by Georgia Byng
“So, Molly, orphan Molly, how would you feel if I told you that I know who your mother and father are?”
From behind a chair near the window, Molly replied, “I’d say the news was out of date. You’re too late, Logan. I know … I know that you are my mother and I know that Cell is my father, and don’t worry, I’ve already disowned you.”
Molly was fighting for her life. Her backbone felt cold as an icicle. As if it might snap. The chill of the crystal against her neck bored into her skin, as if it was freezing her very soul. Molly thought how much she hated Lucy Logan. She couldn’t believe a person could be so crazy, so bad. But what made it all a thousand times worse was that the foul human being brandishing the pistol was Molly’s flesh and blood. All Molly’s life she’d wanted to know who her mother was. She’d dreamed of a kind, intelligent, funny person. The reality was this megalomaniac killer. Molly hated her for ruining her dreams. She would not let Logan end her life, too. But she was so cold … so very cold … and so tired.
Molly shut her eyes. Behind the lids, she saw herself in the room with Lucy. Then, as was so natural to her, she imagined herself shooting away from her body like a rocket into space. In a millisecond she was there.
This time, space was different. Molly saw the whole world, still, below her. She saw the planets around her stopped in their orbits, the stars in the solar systems halted for a moment in time.
Molly sensed space around her stretching forever, for an eternity. In this frozen vastness, she felt herself tinier than tiny, like a speck of dust, smaller than that. She felt herself so small that she was practically nothing. She had found inside herself the nanu of small.
And yet …
Molly’s feelings of smallness switched. Suddenly Molly was impressed by how big she was. Because of her, the universe was held up. Because of her, all the elements—earth, air, fire, and water—were stilled. Molly felt small, then very, very big, and again, nanu small and gigantically big. Molly felt completely at one with the universe, and an enormous feeling of love for everything in it filled her.
She sensed, far, far below her, Lucy Logan’s movement on the world. Then the world seemed to make an offering to Molly—an idea—the idea of the North Pole. Ice, she realized, didn’t feel cold. If she zoned into the essence of ice, perhaps then she too wouldn’t feel cold anymore. She let her mind relax, she let her body relax into the ice. And suddenly Molly didn’t feel cold at all. The crystal round her neck felt warm. Molly knew that she could stop time again.
With her eyes shut, and as easily as if she was blowing out a candle, Molly stopped time for the eighteenth time. Now, with every breath she took, she drew time to a standstill. For the nineteenth time, breathe out, breathe in. For the twentieth time, breathe out, breathe in … for the twenty-first time.
Molly felt no more resistance. Molly was the only moving thing in the universe. Life everywhere was still. Molly felt as alone as if she was dead, except she wasn’t dead, she was alive. For a second she wondered whether she was alone. Was she the only conscious creature in the realms of space and time? Molly felt that although everywhere was still, the essence of life, the force inside and outside her, was watching her. And the mysterious force seemed to be thanking her.
Molly opened her eyes. Now, instead of being misty and cold, the room was full of color. It was clear and still. And Lucy Logan was frozen with a look of hatred on her face.
Molly walked around the room and carefully picked each frozen bullet from its hovering position. She threw them all out of the window. Then she took the gun out of Lucy Logan’s hand and checked her clothes for any more weapons. And she took the crystal from Lucy’s neck.
Satisfied that her enemy was no longer armed, Molly brought her eyes up to their hypnotic peak. She positioned herself so that Logan’s eyes were looking straight into hers. Then, touching her shoulder, she let movement flow into her again.
If Lucy Logan had any energy left to combat Molly’s, it was sapped in a second. Before she even became conscious of being alert, before she realized that she had frozen and started moving again, Molly’s eyes had overpowered hers.
Lucy Logan was hypnotized.
Forty
“You are now completely under my power,” said Molly. “Is that understood?”
Lucy Logan nodded, and Molly looked at her face, trying to see whether there was any likeness between herself and this horrible creature. Logan’s jaw was much heavier and her face was much bonier than Molly had remembered. Her body was wiry. Molly hoped this wasn’t how she would turn out when she grew up.
“From now on,” she declared, “you will accept that all the plans that you had before this meeting will never be carried out. You now have everything you need. You will not remember how to hypnotize anyone or anything. You will not remember how to stop the world. When you come out of this trance, you will behave as nicely as …” Molly tried to think of something that was always sweet-tempered. “… as a lamb.” Molly paused. The next step would be essential for someone as dangerous as Lucy Logan. “And these instructions will be locked inside you forever by some words that you won’t remember. These words will be …” Molly glanced at the coffee table. “Moon’s Marshmallows.” Then she added, “And when I clap my hands, you will wake up.”
Molly let go of Lucy’s shoulder, and immediately the librarian froze again. At last, she stood still with her arms by her side and she relaxed. She let the cold fusion feeling flow out of her fingertips, out of her body. The layers of freeze that she had forced onto time melted, until the time stop that had captured Rocky and Sinclair and Petula released them and the whole world, too. Molly collapsed on the sofa.
Rocky and Sinclair took a second to register where everyone was.
“It’s okay,” said Molly. “She didn’t shoot any of us. And she’s safe now.”
Logan smiled benignly at them all and said, “Baa, baaaaa, baaaaaaaaa.”
Rocky threw a cushion up in the air.
“Whooooa, Molly, you’ve done it!”
Molly laid her head on the back of the sofa. “Yup, I sure have. But wow, that was tiring.”
Sinclair picked up Logan’s silver pistol from the table and examined it. Then he took it away to lock it in a cupboard.
Rocky sat next to Molly and put his hand on her arm.
“Thanks, Molly,” he said.
Primo began to knock on the bedroom door.
“Is that Lucy?” he said. “What’s going on out there?”
“We can let him out now,” said Molly. Rocky opened the door.
“Is Lucy Logan here?” Primo said, stepping out. “Where is she?” He glanced at Lucy and then all round the room. “Where?”
Molly looked at the woman who had hypnotized Cell for all these years. Obviously he hadn’t seen her for so long that he didn’t recognize her.
“There she is,” said Molly. “She’s got older.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Primo Cell. “This isn’t Lucy. This person is … an imposter.” And marching over to her, he grabbed her by the arm.
“Who are you? Where is the real Lucy Logan?” he demanded aggressively.
In a lamb’s voice, the person baaed, “She’s at Briersville Park.”
Molly was stunned. She studied the woman in front of her, and it was suddenly completely clear that this wasn’t the Lucy Logan Molly knew at all. This person bore a very strong resemblance to her, but her features were much rougher. Her nose was bigger. Her build was wirier. Molly had thought Lucy had looked uglier than the kind woman she had met in the library, but she hadn’t questioned it. Now, as she scanned this face and body, it was obvious that they weren’t Lucy’s. And so this person was not her mother.
“Is the real Lucy safe?” Molly asked.
“Yes, she’s locked up nice and safe.”
“And so who are you?”
“I,” said the person sweetly, and then, as if finding the words difficult to utter, stated, “I am C-Corn … elius Logan.”
“C-Cornelius? But—but that’s a man’s name,” Molly stammered.
“Yes, that is true.” The person’s voice suddenly dropped to a low, male tone. “Of course it is a ram’s name. I am a ram.”
Forty-one
“A what?” asked Rocky, his eyebrows nearly shooting off his forehead. “You’re kidding.
Cornelius Logan nodded. “It’s true. I am a ram,” he said, and he began to skip around the room, as if telling everyone was a great relief to him. “Baaaa,” he bleated as he trotted past the panoramic window seat. Petula growled at him.
“A man? But why?”
“Because that was how I was when I was born,” declared Cornelius Logan, cantering around the sofa.
“Cornelius Logan!” said Primo Cell. “I haven’t heard that name in years.” He turned to the others. “He’s Lucy Logan’s twin brother. That’s why he looks like her—like a badly drawn version of Lucy.”
Everyone stared at the strange creature who now pawed at the ground with an imaginary hoof. His Lucy Logan disguise, which for the last twenty minutes had convinced them—the hair in a bun, the sensible librarian’s skirt, and the sweater set and pearls—was now starting to come apart. As he shook his head, his wig slipped sideways. Then, as he began galloping along the edge of the lap pool, he hitched up his wet skirt and everyone saw that the legs underneath were hairy and sinewy and not female legs at all. When he tore off his cardigan, to reveal a short-sleeved sweater, he also uncovered his muscly arms.
Molly’s mind zoomed back to that afternoon in March—to Cornelius dressed as Lucy Logan in the Briersville cottage.
Suddenly she saw how brilliantly this man had fooled her. The plaster cast on his leg and the bandages had been a clever distraction. Cornelius had known that children are taught not to stare at anyone with something wrong with them. And, of course, Molly hadn’t wanted to stare at his injured face. Instead, she’d looked at the pink nail-polished toenails sticking out of the end of his plaster cast, and she’d been duped. Molly thought hard. There must have been some clue. Suddenly she remembered how low Cornelius’s voice had been that night she’d called him from the hotel—she’d caught him unawares.
“Do you normally wear men’s clothes?” she asked him.
“Of course I do. Do you think I like dressing as a woman?” brayed Cornelius. “Do you think I liked putting on that stupid high voice?” He laughed with mad relief. “Baa baaaaaah! I had to become Lucy, I had to do it to get Molly Moon out here to investigate Cell. It was very necessary to investigate Cell, you see. He was behaving so oddly—not being able to hypnotize Davina—and then there was the kidnaping that I never authorized. And, of course, I had to stay behind to weaken Lucy again.” Cornelius pawed the ground.
“Again? What do you mean?”
“The real Lucy Logan,” explained Cornelius with a bleat, “my sister Lucy, was under my power for years. For eleven and a half years. The same time as Cell. I had Cell and her under my power. It was genius. It was wonderful. I was planning to send Lucy out to marry him. She was going to be the president’s wife. And I, Cornelius, would have controlled them both. Baaaaha ha ha.”
At this point, Primo Cell sat down. He had turned a pale shade of olive green. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he said. And with that, he lurched toward Sinclair’s bathroom.
“Poor man,” said Rocky.
“This must all be a horrible shock for him,” said Molly.
Cornelius, oblivious of Cell’s troubles, continued, “All was going well—until Lucy met that Molly Moon in the library.”
Molly thought of their first ever meeting. “What happened then?” she demanded.
“Well, something that I had not counted on,” brayed Cornelius. “Even though I’d hypnotized—her to forget—her daughter, and even though I’d done a—permanent hypnosis on Lucy, when she—met her daughter, Molly Moon, and talked to her, the—lockedin hypnosis for some reason started to unlock itself. Can you imaha ha ha gine?”
Molly felt a lump in her throat.
“As soon as she remembered the bah bah baby,” said Cornelius, “Lucy challenged me—which was foolish—of her—as I, of course, was in a position to overpower her. She—always was led by her heart. Such a stupid woman. She should—have used her head.”
“What did you do with her and when was that?” asked Molly.
“I locked her in a room—at Briersville Park. That was at the beginning of January. Ever since then—I’ve been trying—to weaken her—and then hypnotize her again so that—my plans could be put—back on track. Do you think I wanted to wear—women’s clothes—forever?” Cornelius laughed madly and ripped at his pearls. The string broke, and they flew all over the floor like spilled beans. “I should never—have let that—bah, Molly Moon—find the hypnotism book.”
“Why did you let her find it?”
“Because I was impatient to see—what her power as a hypnotist—was. I put her in that orphanage all those years ago—bah—so that she wouldn’t grow up—normally. I wanted her—hard. I waited eleven years until—baaaah—her powers would be starting to grow. Then I let her find the book. Baaaah. What—a fool I was. She was too like—her mother to—ever be of—use to me. And, of course, she was more powerful than me—I was a twin—so my powers were diluted with my—sister’s, but Molly Moon’s were concentrated. How blind I was—I never should have used her to check on—Cell. I never thought her powers would be so strong—so soon.” Violently Cornelius began pulling at his sweater.
“I think you’d better give him something to wear,” Molly said to Sinclair. “He’s so eager to get back to his real self that he’ll have nothing on in a minute.” Indeed, Cornelius Logan had already peeled off his sweater to reveal a strange bodysuit underneath. It was stuffed to make him look as if he had breasts.
“Incredible!” said Rocky. “He didn’t half go to town on his disguise.”
“He had to,” said Sinclair, who was by now laughing with relief. “Here, Cornelius, go into my room and help yourself to some of my clothes. There’s a blue tracksuit hanging up in the wardrobe that will fit you.”
Cornelius made a beeline for Sinclair’s bedroom. As he disappeared, Molly looked at Rocky and both of them started to laugh. The sight of Cornelius charging round the room taking his clothes off had been very unexpected and a bit shocking, but now it was so funny, they couldn’t stop giggling.
After five minutes they were still in stitches.
“It’s not that funny,” said Sinclair. But Molly and Rocky didn’t even hear him, and when Cornelius came out dressed in a tracksuit with his wig and makeup still on and began to nibble at a potted fern by the TV set, they started laughing all over again.
Finally they got a grip on themselves.
“Phew,” said Molly. “I mean, for a while I thought that guy was my mother.”
“Yeah, it was bad news,” Rocky said. “At least this way, he’s only your uncle.” And they began giggling again.
Their hysteria was really their way of letting off a lot of steam. Ever since they’d arrived in Los Angeles, Molly and Rocky had been under pressure. It was really good to feel free at last.
When they’d got their laughter out of their systems, Molly went to the kitchen and fixed herself a ketchup sandwich and half a glass of concentrated grenadine. Rocky made himself a potato-chip sandwich and poured himself a Qube. When they came back, Sinclair was questioning Cornelius, and relaxing on the sofa, they listened to the truth as it tumbled from Cornelius’s lipstick-stained mouth.
Cornelius Logan had gotten into the lap pool from the road that ran under Sinclair’s aqueduct. He stopped the world in order to position a truck so that it was the perfect platform from which to climb up. That small question dealt with, Sinclair demanded answers to much bigger questions.
Although the real Lucy Logan had lived in the Briersville cottage, from where, in her hypnotized state, she’d done research work for Cornelius, he lived in Briersville Park, an
enormous stately home outside the town. From there, he’d masterminded his operations. He’d spent years laying the foundations of his power, so that in many other countries he already controlled the heads of police, the heads of armies, the editors of newspapers, and the owners of TV stations.
But the hub of his ingenious strategy was in America. Cornelius planned that Primo Cell, his hypnotized president, would marry the quiet, unassuming librarian, the hypnotized Lucy Logan. As soon as she had moved into the White House as first lady, then he, Cornelius, would move in too. From that moment on, Cornelius would have traveled the world with his twin sister and her husband, President Cell.
“We would have been—an invincible—baaaah—threesome. I would have been supremely powerful. Other countries would have, bahhh, bound themselves to—America, and one day—it would have been—re—bah—named Logania.”
They heard how Cornelius had been insanely jealous of his twin. Indeed, when, all those years ago, Lucy Logan had been expecting a baby, Cornelius had been so jealous of her happiness that he’d hypnotized her future husband, the young American Primo Cell, and after Lucy had given birth to the baby, he’d taken advantage of her exhausted mind and hypnotized her, too.
He’d got rid of the baby girl, putting her in an old marshmallow box and leaving her on the doorstep of Hardwick House orphanage. And that was how it all started.
When he’d finished his story, Cornelius’s eyes were fluttering, exhausted, and his head kept lolling on his shoulders.
“I was never any good with people, bahhhh.”
Molly was sick of hearing his voice. She loathed this cruel person who had shaped her whole life.