Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism (23 page)

The Rolls-Royce engine revved, and with a stately lurch they left the Waldorf.

B
efore they left New York, Molly and Rocky had to make one last stop. The Rolls-Royce wove its way down busy avenues until Nockman parked it outside a tall building with a triangular-shaped entrance and the name Sunshine Studios above the doors.

A scruffy man in a dark blue suit hurried down the white marble steps to meet them. He took off his dark glasses and smiled, revealing a golden incisor in his top deck of teeth. “Welcome, welcome,” he said excitedly, “and thank you for your phone call. We are so pleased to have you. I’m the director you spoke to, Alan Beaker.” He thrust his hand out for Molly and Rocky to shake. “Please, follow me.”

Molly, Rocky, and Petula followed the director
inside, along white passages and then into an enormous studio, full of cranes and cameras and people standing about staring at Molly. The new star, Molly Moon.

A gray-haired woman, dressed in a very smart suit, stepped out of the throng. “This,” said Alan Beaker, “is the chairwoman of Qube Incorporated, Dorothy Goldsmidt.”

Dorothy Goldsmidt raised her hand to shake Molly’s. A huge emerald ring flashed on her finger. “How do you do,” she said smoothly and grandly. “It’s
such
a pleasure.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” said Molly. “I think you spoke to my friend Rocky on the phone.” Rocky stepped forward.

“How do you do,” he said.

“It’s a huge pleasure—to meet you, too,” said Dorothy Goldsmidt, only slightly haltingly, “and we are ready—ready for everything.”

Twenty minutes later, Rocky, Molly, and Petula had been brushed up and were all on the studio stage.

“Lights,” shouted Alan Beaker. “Camera roll, and …
action.”

And Molly and Rocky began. It was a simple jingle Rocky had made up, but with Molly’s eyes on full glare, and Rocky’s voice at its most hypnotic, and Petula
looking as sweet as possible, the ad they performed was very, very powerful. It went like this:

The ad finished with Molly and Rocky pointing straight at the cameras. “Cut!” shouted Alan Beaker. “That was fabulous! You two are professionals all the way.”

“Well,” said Molly, smiling at Rocky, “we have been doing ads for years.”

“Yes,” said Dorothy Goldsmidt, “that was wonderful, and we will air it, like you said, every hour, every day. It will be Qube Incorporated’s pleasure to pay for
the TV time. Thank you so much.”

“Oh, no,” said Molly, “thank y
ou.
And so good-bye now. We have to go.”

“Good-bye,” called everyone in the studios, starstuck.

Back in the Rolls-Royce, Rocky said to Molly, “See, brainwashing can be used for good. Feel less guilty now?”

Molly nodded. “I know that ad won’t change the world, but it will do something good, won’t it?”

“Definitely,” agreed Rocky. “Even if only one person is kinder because of it, it was worth it. But you know what? I think thousands of people will see it. You never know how many kind things will be done because of it. Plant a seed and hope it grows.”

T
he Rolls-Royce left the island of Manhattan and rolled on down the highway to John F. Kennedy Airport.

Once there, Nockman parked alongside the international departures entrance, and a porter came to help. He and Nockman loaded Molly’s twelve suitcases onto an airport cart, while Petula hopped into her traveling basket. They all went inside to the check-in desk.

“Thank you,” Molly said to the porter as he heaved the last case onto a conveyor belt. “And if it’s not too much bother, could you keep the car?” She put the Rolls-Royce keys in the tired man’s hand.

“Keep? You mean park it?”

“It’s a present,” said Molly.

The man’s mouth dropped open. “You kidding?”

“These are its papers.” Molly took a crumpled envelope out of her jeans pocket. “If I just put your name here, it’s all yours. What’s your name?”

“Louis Rochetta. You’re joking, though, right? Hey, am I on some sort of game show?” The man looked about for a hidden camera.

“Nope,” said Molly, writing the porter’s name on the car registration. “There you go, Mr. Rochetta. Take it easy now.”

Mr. Rochetta was too stunned to say anything but “Th … th…”

“Don’t mention it,” said Molly, smiling. “Goodbye.” She’d always wanted to give someone a jackpot surprise like that. Then she turned to talk to Rocky, who’d sorted out the tickets. Fifteen minutes later Molly was hypnotizing the airport staff once more, to get Petula unnoticed past the passport officers and all the X-ray machines.

Rocky and Molly went shopping in the duty-free mall. They had to visit a bath shop, a candy shop, an electronics shop, and a toy shop. After a mammoth spree their plane was ready to board. Staggering under all the weight of their purchases and carrying Petula’s basket, they made their way to gate twenty.

Nockman was making his way to the gate as instructed. He felt quite peculiar. He knew who he was, and exactly what his life had been like so far. However, he didn’t know how he’d come to be a servant to Mr. Gat Basket and Miss Hair Dryer. Nor did he know exactly why he liked them so much. He still hated other people. At gate twenty, where everyone was lining up to get on the plane, he presented his passport and ticket to one of the ground crew. “Good evening,” she said politely.

Nockman was halfway through an insincere smile when his mind suddenly filled with memories of a teenage girl he’d once known who looked like the woman. Nockman recalled how rude he’d been to her. And, without meaning to, he started to babble. “You are ugly just like her,” he found himself saying. “Yes eendeed, eet ees true. You look like a constipated frog. And zis ees vat I alvays tell her, too. And I alvays bloow ze blubber face noise.” At this point Nockman found his mouth suddenly filling with air, and before he could stop it, a very loud, bubbly raspberry blew its way out of his mouth. And if that hadn’t been enough, Nockman began to remember his old parakeet, Fluff, whom Mr. Snuff had killed, and he began to howl.
“Aaaaaeeeeouuuuooo!”

The woman looked appalled. She crossed her arms
and narrowed her eyes. “Sir, we have a policy against rude passengers. If you are rude to staff or other passengers, you will be barred from flying.”

Nockman was amazed at himself. He couldn’t understand how that had happened. Maybe he was ill. And all those nasty memories gave him the creeps.

“I’m zo zorry. Please accept my apologies. Eet vas a joke.”

“Strange sense of humor,” said the woman. But uncrossing her arms, she let him through.

Nockman stumbled down the jetway toward the plane door. He tripped on his shoelace and wondered again what had come over him. As he lumbered along, he considered how strange that encounter had been. He’d felt like he was a machine but that someone else had the remote controls. Nockman shuddered again as he thought of his poor parakeet, and he squirmed as he recollected the teenage girl he’d taunted so meanly. He couldn’t understand why all these memories had just spewed up in his head. He didn’t like it.

“Er, hello, Miss Hair Dryer and Mr. Cat Basket, I’m back.”

“Oh, hello,” said Molly and Rocky, looking up from their first-class seats at the green-suited Nockman.
Nockman looked at them both and seemed to pale, as if he’d seen a ghost.

“Are you all right?” Rocky asked.

All of a sudden Nockman felt peculiar again. This time he found himself diving down on the aisle, rolling over onto his back, and waving his legs and arms in the air. And, as before, his mouth opened of its own accord.

“Voooof, voooof, aaarf, aaaarf,
” he barked as his hat fell off. Then,
“OOOoooooOOOooOOoooowwvooof,”
he howled, as again, he thought of his poor dead parakeet.

Other people on the plane looked very concerned, and a flight attendant came up to see what the problem was.

“You can stop now,” commanded Molly. Then she beamed her eyes at the flight attendant. “It’s all right. He just needs his medicine. Don’t worry about it, please.”

Nockman got up, all out of breath. That had been a fit. He
must
be sick. Again, out of the blue, he’d been crying about his pet parakeet and how horrid Mr. Snuff had been.

And now, as he made his way to his seat, another feeling made his eyes water. He felt pity for a dog he had once been unkind to; a dog not dissimilar to Miss Hair Dryer’s. Nockman realized that he was no better
than Mr. Snuff. As he buckled his belt, he wondered how he could have been so blind. As a boy he hadn’t been blind. He’d known how much his parakeet had suffered, and he’d cried for her. For nights he’d cried. And yet, as an adult, he’d been cruel to a dog. He’d left the animal alone, cold, and hungry, in a dark, dirty room. The S for Simon, he thought, should stand for Snuff. Snuff Nockman. Nockman hung his head, and an emotion that hadn’t troubled him for years now throttled him. Shame.

Nockman looked out the airplane window and thought. He’d been unkind to people, too. He’d never let other people’s feelings bother him. He’d persuaded himself that they didn’t matter. But now … it was very strange, and he didn’t know how, but today he knew he couldn’t ignore people’s feelings anymore.

More memories of horrid things he had done began to fill his mind. One by one, the ghosts of his bad deeds introduced themselves to him. As the plane took off, he felt heavy in a way that was entirely new to him. His spirit was lagging behind him, low and sad and drenched with guilt.

W
hen it was time for supper on the plane, Nockman found himself only wanting to eat fruit. Then he went to sleep. Rocky and Molly, on the other hand, stayed wide-awake, making the most of the first-class menu.

“I wonder what the rest of the plane are having,” said Molly brightly, biting into a ketchup sandwich.

“Meat in congealed fat, followed by fruit that tastes of cardboard?” suggested Rocky, biting into a crispy pancake that oozed lemony syrup. “That’s what the Alabasters and I had on the way here.”

“You know what?” Molly said, looking up from her in-flight magazine. “It says here that you can get a neck massage in first class.”

“Who by?”

“I dunno. The captain?”

This made them both giggle, and Rocky got quite a lot of his syrupy pancake on the magazine.

“Mmmnnn, first class is gggrrrreat. Luxury!” Molly added, taking a slurp of concentrated orange squash. “But you know what, Rock? It’s going to be difficult coming back down to earth when we land.”

“Why? Hasn’t the plane got wheels?”

They started laughing again.

“Pathetic joke …” said Molly, her eyes watering as she recovered. “No, what I mean is …” She glanced at Rocky. “And don’t make me laugh, Rocky, because I’m about to say something serious.”

“Okay.”

“What I mean is, it’ll be difficult to not use our hypnotism anymore when we’re back. I mean, think of all the times you’ve used it over the last few weeks. It’s so
useful
. I know we agreed we should make our way honestly from now on, but what if, let’s say, you saw an old man crying on the street because his wife had died, and because he was lonely…. Wouldn’t you want to hypnotize him to not feel quite so sad? Hypnotize him to join the old peoples’ party club, or something? Or let’s say you saw a kid crying because she’d got a bad report card, and on the same day her gerbil had been eaten by a cat and her
friend had gone to the hospital with a terrible disease and …”

“Molly,” interrupted Rocky, “stop it. We agreed.”

“Yes, but I just think it’s going to be difficult to resist the temptation.”

“True. It will be. But we have to resist, because if we start using it for good deeds, soon we’ll be doing useful deeds, and before we know it, we’ll be using it again every time we don’t get our way. And then we’ll be living unreal lives again.”

“Okay, you’re right,” said Molly glumly, turning her head to look out of the window. Outside, the night sky was full of stars, and 35,000 feet beneath them the Atlantic Ocean’s tides moved with the moon. Molly stared out, finding it difficult to believe that she would never hypnotize anyone again. It struck her that it would be hours before they landed, however. It wouldn’t be breaking the rule if she used her powers on the plane.

Rocky was watching a music video. Molly got up and stretched. Then she went for a little walk.

Molly had quite a few conversations over the next two hours.

She met a man by the toilets who was shaking, because he hated flying. Molly persuaded him that
from now on he would love it. She talked to an exhausted mother who was up holding a child who wouldn’t sleep. After ten minutes they were back in their seats, both completely conked out. She spoke to a weepy flight attendant who’d just broken up with her boyfriend, and Molly mended her broken heart. Then she helped three kids who hated school, she turned a grumpy old codger into a mild old man, and she fixed a small boy so that he would love eating green vegetables, especially spinach.

Molly sat down in her seat feeling very satisfied, and a bit like a fairy godmother.

The plane touched down at six o’clock in the morning.

“Remember what we agreed,” said Rocky, walking down the jetway.

“Here goes,” said Molly, stepping into the terminal.

Nockman collected their mass of luggage from the baggage carousel. Then Molly and Rocky decided that it would be cool to travel back to Hardwick House in style. So they chartered a helicopter.

The journey in the helicopter took twenty minutes. Molly looked out, seeing the coastline in the distance and then, from afar, the town of Briersville. As the pilot flew closer, she pointed out the hill where
Hardwick House was. Approaching the dilapidated, unkempt building, Molly was reminded of how she used to shut her eyes and picture flying away from Hardwick House into space.

Very soon, they were hovering directly above the grounds of the building, and the pilot began to bring the helicopter down. He landed just outside the orphanage, on a small area of flat ground, the wind from his propellers whipping up the bushes and thistles and grass.

“Here you are,” he shouted.

Molly looked out expectantly, to see who would emerge from the building first, but no one came out.

“I suppose no one’s up yet,” said Rocky. “I mean, it is early. At least it shows Hazel’s not strict about getting up.”

“The place looks as crumbly as ever,” said Molly. They jumped out. While Petula sniffed enthusiastically about the frosty drive, Nockman unloaded the helicopter. Once that was done, the pilot wished them all good luck. With a thumbs-up signal he was off. In a minute the machine was only a blot in the sky.

Molly and Rocky turned to look at Hardwick House. A small face dodged from one of the windows.

“Someone’s up.”

“Something’s
up,” said Molly. “It’s all a bit too quiet round here.” She went to ring the front doorbell, but then she noticed that the splintered door was already open.