Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

Miss Hunroe continued. “That book holds lessons for hypnotizing animals, then people, long-distance hypnosis, crowd hypnosis, that sort of thing, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s true,” Molly agreed. And now, to check on the other women in the room, she opened thought bubbles over their heads, too. All were thinking about what Miss Hunroe was saying, except for Miss Suzette, who was thinking about a jam-and buttercream-filled cake, and then a chocolate cake, as though she was hungry and making her decision about which she would buy at the local cafe when this was all over.

Miss Hunroe flipped her coin. Then she asked lightly, “Did you know that your great-great-grandfather wrote a second book? Volume Two?”

Both Molly and Micky were taken completely by surprise at Miss Hunroe’s announcement. Molly saw that above all the women’s heads, their thought bubbles filled with the images of a heavy book, with an oval shape in each of its corners.

“Which makes it all the more amazing,” Miss Hunroe went on, “that you, Molly, have actually learned some of the lessons from that book. You seem to have learned them intuitively, without the book.”

“Hmmm,” agreed the large German woman, Miss Oakkton, on the sofa, smiling encouragingly and rubbing her white-gloved hands together. “It’s arbsoluteleeey extraordinarrry. It is as if you have a natural gift.”

“What lessons?” Molly asked, though deep down she had already guessed what some of them might be. Miss Oakkton answered.

“Time stopping and time traveling are lessons in zat book. Mind reading is in it, too.”

“Mind reading?” Molly, determined to keep her own mind-reading skill a complete secret, frowned. “That sounds tricky.”

“And morphing,” said Miss Hunroe. Above her head, a person appeared to turn into a cat.

“Morphing? What’s that?” asked Micky.

“Oh.” Miss Hunroe sighed. “It is perhaps the most dangerous of all the hypnotic arts.”

Above Miss Hunroe’s head, a horse turned into an owl, then the owl into a short, hairy man. Then that man turned into a baby. It was too much for Molly. She wanted to listen intently to Miss Hunroe, to concentrate on this new thing, morphing, but she couldn’t while mind reading at the same time. And so she let the bubbles above Miss Hunroe’s and the other women’s heads dissolve. She would put her suspicions of them to one side for a moment.

Besides, Molly’s suspicions of them were beginning to fade. These people weren’t entirely angelic, she could tell, as they did have their maid hypnotized—but then Molly had kept Cornelius back home hypnotized to think he was a lamb. They probably had good reasons, just like her.

Miss Hunroe picked up a remote control and pointed it at a projector with a slide wheel above her. It began to purr electronically. Miss Speal, practically curtsying to Miss Hunroe before she did it, shut the room’s blinds and dimmed the lights.

“If you can morph,” Miss Hunroe elaborated, “you can change from a cat”—on the screen up came a picture of a black cat—“to a dog.” Now a photograph of a shaggy sheepdog appeared. A succession of animals followed— mice, a whale, an elephant, a bird, even insects, flies, beetles, and a red ant. “A morpher can only change into an animal that he or she can actually see. The morpher borrows their bodies for a while, so some people prefer to call morphers ‘body borrowers.’”

Molly was now even more taken by the idea of morphing and body borrowing. To be able to borrow a bird’s body and fly, or be a fish and swim, was fantastic! But Molly kept very still and quiet and didn’t show her excitement.

“How do you know about this stuff?” Micky asked. “Do you have a copy of the second book?” From the sofa, Miss Teriyaki laughed. Miss Hunroe smiled.

“Oh, dear no. If we did, well, all would be well and you two wouldn’t be here. Now where was I? Ah, yes. To move from animal to animal is the elementary form of morphing. But do not think for one second that it is easy to do.”

“Can you do it?” asked Micky.

“Oh, I wish,” sighed Miss Hunroe.

“How do you know about it?” asked Molly.

Suddenly the wrenlike voice of Miss Speal, the skinny, tiny, dark-haired woman with the thin face, piped up. She rose to her feet and spoke quickly, in a half whisper, as though frightened that if she spoke louder something horrible would happen. “My parents were hypnotists. They looked after the book for a while, when I was about seven years old. But it was a dangerous thing to possess, for its contents are extremely powerful.” Molly found the hairs pricking up on the back of her neck. Miss Speal’s face was so pale and bloodless that she looked like a ghost, and now, talking about the book in this way, she was even spookier.

“I remember finding it once when my parents were out. I wasn’t that good at reading, but I knew the book was very, very special, as I’d heard my parents talking about it, and so I opened it and made an effort to understand it.” The woman stroked her black, limp hair as she remembered. “It was a very heavy book. Four flat stones were embedded in its thick leather cover, one in each corner! One was orange with red streaks in it, one was light gray with white-and-black cloudy parts to it, one was green and brown like the color of plants and earth, and the last was blue with white flecks in it, like waves and white foam.” Miss Speal then pursed her lips and suddenly reached into her coat pocket.

“Miss Speal,” cautioned Miss Hunroe soberly. But ignoring her, the thin raconteur pulled a small piece of blue stone from her coat pocket and thrust it up toward the children’s eyes so that they both could see it. It was a watery-blue-colored stone, mottled with patches of white.

“This is the blue stone from the book!” the woman announced. “It fell out, and I’m glad it did, because a few days later the book was stolen.” Outside, a crack of lightning broke through the sky.

“Miss Speal,” Miss Hunroe cautioned again. “Please try not to get overemotional about this. The children need to know about the book. Do you want to tell them, or shall I?”

Miss Speal sniffed, and her eyes darted to look at the sky outside. “Yes, yes. Well, inside the book was the title, Hypnotism, Volume Two: The Advanced Arts. There were about ten chapters, but I can’t remember what all the skills were. It was intoxicatingly exciting, and I read it as though I had opened some sort of spell book.” As she spoke, she rubbed the blue stone. It was as though it was a talisman that brought memories of that precious evening back to her. Outside, thunder rumbled.

“MISS SPEAL!” Miss Hunroe now scolded the woman. “Please control yourself.”

Miss Speal put the flat stone back into her pocket and looked nervously at Miss Hunroe, rather as a dog with its tail between its legs might look at its master. “Yes,” she finished, her attention now on her audience. “As I said, the book was stolen….”

“Before you learned any of its lessons,” Miss Hunroe added, helping her along.

Miss Speal looked bewildered for a moment, then her eyes widened. “Y-yes, yes, before I learned any of its lessons. I read the list of lessons but never learned them.”

“Who stole it?” Molly asked.

Miss Speal shook her head. “The devil knows.”

“But the important matter,” said Miss Teriyaki, impatiently, “is where it is now.”

“First things first,” insisted Miss Hunroe, reprimanding Miss Teriyaki and tapping her sharply on the wrist with her remote control. “I haven’t finished explaining morphing.”

Miss Teriyaki put her hands together and humbly bowed to Miss Hunroe. “Sorry, sorry,” she said subserviently, readjusting the ice pack around her ankle.

Miss Hunroe pressed the button on her remote control again. “As I said, the elementary stage of morphing is into an animal, but the sophisticated level…” She turned toward the children and said very seriously, “The thing is that the second level of morphing is being able to change from human to human. And as you can imagine, anyone who could do this could become very, very powerful and influential. Why, a person with this skill might choose to morph into the president of the United States of America!” Up on the screen came a picture of the president of the United States talking to an important-looking army official. A line of soldiers stood behind them both, saluting. “Or they might morph into the body of the president of China.” Now on the screen was a picture of thousands of soldiers standing at attention, saluting the Chinese president. “Once inside another person’s body, they’d have control over