Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

“Let’s hope so,” Molly replied, running her fingers along the headings. “Do you think Black has photocopied it? “‘Chapter One,’” she quietly read, “‘Recapping Hypnotism. Chapter Two, Time Stopping. Chapter Three, Time Traveling…’ Ah, now this is more interesting. Look. ‘Chapter Four, Morphing—Animals. Chapter Five, Morphing— Humans. Chapter Six, Mind Reading. Chapter Seven, Hypno-Dreaming.’ Wonder what that is. ‘Chapter Eight, The Logan Stones. Chapter Nine, Possibilities.’ Wow.” Hurriedly, Molly flicked to the first page on morphing.

Unable to control their curiosity, the twins began to read the book’s instructions.

“‘MORPHING or body borrowing,’” read Micky,

“like hypnotism, is best learned in two steps. Just as I encouraged you to master the art of hypnotizing animals before humans when you learned to hypnotize, with body borrowing, you must learn to morph into an animal before you will be able to morph into a human. It is very important that you choose your morphee carefully, for if you choose an animal or person that knows about morphing, or one that has a very strong character, when you change into the animal, it will resist your presence in its body and swallow you up entirely. Animals are usually easy subjects. It is people that you must choose very carefully. Be respectful to the creature you are morphing into, for remember! You are borrowing its body. You are a body borrower. And it is imperative that you read right to the end of this chapter before you begin morphing at all!”

“Imperative? What does that mean?” Molly asked.

“Don’t know. But I like the idea of being a body borrower.” Dr. Logan’s words ran before the twins’ hungry eyes and Micky read on.

“‘Bring yourself into a semitrance.’ How do you do that?”

“It’s just like going all daydreamy and letting the world drop away from you.”

“Oh, okay.” Micky read on.

“Find a pattern. This may be in a wallpaper design, in some upholstery furnishings, in material, or even in flooring. Clouds can also be useful for this exercise. Stare at the pattern or shape. Let it take over your visual fields until it begins to move and change. You will begin to see other forms in the pattern. Two leaves, for instance, in a plant motif may begin to look like a teapot. It is of no significance what the new picture that you see is, so long as it is there. At this point, consider the animal you would like to morph into. You must be able to see it. With the image of, let us say, this leaf-made teapot, held in your mind, focus on your animal and enter its being.”

“He makes it sound so easy,” said Molly with a chuckle of amazement.

The eager twins read on, completely oblivious to two eyes that were upon them.

Lily Black crouched in a cupboard in the office, peering out through the crack where its two doors met. Her heart was thumping against her rib cage and in the confined space her breath sounded to her like a steam train as she tried to quiet it. Her expensive white wool dress itched horribly, she was so hot.

She could make out two children in her father’s office, and she could hear them.

“‘Morphing to humans is much more difficult to accomplish,’” the boy was reading out in a low voice.

“It requires a controlled but also a playful mind. Follow the steps for morphing to animals. In the same way, find a trancelike state, and then with intense observation of a pattern, find a picture in it. However, because you are morphing to a human, you need to do something different. If that human is an adult, you must imagine the person as a child; if the human is a child, imagine the child as a baby; if the human is a baby, imagine it as an egg. It is very difficult to hold in your mind both the picture of (let us say again) the teapot and also to imagine an adult as a child. Do not underestimate how difficult this might be for you. Once you are seeing both images at once, the teapot and the child’s face, then you can morph into the human subject. May luck be with you!”

Lily was in two minds as to what to do about the intruders in her father’s office. She wanted to blow the whistle on them, but she couldn’t because she wasn’t supposed to be there either. Moments before they’d arrived, Lily herself had been reading the hypnotism book. That morning she’d found the spare key to her father’s forbidden room. It had been hidden under a china soap dish in his bathroom. After school, she’d come to the casino and waited near the corridor outside the office until the guard there had needed to go to the loo. Then she’d unlocked the door, slipped inside, and locked the door behind her. She’d found the book and skimmed through it. Then she’d heard noise coming from the vent above the office, and that had scared her stiff. Faster than she’d known she could move, she’d bolted to the cupboard and hidden there.

If her father found out what she’d done, he’d go berserk. And Lily would be in such trouble that she didn’t dare think of it. But there was another reason, a more important reason. This reason was that Lily had high suspicions that the children were hypnotists like her father. Lily had no talent for hypnotism herself, but she knew all about it. She didn’t want to step out into a firing line without armor. She wasn’t a brave person at all, and she also wasn’t an idiot.

“He makes morphing into humans sound like a piece of cake,” the boy was saying.

“Just don’t morph into a piece of cake,” the girl replied with a wry smile.

As the girl spoke, something caught Lily’s eye. Something was moving in the high slit window behind and above the twins. To her amazement, four cats’ faces were peering down at the children. Each cat was a different breed and a different color. Lily shrank back, feeling suddenly scared. For four cats to be standing on the outside sill of a slit window peering into a casino was very odd. Even though she was completely hidden, Lily felt very conspicuous, as though the cupboard door was transparent and made of glass. Now she really regretted that she’d ventured into her father’s office at all. She wished she’d stayed at school to do homework.

Four cats vied for position on the narrow sill to see what was going on in Black’s office.

“Just take the book now and leave, you idiots,” the white cat that was Miss Hunroe urged nastily. Then she noticed both Micky and Molly stop reading and turn their heads toward the door. “You fools!” she spat.

“Someone’s coming,” Molly hissed to Micky. “Quick!” She shut the book and slipped it back into the drawer. Grabbing the sleeve of Micky’s sweatshirt, she pulled him toward the floor behind the sofa.

“We’re so stupid, Molly. We should have—”

“Shh.” Molly strained her ear to the shuffling noise outside the room. Someone was opening the door.

Up on the window ledge, the fluffy white cat that was Miss Suzette and the gray Siamese that was Miss Teriyaki leaped away, leaving the white cat that was Miss Hunroe and the ginger cat, Miss Oakkton. They stood still