by Georgia Byng
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.
&
nbsp; 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 that person’s very mind and so of course their actions. Do you see how dangerous this could be?”
“Of course,” Molly said.
<
br /> “And so,” Micky guessed, “you’re telling us that the prime minister of this country is really someone else—that an evil hypnotist has morphed into his body.”
“No, not yet. At least I hope not.” Miss Hunroe crossed her arms. “But we do know that the book has passed into the hands of a very undesirable person. We know that he is highly likely to try to learn the book’s lessons for bad ends.”
Miss Hunroe pressed a button on the slide controls, and up on the screen came a photograph of a leathery-faced man with a mop of dark hair. His skin was rough and pockmarked. He wore a smart pinstriped suit with a red tie and a brimmed homburg hat. Molly recognized him from the thought bubble that had appeared over Miss Hunroe’s head earlier.
“His name is Theobald Black. He’s a hypnotist. He uses his talents to embezzle money.”
“Embezzle. What’s that?” asked Molly.
“It means,” Micky quickly explained, “when you get something—usually money—through trickery.”
“Yes, that’s right,” agreed Miss Hunroe. “Mr. Black here picks on easy prey—rich old ladies or gentlemen. Here are some photographs we got of him in action. Here he is hypnotizing a very rich heiress who owns gold mines.” Up on the screen came a black-and-white photograph of Mr. Black on a park bench, holding a pendulum up in front of a small middle-aged woman in a hat with a stuffed bird on it. “And here he is taking control of an old man who has made a fortune in marmalade—”
“And jams, very good jams,” Miss Suzette interjected. “Wiltshire Jams is de company’s name.” Now another picture came up. It was taken through the window of a café and was of Mr. Black sitting at a table with an old man in a bowler hat. Their faces were very close, and Mr. Black was staring into the man’s eyes, as though hypnotizing him.