Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery (4 page)

Micky glanced at Molly, and he put down the glass paperweight. It clunked loudly onto the tabletop, nearly cracking it.

“Um…okay.” Molly nodded. She and Micky eyed the well-heeled ladies suspiciously. Then, to their amazement, a wide white screen began dropping from the balcony behind their heads. As it did, to pass the time, Miss Hunroe gave her small harp a few strokes. Lovely music filled the air. Then Miss Hunroe spoke, all the while plucking and strumming her miniature harp.

“How to start? It's difficult. But I'll be as quick and as to the point as possible. This is Miss Oakkton….” She pointed to the big muscley woman.

“Nice to meet you,” Miss Oakkton said in a German accent.

“And this is Miss Speal.” The thin woman in the gray coat smiled weakly. “You met Miss Teriyaki on the ice, and Miss Suzette, who just gave you a fright.”

“How do you do?” Molly and Micky said uncertainly.

“Hello. How do you do?” the cluster of women replied.

Molly felt like laughing again. “This is mad,” she whispered to Micky.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“These ladies already know about you,” Miss Hunroe continued. “In fact, rather more than you might think. They know, for instance, that you, Molly, are a hypnotist, a time stopper, and a time traveler. And we are here today to talk about what you can do.”

“This is where I say, ‘Oh, my giddy aunt,'” Micky said under his breath to Molly.

And Molly, though shocked by Miss Hunroe's revelation replied, “A load of giddy aunts, I think.” She didn't care whether the gaggle of women heard her or not. Suddenly she was
very
suspicious. A cynical frown
creased her forehead. And suddenly Molly didn't like the music or the women's smiles or the elegant room or the idea of the hot chocolate that was coming her way. “Do you mind,” she said to Miss Hunroe, “putting down your harp? It's just a bit weird.”

Miss Hunroe stopped immediately and put down the instrument on the desk.

Just then a fair-haired maid dressed in a blue uniform with a white apron entered. She was carrying a tray with two mugs on it and had the obedient look of a well-trained dog. In fact, Molly thought, she looked hypnotized.

Miss Hunroe smiled at the maid. “Thank you, Sally.” Then she tossed her gold coin and let it land in her left hand. As though its landing musical note side up had directed her, she declared, “Now, Molly and Micky, maybe you have guessed, or maybe you haven't guessed. My good friends here and I are all hypnotists.”

O
utside the natural history museum, shielded from the high tower that Molly and Micky were in by bare winter trees and a Beefeater hot-dog stand, AH2 stood shivering in the winter sun.

“She's definitely up there,” he was saying to someone on the other end of the cell phone. “Unless the device is faulty.” The other person said something, to which AH2 replied with a wry chortle. “Yes, she's well and truly trapped. She's like a fox in a hole now. I'll get the proof, and then we'll confront her—or I should say we'll confront
it
.” He laughed happily. “Over and out.” AH2 slipped his phone back into his pocket and rechecked his tracking machine.

He felt good, for, like a fisherman after a clever fish, he'd been trying to catch Molly Moon since he'd
first come across her in New York City. And today here she was, swimming near his net.

Molly was extraordinary. As soon as AH2 had encountered this Moon girl he'd known exactly what she was. Even her name gave it away! He didn't believe the outlandish story that she was named after the box of Moon's Marshmallows she'd been found in as a baby. Nonsense! No, this girl had superhuman, unearthly talents. She could make other people do
exactly
what she wanted. AH2 had concluded that, without a shadow of a doubt, this Molly Moon was
not
human. No, it was very clear that this “girl” was definitely neither he nor she but instead an
it
. For she was, as sure as hot dogs were hot dogs, an alien.

AH2's real name was Malcolm Tixley. He was twenty-five and was in the Royal Air Force, and he'd been an alien hunter since he was five years old. His obsession began when he'd seen a green alien sitting on the wing of an airplane. He'd been traveling with his parents to visit relations in Tanzania, and the plane had been cruising at forty thousand feet, but the alien had been there, all right. It had even winked at him. His mother had seen the alien, and so had the flight attendant.

Ever since then he'd been hooked. At ten he'd joined the Y.B.A.H.A, the Young British Alien Hunting Association, and had risen through its ranks so that he
was deputy in command. Thus his title, AH2—Alien Hunter Two. At eighteen he had joined the air force and become an excellent pilot. He enjoyed his work, but deep down, his main reason for flying was to see an alien again. At night he took classes in space studies.

“Strange weather we've been havin', haven't we?” the fat-faced hot-dog man asked, holding out a bun and sausage. “Hailstorms with stones the size o' Ping-Pong balls and then bright, bright sunshine.” AH2 was so deep in thought he didn't hear him. “Hungry for it, are ya?” the man asked.

“Wh-what? For what?” AH2 stammered, caught off his guard in his daydream.

“For the hot dog, of course. Are you hungry for it?” The hot-dog seller wiped his hands on a checkered cloth.

AH2 took the hot dog and squirted some mustard on it. “Actually,” he said, dropping some coins onto the tin counter, “I'm hungry to catch an alien.”

“Ah. Right. I see,” he said. “Very nice.”

 

“So you're hypnotists too,” said Molly slowly. She paused as the maid placed her hot chocolate in front of her. “I don't think I'll be drinking that hot chocolate, then.” She eyed the well-dressed collection of women before her. “Am I right in thinking, Miss Hunroe,
that you aren't a tutor at all?”

Miss Hunroe nodded. She looked down shamefully and fiddled with her gold coin. “I do apologize for misleading you both, and your parents and family,” she said, “but it was necessary. Your parents never would have let you come if they knew my real reason for wanting you here.”

“Unbelievable.” Molly glanced sideways at Micky. As the full impact of Miss Hunroe's deception became clear, a steely anger filled her. “You had no right,” she said. “You wouldn't take
normal
kids out of their family house by posing as a teacher. If the police knew, they'd lock you up. Who do you think you are?” Molly turned and walked toward the door. “Where's the key for this? I noticed you locking it. It did cross my mind that that was a weird thing to do. We're going home. Now.”

By now Micky was standing beside her. Both of the twins felt extremely anxious. The truth was, they were clearly in a tricky situation, because these five women, all hypnotists, seemed to have the upper hand. But this didn't stop Micky and Molly from saying what they felt.

“You've acted in a really underhanded way,” Micky said.

“Completely out of order,” Molly agreed.

Miss Hunroe was totally unruffled. “I do understand
your reaction,” she said. “And if this is really how you feel, of course you are free to go. But I have one favor to ask. Please just listen to why you are needed here. If you still feel the same way afterward, we respect your decision and you can, of course, return to Briersville Park immediately. We will get you a chauffeur-driven car to drive you home as soon as you would like.”

Like birds cooing around her, the other women voiced their agreement. “Yes.”

“Yes, we will.”

Molly looked at Micky and raised her eyes to the ceiling. He narrowed his eyes at the female crowd, then made a tiny gesture of a shrug to Molly. Molly breathed out irritatedly. “It better be good,” she said, returning to the third sofa and leaning against its back.

“And quick,” Micky muttered, joining his sister.

“Well, we spotted you quite a while ago, Molly,” Miss Hunroe began. “Word got to us that you had moved into Briersville Park. We were suspicious to start with. We were aware of the huge success you had had in America, starring in a Broadway show, and we calculated how much money you had made.” Miss Hunroe pulled some cuttings from newspapers out of an envelope. They were from American newspapers.

“‘Moon is out of this world!'” Miss Hunroe read.
“‘Molly Moon has eclipsed Davina Nuttel and taken her part in
Stars on Mars.
Last night the whole of Manhattan was alive with the gossip. Who is this Molly Moon? Nobody knows…' And so it goes on.”

Molly hung her head. She was slightly ashamed of how she had conned her way to the top in Manhattan.

Miss Hunroe continued. “At first we thought you were a bad egg. But then we saw how you used the money to help the other children in the orphanage that you grew up in. We saw your loyalty to them, especially your good friend Rocky. Then it all clicked into place. We realized that that huge twenty-five-room house, Briersville Park, was in fact your family home. For though you are called Moon, you are really a Logan—the great-great-granddaughter of Dr. Logan who wrote the phenomenal book
Hypnotism: An Ancient Art Explained
.”

Molly bit her lip. It was really odd how these women knew so much about her life.

“I don't know whether you realize this, but the world is full of hypnotists,” Miss Hunroe stated. “Full of people who have mastered the ancient art.” She paused. “It has to be said, very few are as good as you. It's an honor to meet you,” Miss Hunroe said smoothly. “My friends and I are elite members of the National Society of Hypnotists. Only a small proportion of
these registered hypnotists are truly talented. There are very few time stoppers, and there are even fewer time travelers. What's more, I have yet to come across a mind reader….”

A shiver went up Molly's back as Miss Hunroe spoke. She wondered whether Miss Hunroe somehow knew about Molly's secret mind-reading skill. Molly really didn't want this to be exposed now. Her heart galloping, Molly decided to read Miss Hunroe's mind again. She knew that what she was doing would be invisible to everyone in the room, and yet she found her nerves were on edge as she did it—as though this time, she was going to be caught. What are you thinking? Molly thought to Miss Hunroe.

A bubble popped up again over the blond-haired woman's head, and as she continued to talk, pictures in it, illustrating her words, appeared.

“As you might suspect, Molly and Micky,” Miss Hunroe continued, “not all hypnotists are good, kind people. Hypnotism can be used for a person's own fulfillment, and if that person has no morals, and they don't know the difference between right and wrong, these bad hypnotists can use their powers entirely for themselves. They can easily become powerful, influential,
rich
. Yes, bad hypnotists can be destructive without a care for the damage or suffering they
are causing others.” Above Miss Hunroe's hair, the thought bubble filled with pictures of different people in wonderful surroundings—a gray-haired woman in a large, lavishly furnished room, a Mexican-looking man sipping a cocktail on a yacht on a calm sea somewhere hot and tropical, and an ugly, tall man posing in front of a casino called Black's Casino with a cigar in his hand. Then fast cars shot through the bubble, as well as racehorses and jet planes.

“I believe that you learned how to hypnotize from your ancestor Dr. Logan's book. Am I right?” Now above Miss Hunroe's head was the picture of a bespectacled man in Victorian clothes with a potato-shaped nose.

“Yes, that's right,” Molly admitted.

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 café 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.