Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism (12 page)

As the plane wheeled down through low-hanging clouds to John F. Kennedy Airport, Molly pondered her next move. She had £1,910 left of her prize money. She’d spent £5 on Petula’s collar, £15 on her travel basket, £20 on the sunglasses, £50 on the afternoon in
the hotel, £550 on the pendant, and £450 on the airline ticket. Over a thousand pounds. She was amazed how quickly it had gone. The first thing to do was to change her money into dollars. Then she’d have to get a train or a cab to … where in New York Molly wasn’t sure yet. Some hotel. From there, safe and private, she’d be able to plan what to do next.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please put your watches back five hours,” announced the pilot. “The time in New York is eleven o’clock at night. We hope you have enjoyed your flight and look forward to traveling with you again.”

Molly was so nervous and excited that she didn’t feel at all tired. She put on her sunglasses, picked up her knapsack and Petula’s basket, and twenty minutes later was out by a taxi stand, with dollars in her pocket—$2,998, to be precise. There, while Petula was having a pee in the gutter, a cab-stand attendant with a thick Brooklyn accent asked Molly, “Where to?”

“New York.”

“Yeah, little lady, but which part of New York?”

“The center,” Molly said, as confidently as possible.

The woman wrote
Manhattan
on a piece of paper, gave it to a driver of a rusty old yellow cab, and helped Molly and Petula inside. The door slammed, and Molly slid back into the seat. A tinny recorded voice from under
the seat shouted, “Hey you … this is a former mayor of New York. Buckle up … I don’t want to see you in the hospital!”

As Molly did up her seatbelt, another, deeper voice inquired, “Okay, so where to in Manhattan?”

Molly looked up at the solid partition between her and the driver, with a tiny sliding door for money to be passed through. She could see only the back of the driver’s bald head. He glanced at her in his rearview mirror and said, “You’re small to be traveling by yourself this time of night. You know you oughta be careful—this is an unfriendly city if you go to the wrong part of it.”

“I’m older than I look,” Molly replied. “And I’m used to being on my own. And you know what? Nowhere could be more unfriendly than the place I’ve just come from. Now—I want to go to … oh … no … oh, it’s been such a long flight that I’ve forgotten the name of the hotel.” Molly made a convincing act of searching her pockets for a piece of paper.

“I know all the hotels in Manhattan,” boasted the driver. “What’s it like?”

“It’s the grandest, largest hotel—you know the one…. It’s got flags everywhere and gold—dead posh.”

“Oh, you mean the Waldorf?”

“Yeah … that’s the one,” Molly said happily. “The Waldorf.”

“Okay, little lady. Well, hold on tight.”

The cab pulled into traffic. It was the bounciest car Molly had ever been in. She and Petula bobbed up and down as the rusty old vehicle turned onto the highway and headed to the island of Manhattan.

Molly stared out in wonder. Everything was so big. Huge juggernauts thundered down the six-lane road like glaring monsters with scores of lights on their massive fronts. To the left and right suburban houses stretched away into the distance. It was a dark, moonless night, but the highway was a solid river of white headlights and red taillights.

After rolling and bouncing along for half an hour, the driver announced, “Here she comes.” They rounded a corner and suddenly, there, out of the window, was a view of the tallest, brightest, most colossal, space-age city that Molly had ever seen. The buildings were mammoth, like buildings from another planet, and they all stood on an
island.
Petula put her front paws on the window to look out, and Molly’s hands started to sweat as she saw that the way onto the island of Manhattan was over an enormous, glittering bridge. Her mouth dropped open as they drove toward it, and as they began to cross the water, Molly saw how truly big these buildings were. Some had
dozens
of floors and
thousands
of windows with lights still on.

“So many people are still awake!” Molly exclaimed.

“Yeah, din’t ya know?” The driver laughed. “This is the city that never sleeps.”

On the other side of the bridge, the cab drove onto a street that was lined with tall buildings.

“The streets in Manhattan are real simple to follow,” the cab driver explained as he honked at a truck. “They were designed on a grid system, ya know, so it’s easy to navigate. Like Fifty-ninth Street, Sixtieth Street, and so on. Some streets are east of the Park, some are west. The Park’s in the middle. We’re on the east side of the island. Around the East Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties is the nice part where you get all the rich people. Mind you, these days rich people live downtown, too. Yeah, yeah, Manhattan’s real expensive, but the roads are still fulla holes.” The driver swerved suddenly to avoid a big pothole. Finally he pulled up in front of a grand old building.

“This is your stop, lady, and you owe me thirty-five bucks.”

A doorman wearing a brown-and-gold uniform stepped up and opened Molly’s door. Molly paid and thanked the cabdriver, and the yellow car rattled away into the night. She and Petula entered the building and walked uncertainly up a flight of wide marble steps into the hotel lobby, where they stood and stared.

A heavy glistening chandelier hung high above their heads. The floor underneath their feet was done in beautiful mosaic patterns of beige, pink, and green. Small sitting circles of chairs, patterned couches, and coffee tables were dotted about, and behind them was a beautiful grand piano. As Molly walked past a bank of elevators toward a second lobby, she saw her reflection in a mirror and thought how very scruffy she looked in her old clothes. This was the most luxurious, perfumed place she had ever been in.

“Hhh, hmm,” the haughty receptionist coughed, looking down at Molly over two large nostrils. “Can I be of assistance?”

Molly turned and stepped toward the small, smartly dressed man who was standing behind a black glass desk.

“Yes, please. I’d like a room.”

“I’m afraid you’re a little young. And we don’t allow pets.”

Molly was tired, so it took more effort to crank her eyes up to “zapping mode.” But after a moment the receptionist was as impressionable as a piece of squashy dough. He looked at his books. “I’m afraid, madam, all our rooms are full.”

“Full?” Molly said incredulously. “But you must have loads of rooms here.”

“Yes, and all 1,427 are occupied.”

“There isn’t even one available?”

“We have the Royal suite, madam.”

“I’ll take that. How much is it?”

“It’s nine hundred dollars a night, madam.”

“Wha …? And do I pay before?”

“No, madam. You pay your bill when you leave.”

Molly had only $2,963 left. The Royal suite was more than she wanted to spend, but she was too tired to set out on a hotel hunt.

“Oh. Well, I’ll take it. And my dog will stay with me.”

The man gestured for a porter. “Follow me,” the porter said.

They took the elevator to the forty-second floor and followed a plushly carpeted passage to an elegant-looking door. The porter unlocked the door and led Molly and Petula in.

Molly felt as if she had walked into a dream.

The room was spectacular. In fact, because it was a suite, it had
four
huge rooms: a bedroom with cream-colored silk curtains and a giant four-poster bed, a large sitting room with sofas and a low table in it, a kitchen, and a dining room.

“Every room, including the bathroom, has a television and a music system,” explained the porter, opening cupboards and revealing hidden TVs and stereo
equipment. “Here is the minibar, and also here is a list of services we provide, from limousine hire to hair-dressing. The Jacuzzi is easy to operate, and there is a fitness center downstairs on the nineteenth floor. Room service is available around the clock, so if you require anything, please don’t hesitate to call. Thank you, ma’am.” The porter bowed and went.

Molly kicked her shoes off and jumped onto the bed. “Yeee haaa!” she shouted, feeling suddenly very wideawake. Petula scrambled up too. “Isn’t this great, Petula? I mean look at us. Can you
believe
it? Yesterday in gross Hardwick House, and today in the most luxurious hotel room in New York!” Petula barked happily in reply, and Molly jumped off the bed and opened the minibar. After giving Petula a bowl of ice-cold mineral water, she opened the window. Noise blasted into the room. Taxicab horns, horns from delivery vans, the grinding of garbage trucks, sirens from police cars, voices shouting and whistling. The whole city was buzzing with life. Molly had never been anywhere as loud and busy as this. With Petula tucked under her arm, she looked out over the city.

It was midnight but the streets were full of traffic. The city towered about her, a jungle of skyscrapers with insectlike cars and yellow cabs crawling about on its forest floor. Molly wondered how many people lived
here. And for a second she wondered whether, maybe, somewhere out there, among the millions of New Yorkers,
maybe
there was someone related to her. Rocky must be out there somewhere—but where? She hugged Petula. “Where are your family, Petula?” Petula licked Molly’s hand. “Yup, Petula. I guess you and me are family. We’re all we’ve got at the moment.”

Molly gazed down at the bristling city. She supposed that New Yorkers would be as easy to hypnotize as any other people. Her eye trick had worked on the receptionist. With this room costing $900 a night, it was vital that her hypnotic powers work. Of course, she could move to a cheaper hotel, but Molly liked the richness of this place and she wanted to stay here.

Molly shut the window and went to have a bath. She squirted all the mini bottles of bubble bath into it to make it extra bubbly, and when the bubbles were foaming high, she sank into the sweet-smelling water. She clicked on the wall-mounted TV with a remote control. How far this was from the drafty bathroom at Hardwick House, where only recently she had been punished for having a bath more than ten centimeters deep! She laughed out loud.

There were hundreds of television channels. Molly surfed through them happily. There were news programs, talk shows, music programs, fitness programs,
religious programs, and movies.

And ads
all
the time. Molly noticed that some channels had commercials every five minutes with hardly any programming in between. Some ads were repeated over and over again. “Buy this … Buy this … You need this … You really do need this …”

As Molly watched, amazed by the regularity of the commercial breaks, it struck her for the first time that advertising was like a sort of hypnotism. A hypnotism that persuaded people to buy things. A sort of brainwashing. Perhaps if people watched an advertisement that told them “You need this” often enough, eventually they’d believe they did need whatever it was. Then Molly caught her favorite, the Qube ad, and she felt all warm inside. How much closer she was now to being one of those glamorous people on the beach. She started to sing along.

“Qube if you’re cute … Qube if you’re rude … Everyone loves you ‘cause you’re so Qube.”

The blue-eyed man on the TV winked. “I’m sooooo popular—I’ve been Qubed.”

“Not as popular as I’m going to be,” shouted Molly, throwing a wet washcloth at the TV and pressing the Jacuzzi button on the side of the bath. A moment later she was practically blown out of the water. Molly slammed her hand on the button again and the
bubbles stopped. She wasn’t sure about the Jacuzzi. It was like ten monsters farting in her bath all at once. But apart from the Jacuzzi, she certainly felt she could get used to this kind of life. The question was, how should she go about keeping it?

After her bath Molly got into her satin-sheeted four-poster to think. But instead, like Petula, on the end of the bed, she fell instantly asleep.

Nockman was four hours from landing at JFK Airport. In his mind he conjured up a picture of the girl with the book. The girl who, his taxi driver from Briersville had told him, had performed in front of hundreds of local people who had all thought her the most talented and sweet-looking child they had ever seen. Nockman realized with astonishment that the girl had hypnotized them all. He was astounded that a girl as young as she could learn Dr. Logan’s art. She must be exceptionally talented. But his fascination with her was soon replaced with fury. How dare the wretched kid steal his book? He’d soon wipe the smirk off her face.

He ground his teeth. She wasn’t going to escape him. He was on her trail. Even though he hadn’t properly seen what she looked like, he was sure that if he kept his ear to the ground, he’d track her down in New York.
He removed his new spiral-pattern glasses from his pocket and gave them a polish. He’d read enough about hypnotism to know that when someone had the mesmerizing gift, people were powerless under their gaze. But something in the makeup of the spiral on these glasses deflected the effect of hypnotic eyes. Nockman hoped they worked. The only other thing he needed was a voice-scrambling machine, and then he’d be protected from M. Moon’s voice, too.

Stroking his oily mustache, Professor Nockman sat back and wondered what the M stood for. Margaret? Matilda? Mavis? He smiled. Perhaps it was a good thing that this girl had found the hypnotism book. Maybe she was better at it than he could ever hope to be. When he found this M. Moon, maybe all he needed do was control her, which shouldn’t be difficult. After all, she was only a child. And suddenly the ruthless Nockman realized that, far from being his rival, this M. Moon, whoever she was, could be a gift horse in disguise. Why, she was surely the perfect accomplice to help him achieve his ambitions. She could give him a ride to the top.

W
hen Molly opened her eyes the next morning, the hotel room made her jump. The luxury of it was a shock. The cream carpet and heavy silk curtains made her feel as if she was in a chocolate commercial. She tipped herself out of bed, opened the fridge, and took out a Heaven bar, singing the brand song as she ate it.