypnotists in the audience. Like the sort of professional hypnotherapists who help people to give up smoking.
Molly tried to pull herself together. What was she thinking of? Of course she’d be much better than they were. She only hoped the new scene she had written into the beginning of the show, with the new props, would make things easier.
“Fifteen minutes to curtain up,” the P.A. announced.
Molly reached into her pocket for her pendulum and stared into its black spiral. “I will do it, I will do it,” she said to herself, over and over again, and then she kissed the pendulum for luck and put it back in her jumpsuit.
Molly and Petula made their way down the corridor and up the stairs to the side of the stage. Through the curtain Molly could hear the hum of the massive audience. Her hands began to sweat and her heart began to pound. “Break a leg, break a leg,” she heard people saying. She took her position in the cockpit of a silver spacecraft on the stage, ready for takeoff. “Ten minutes to go,” someone whispered to her. Molly’s stomach writhed. It was difficult to concentrate.
The orchestra began to play the overture: little pieces of music from different songs in the musical. The audience went quiet. Molly lowered her head, which felt full of cotton wool. “Come on, Molly, you can do it,” she said in a low, quaky voice.
Then the overture finished, and however hard Molly wished for time to stand still, the show started. With a clash of drums, the curtain swished upward.
The audience sat with bated breath and feasted their eyes on Molly Moon. The Cuckoo. At last, there she sat, the new star of the show, in the cockpit of a huge spacecraft, with Petula the pug on the seat beside her.
A deep voice crackled over the loudspeaker, “Ground control to Major Wilbur, do you read me? We are ready for liftoff, over.”
Major (Molly Moon) Wilbur, with her eyes shut, replied, “Ready.”
Then, slowly, a huge glass window began to lower itself down in front of the rocket.
This was the new part of the show, which Molly had added. Because this glass window was no ordinary glass window—it was an enormous, powerful magnifying glass, which the theater had ordered especially, at great expense, from NASA. And as it slowly dropped in front of Molly, it magnified her so much that she became a giant behind it. The center of the magnifying glass was the strongest part, and when Molly leaned toward it, her shut eyes became eighty times as big.
This looked good, and murmurs of approval filled the theater. The New York audience liked this spectacle, and they relaxed to watch the whole stage grow dark, except for a spotlight shining on Molly’s shut eyes.
“Ten,” the controller’s voice boomed out over the loudspeaker.
“Nine … eight …”
“Engines set,” said Major Wilbur.
“Seven … six … five,” said ground control.
“We have ignition,” said Major Wilbur.
“Four … three … two … one … and we have liftoff.”
The roar of rocket engines filled the theater. Orange lights flashed around the cockpit like fire from the rocket’s engine, and then Molly’s eyes, as huge as the hugest of TV sets, opened. Molly was composed at last, and her magnified eyes swept over the audience like lasers. From the front rows to the standing-room section people were sucked into the hypnotic whirlpool of Molly’s gaze.
Molly felt a surge of something like electricity in the air, which made her tingle from head to toe. It was that fusion feeling, but on a massive scale. Molly stretched her gaze to the back of the theater and then dropped it to the front. Molly felt hugely powerful, she felt sure that everyone had been “hit,” and she knew that the theater doormen were under instruction not to let anyone in. She was safe.
“Just—look—at—me,” she said, in case there was anyone out there who hadn’t looked up yet. “Just—loooook—at—me,” she repeated slowly, her voice like a vocal magnet.
Molly had woven her hypnotic instructions into a song she had composed. She sang it now with no instrumental accompaniment, a plain, haunting tune.
“You will be bowled over—by this—show.
It’ll be so good you—won’t want to—go.
My dancing and singing will—thrill you—to bits,
My jokes will give you—giggling fits.
This blockbuster show was—destined—to be.
The star—of the twenty-first century—is—ME.”
Molly clicked her fingers, and the roar of the rocket launchers filled the air.
“Yes,” said Molly, her whole face now in the center of the magnifying g
lass, “we have LIFTOFF.” The magnifying glass pulled up and away and the real show began.
For two hours the audience was in raptures of pleasure, marveling at Molly’s dancing and singing. She could do ballet, tap dancing, jazz dancing, and break dancing. She leaped effortlessly into the air. She glided! And when she sang, she made her audience go all goose pimply and hair stand up on the back of their necks. She was entrancing.
In reality Molly’s dancing was clumsy and uncoordinated. Her tap dancing was a mess and her jazz dancing heavy-footed and out of time. But Molly was having a lovely time dancing, and she got really involved with the Martians’ battle scene. Her voice was flat and out of tune, but no one cared. The other actors were great and helped her out whenever she forgot her lines, although it didn’t matter whether she forgot her lines or not; the audience loved her whatever she did. And they thought Petula was wonderful too, even when she simply lay on the stage, chewing a stone and looking bored.
Chocolates melted into people’s hands as they forgot to eat them.
When the show ended, the theater erupted with applause, and when Molly came forward to take her bow, the whole audience stood up to cheer and whistle and clap. Anything nice that people had on them they threw at her: money, watches, jewelry, fancy scarves…. It was a show of appreciation that was unlike anything that had ever been seen in New York before. The curtain opened and closed and opened and closed forty times. The audience clapped and clapped and clapped and clapped until their hands were red. And then the curtain came down for the last time.