Molly Moon & the Monster Music (14 page)

Did the coin repel everyone? Molly simply had to know. She called room service.

“Send someone to collect my lunch tray,” she demanded rudely. Putting the phone down, she placed the gold coin on the tray that was to be collected.

Ten minutes later a waiter arrived.

Molly pointed at the tray. “There,” she said.

The waiter came in to pick the tray up and spotted the coin. Naturally he reached down to pick it up.

“I sink zis is yo—AAAAAAAAAAAARRRGHH!”

Molly was pleased.

“Is zis some sort of joke-shop trick?” the man asked.

Molly shook her head. “No,” she said. She had enjoyed seeing the waiter's pain. “Don't be silly. Pick it up and give it to me.”

The odd thing was that this time when the waiter touched the coin, nothing happened. Before Molly knew it, her precious coin was in his hands and,
what was more, a sly look of interest had crossed his face.

“Give it to me, please,” Molly said.

Reluctantly the waiter passed her the coin.

“Thank you.” Molly tried not to snatch the coin back.

The waiter's eyes lingered on the coin. Molly slipped it into her pocket. That had been a mistake, she realized. It had taught her that if given permission by her, someone could take the coin. She vowed never to invite anyone to take it ever again.

She would hypnotize the waiter to wipe all memories of the coin from his brain.

“I think I've got something in my eye. Could you take a look?”

The man frowned, then nodded. He peered into Molly's eyes. “Which one?”

Molly switched her eyes on.

“Which one?” the waiter asked again.

Molly stared at him. Oddly, nothing happened.

“Er, the right one,” Molly replied. As he studied her eye, Molly focused her mind as she had done countless times before, and really concentrating, she summoned up all the hypnotic strength she could muster to send a pupil-locking stare into the waiter's eyes. This time it was Molly's turn to be shocked.
Absolutely nothing happened. Molly was stunned.

“Hmm, actually it seems to have gone,” she said. Thinking quickly, she added, “By the way, would you like me to play you something?”

The man looked delighted. “Wow! Wow, yes, zat would be amazing, Miss Moon!”

Molly fetched her guitar. If her traditional mode of hypnotism didn't work, she'd have to use her musical hypnotism. She would mesmerize the waiter so completely that his desire for the coin would be overshadowed.

As she played, and watched the man's love-struck face, she was infuriated by how inconvenient it was that her hypnotism hadn't worked. She recalled the last time she'd used her eyes. It had been on Mr. Proila. They had struggled to work then, too, only strong enough to charm him. It was as if they had gradually been switching themselves off. Perhaps she was working too hard. Perhaps tiredness was to blame.

“My music will be all you remember about me,” she said. “You can go now.”

When the waiter had left, Molly picked up her phone. “I'm ready to go to Madrid now, Miss Sny. Arrange it.”

Gerry craned his neck to watch a plane flying over their small hovel. Seven nights had passed since they'd been caught, and with every day they had become more miserable.

“Look where we are, Petula! All shut up and forgotten about. It's like we're going to live in this 'orrible room for years and years and maybe we'll get out of here when Rocky an' me are wrinkly old men. You'll be dead, 'cos dogs don't live as long as people. An' where will we bury you? Maybe we'll die 'ere, too.” Gerry shivered. “Wish they'd bring us another blanket.” He paused. “I wonder where Molly is.”

Just as he said this, Gerry noticed a small mouse pop its head out of a tiny hole in the corner of the room.

“Pssst. Look, Rocky!” he whispered.

They all sat very still and watched as the mouse disappeared again.

Rocky took the spoon that he had eaten his lunch with and knelt down. Nervously he began to scrape at the bottom of the wall.

To his delight, it crumbled. Gerry grabbed his spoon and the two of them set about frantically scraping and digging.

For the rest of the day the boys worked. By late
that night they had made a hole big enough to squeeze through.

Petula followed them. They were all out.

To their left was the sea, to the right a road, and there, a little way along it, beside a bus stop, was a phone box. Luckily Gerry remembered Toka's phone number from when the Japanese boy had given it to him in Quito and Rocky had a few yen in his pocket.

“Toka, it's Gerry,” he blurted out.

“Gerry? Gerry, where are you? Are you OK?” came Toka's voice over the phone. “I'm coming to get you.”
Beep beep beep
went the telephone line, signaling that the money was about to run out. “Where are you?”

“Umm, I don't know, in a phone box.”

“Good, don't worry. I track number. I come to get you. Wait there. Don't worr—” The line went dead.

Gerry, Rocky, and Petula hid behind some rocks where they could see the road but not be seen, and they waited. Every minute felt like ten for they were convinced that their escape would be discovered.

In the early hours of the morning a van drove quietly into the fishing village. It had a picture of a sumo wrestler with some Japanese writing on its side.
Toka jumped out of it and Gerry, Rocky, and Petula rushed out to greet him. He helped them into the van. The old grandmother sat in the backseat. She hugged the boys and her eyes were brimming with tears. The driver, her old friend who was the master of the sumo academy, was at the wheel. He turned around and winked at Petula, then put his foot on the accelerator.

“Thank you. Thank you,” Gerry and Rocky said repeatedly. They'd never been so grateful in their lives.

M
r. Proila stood in his penthouse apartment in Tokyo, a glass in his hand. A large screen rose up out of a sideboard at the end of the room. He sat down in front of it and took a sip of vodka.

Moments later a black-and-white view of a sitting room came up on the screen. A view that was taken by a concealed camera in one corner of the ceiling.

Mr. Proila watched the screen for a while. Nothing happened. He picked up the controls and began to stab at them. The film on the screen skipped forward. A girl now walked into the room very fast. Quickly she shut the door and leaned against it. Then she put her hand in the air as if celebrating something. It was Molly. Mr. Proila jabbed at the controls and slowed the speed. Molly seemed to be talking to herself. Mr. Proila read her lips.

“Good, good. You were brilliant . . . of course,”
Molly was saying.

He watched as Molly admired herself in the mirror. “Boring,” Mr. Proila said. “A prima donna loving herself.”

He fast-forwarded the film again. Molly took off her necklace and tweaked her hair. She took something from her pocket and stroked it for a bit, talking to herself all the while.

“Get yourself some company!” Mr. Proila said. “You'll go crazy if you talk to yourself so much.” He speeded ahead to the end of the film. “OK, so that was Moscow. Let's see if Rome tells me any more about you.”

Again a hotel room appeared on the screen, this time filmed from a side angle. Molly came in, danced around a bit and then once again admired her jewelry. When Mr. Proila slowed the film down, Molly was once again talking to the item.

“Between us we can do this,” she was saying. “Working together, I am brilliant!”

“Now you're a split personality, are you?” Mr. Proila said disgustedly. “Stars, they're all the same—self-obsessed.”

He fast-forwarded to Paris. Everything was very similar—too similar. Mr. Proila was beginning to find the whole business tedious. He was about to
whizz to the end of the footage in New York when something on the flickering screen caught his eye. He slowed the film right down.

Yet again Molly was talking to herself, but now Mr. Proila saw that the shiny object between her fingers wasn't a piece of jewelry at all—it was a coin. A coin that he recognized. The coin she had had at the cockfight. Molly was rolling the coin through her knuckles, tossing it in the air, and talking to it.

“OK,” she was saying, “I'll do that. And what about tomorrow? Shall I do a long show?” Molly flipped the coin again and smacked it onto the back of her hand. “Heads! Good. OK, I'll do it. Thank you for helping me. I adore you.” Mr. Proila shrugged. So she was superstitious and used her coin to help her to decide what to do. He was about to press the Off button when he saw some extraordinary words come from Molly's mouth.

“With the music we make together,” she was saying, “nothing can stop us. We'll control every single person on this planet. Except hairy hermits in mountain caves who don't listen to music, but who cares whether they are hypnotized or not!”

Mr. Proila pressed Pause and stared, stunned, at the screen. “I don't believe it! It can't be true.” He rubbed his eyes. He rewound the tape and watched
the footage again.

“. . . except hairy hermits in mountain caves who don't listen to music, but who cares whether they are hypnotized or not!”

Mr. Proila watched as Molly carefully put the coin away in her pocket. He knew he was on to something.

Pouring himself another drink, he rewound the tape right back to the beginning. Now he meticulously began to study the film.

In Moscow, he saw that Molly was stroking the coin. In Rome, she congratulated the coin and Mr. Proila watched as she tried the coin in different purses. “No, that doesn't suit you,” she was saying. “This one's too leathery. None of them is good enough for you, you perfect thing.”

In Paris, Mr. Proila now saw that she was talking to the coin again, not to herself. In Madrid, Mr. Proila lip-read as Molly spoke to the coin more desperately.

“I mustn't let anyone find you,” she was saying. “You're mine—mine alone. You know I'm your mistress, don't you? You'd electrocute anyone who touched you, wouldn't you? Like the Japanese granny. Stupid woman. She shouldn't have touched you. She deserved to be burned. She won't try to
steal you again. You can only belong to someone else if I give you to them, or if I lose you, can't you? And I'll never do either of those things—so we're together forever and forever!” Molly hugged the coin to her cheek and shut her eyes.

Mr. Proila's eyes widened as he watched. To start with, he kept saying, “Weird, just weird!” He wondered whether the vodka was making him imagine things. But the more he watched, the more he found himself facing an undeniable truth. Molly believed that the coin she carried helped her make hypnotic music.

Now Mr. Proila saw that Molly's behavior was paranoid and nervous. She was sitting scared in her room, glancing this way and that as though expecting an invisible attack.

“That coin is getting to you, li'l girl.” Mr. Proila chuckled. “Looks as if you should let someone else look after it.” He switched the monitor off.

As the screen dropped back into its concealed home, he tipped the last of the vodka into his mouth.

“The question is, how do I get you to part with it?”

A
few days later a black jet landed in Tokyo Haneda Airport. The sleek aircraft taxied off the runway to a special hangar, where Molly disembarked. A white Bentley awaited her. Molly climbed inside, with Miss Sny, and was whisked away.

Fans lined the road from the airport. Molly ignored them.

“So, Miss Sny. I expect sales of my CD have done well this week?”

“Oh yes, Miss Moon.”

“And my bank account is filling up even more?”

“Yes, it's b-burgeoning, Miss Moon.”

“‘Burgeoning'? Why are you trying to use fancy
words, Miss Sny? They don't suit you. You're not that clever. Burge-what-ing? What does that even mean?”

Miss Sny stuttered nervously. “B-burgeoning—it means overflowing with—”

“Burgeoning—yes, I like that word. It suits me down to the ground. I'll use it from now on.” Molly pointed a silver fingernail sharply at Miss Sny. “But you, Miss Sny, are never to use that word again. Got that?”

“No, Miss Moon, I mean, yes, Miss Moon. I wouldn't dream of it.”

By the time Molly got back to the Pea-pod Building, she was very short-tempered. “So annoying not to have my own place,” she grumbled as they stepped into the elevator. “Find me a property, Sny. Suppose I'll have to talk to those Japanese twits again.”

“Er, oh. Sorry, sorry. I'm so sorry,” Miss Sny apologized. “The boys are working late in the studio, Miss Moon, so they won't be there. But I hear that someone is waiting for you—a Mr. Scarlet.”

Molly's eyebrows arched. “Oh, him. I'll go up alone.”

“Yes, Miss Moon.”

When Molly stepped into the apartment, Rocky was looking out of the window at the glittering night view of Tokyo.

On hearing the door close, he turned. His face lit up. He rushed toward Molly and threw his arms around her, giving her a massive bear hug. Molly, cold as a marble pillar, made a face at the physical contact. Rocky didn't notice. Grinning, he drew away from her.

“Don't ever do that again,” Molly said crushingly. “Things are not like they used to be. I . . . I am different.”

“I know, I know—you are brilliant!” Rocky exclaimed. “Your music is genius! I can hardly believe it! My friend—my friend Molly—is world famous!”

Molly interrupted him. “I'm not your friend anymore. You can forget that idea, Rocky. You knew me once, that's all. I'm an independent person now and far superior to you.”

Rocky's face dropped. “But . . . but, Molly, what are you saying? We're like brother and sister.”

Molly laughed. She had been prepared to play guitar to Rocky, but it was obviously unnecessary. He was already putty in her hands. “No, Rocky. I don't have any family,” she said, with fake sadness. “Neither you nor Gerry nor Petula are family to me
anymore. I'm alone, and I like it this way.” Molly turned to the fridge. The idea of friendship made her feel queasy, and she didn't like the look on Rocky's face that seemed to be begging her to be friends with him again. On the wall behind him the one-eyed Japanese dolls stared at Molly. “I can't believe those ugly things are still here,” she commented. “Must get rid of them.”