by Georgia Byng
Molly pointed through the vent to a roulette table below, where three rich Chinese people sat. Two smartly dressed businessmen and their velvet-suited lady friend sat on smooth-backed stools with piles of betting chips stacked on the green baize table before them.
“Look! That chip’s worth a thousand pounds!” Molly observed. “And she’s got about fifty of them.”
“And,” Micky noticed, “if the ball lands on a black number, she’ll win quite a few more.”
The croupier, a man in a dark waistcoat and a starched shirt and black trousers, stood calm and official behind the spinning roulette wheel. The little silver ball tittled and tattled, as though gossiping with the numbers on the roulette wheel as it spun. Then it stopped. For a few seconds it was impossible to see what color it had landed on, for the wheel was still a rotating blur.
“Red, fifty-two,” the croupier announced. Without a glimmer of emotion, he swept all the gambling chips off the numbered felt toward a slit in the table’s surface, through which the chips disappeared.
“Black must make a fortune!” Molly whispered.
“Just like a one-armed bandit,” said Micky.
“Yup. He’s an ugly bandit,” Molly agreed. “Come on, let’s get the book.”
The twins followed the vent up a slope and around a corner. Now it was dark again, and to make things worse, a cold breeze was blowing as the casino’s air conditioning blew through the vent. It made the tight passage like an arctic wind tunnel.
Finally they reached the grille. And true to Miss Hunroe’s plans, this vent looked down on Black’s casino office. Molly and Micky peered down. A glass kidney-shaped lamp with a brass stem lit the room, its warm glow making the green leather-topped desk and the paneled walls tinge with gold. A narrow slit window onto an alley outside let in a little more light from the street.
“Empty! Perfect,” Molly exclaimed, and she and Micky began easing off the metal grille.
“Bet I can punch it through,” Micky decided. “You hold it so it doesn’t fall out into the office.” Seconds later the grille had given way and Molly was quietly pulling it into the duct.
“After you,” Micky said.
Maneuvering herself so that her legs went first, Molly dropped into the room. Micky followed, and at once they set to work. Molly quickly began to lift pictures off the walls, peering behind them to see where the safe was.
“Maybe it’s under the carpet,” Micky whispered, lifting the corner of a Persian rug from the floor.
Molly opened the central drawer of the desk. And as though the heat of an oven had just hit her in the face, she stumbled backward.
“What is it?” Micky asked worriedly. Then, looking into the drawer himself, he uttered a sigh. “Wow!”
For there, almost so carelessly deposited that it seemed like it must be a trap, lay the book. Its brown leather cover, heavy with inlaid stones, had golden embossed words that read Hypnotism, Volume Two: The Advanced Arts.
Molly ran her fingers inside the indentation in the top right-hand corner of the leather cover and remembered Miss Speal’s stolen stone.
With a shaking hand, and full of respect for the book, Molly opened it.
Six
Molly glanced around the room suspiciously. “Can’t believe he left it in such an obvious place. Do you think it’s a trap? Or maybe the book’s a fake.” Something buzzed past her nose. “What was that?”
“A ladybug, Molly. You’re just jumpy because you’re nervous,” Micky said, jittering himself. “They’re crawling all over that plant.”
Molly pulled the heavy book from the drawer and opened it up. “Let’s check if it’s the real McCoy.”
The pages inside the book were yellow from age. Molly found the title page, Hypnotism, Volume Two: The Advanced Arts, and read on.
“By Dr. Logan, Published by Arkwright and Sons, 1910…I can hardly believe that our great-great-grandfather wrote this,” Molly whispered. “Can you? The first book was written in 1908. So he wrote this one two years after he wrote the first book.”
“It’s very fancy looking, with those stones stuck on the front,” Micky observed.
“Yes, much fancier than the first volume,” Molly agreed.
“Don’t expect there are many copies exactly like it,” Micky said. “Maybe it’s unique.”
“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 an
d 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 as statues at the edge of the window, waiting to see what would happen next.
In the cupboard, Lily pushed the door a centimeter open to watch Molly and Micky disappear behind the sofa; then she quickly shut it again. Her father was going to be in the room soon. If she told him about the twins, at least he’d know that they were there. But then he’d be very, very cross with her. Lily winced. She hated the idea of being scolded. He hardly paid her much attention as it was, and she didn’t want her ration of the day to be taken up with him telling her off.
Theobald Black entered. From her hiding place, Molly caught sight of a black shoe and the bottom of his green velvet trouser leg. She bit her lip and gripped Micky’s wrist tightly. Micky pointed to a couple of ladybugs on the ground. Molly gave him a puzzled look. Micky then tapped the knotted boards of the wooden floor, pointing again, this time more emphatically, to the ladybugs. Without waiting for a response, he began staring intently at the pattern on the floorboard. Molly guessed what he was doing. It was a crazy thing to be attempting, but if morphing was real, it was definitely a very neat way of getting out of the room.
Then, before she’d expected anything to happen, Micky, amazingly, disappeared. His wrist vanished from Molly’s grasp as fast as a light turning off. Instead of him, Micky’s clothes, like a snake’s molted skin, lay bodyless in a heap on the floor. Molly’s eyes scrutinized the pile to try to see a ladybug. And there one was. It seemed to be jumping about. In fact, Molly could have sworn it was shaking its little legs as though it was doing a jig. Then it spread its wings and flew straight toward her, landing on her nose.
From her perch above, Miss Hunroe, the white cat, saw all of this. She splayed her claws in annoyance. Now her eyes were trained on Molly.
Molly felt the sofa move as Black dumped his full weight on it. He began to make a call. Molly listened to his heavy, congested voice as he spoke to someone.
“I’ll look for it, Terry. Probably dropped it here somewhere yesterday. Yes, then I’ll get him for you.”
Molly shivered and crossed her eyes as she tried to look at the ladybug on the end of her nose. She didn’t want to be caught red-handed in Black’s den. He was three times bigger than her and a hypnotist. He’d be too alert to be hypnotized, and he’d easily use his physical power to overcome her. Molly wouldn’t stand a chance.
She stared at the floor. Now Molly was desperate to follow Micky’s example. She concentrated on the weave of the wood of the floorboard. It was oak, streaked and knotted with dark brown marks. She focused on the pattern. She thought of nothing else. For a moment her mind faltered. All she could see were brown woody marks. There were no pictures, and she had to see pictures. If the book was right, that was the only way into morphing. Yet all she could see were mud-colored splodges.
Molly gulped and took a deep breath and breathed out slowly. With an enormous effort of will, she tried to forget about Black, and she tried to levitate her mind into a trance. She turned her scared feelings into careless feelings, light and easy. She let her mind drift away from the casino office. And soon her concentration brought a result. Black’s voice began to sound distant and small. Molly let her eyes linger over the pattern again. Now the lines began to move and twist as Molly’s imagination opened. And a hugely obvious picture sprang out from the lines and grooves—the image of a long finger with a painted fingernail poking a worm. Molly smiled. Now, still thinking of this picture, she focused on the ladybug that was walking up the wall.
The words of the book echoed in her head. Focus on your animal and enter its being. Molly considered the ladybug. She imagined what it felt like to have the six tiny legs. Then she thought of its curved shell with heavy folded wings on top. She let herself conjure up this feeling of what life must be like as a ladybug. She imagined antennae projecting from her head, and she thought about wanting to fly. And as she thought, still holding on to the image of the finger and the worm, she dropped into the essence of ladybug. And she threw herself forward, toward the insect.
A peculiar feeling, the likes of which she had never ever felt, shuddered through her. And Molly the human disappeared.
Seven
For a second Molly was all air, and then she was in the ladybug. It took a moment or two for her senses to adjust. She flowed into the insect’s body like water into a glass, her legs multiplying, her arms vanishing, and her back extending so that the creature’s wings were hers. And as she looked out through her antenna-raised eyes, she saw how minute she was. The area behind the sofa was like a valley, and the room was like a country. But the other strange thing that she hadn’t expected was that underneath her feeling of being herself was the feeling of another being—that of the ladybug!
The ladybug’s real self had been pushed down, packed down like sand into the bottom of a bucket. Every second it was squashed more as Molly’s character took over its body.
Molly could sense it squeaking in horror. But she was the supreme force now, and though part of her knew that overcoming this other creature was wrong, the other side of her understood that now she was there, she had to be in charge, or she, Molly, would sink below the ladybug and be lost underneath its spirit forever. So, though she could sense the minuscule bleatings of the insect, she ignored them and concentrated instead on being the ladybug herself. She remembered the book’s words, about how she would be body borrowing, and Dr. Logan’s advice to be respectful. As she took possession of the insect’s body, she tried to communicate apologies to it.
I’m really sorry, she found herself thinking to it, in as ladybug a way as she could. I won’t be here forever. I’m just borrowing you for a bit. Thank you.
And as she thought this, the ladybug relaxed and let her in. From way down in the bottom of its brain, it looked up and saw into Molly’s mind. It saw some of Molly’s memories and thought processes. But its brain was far too basic to be able to understand what it was seeing. Molly, on the other hand, was able to comprehend the ladybug’s tiny mind. It had no concept of how big the world really was in a human way. It had no perception of the world being a globe, and yet it sensed where the moon and the sun were, even though neither was visible. It also had an instinct for water. Molly felt the tug of water on the other side of the sofa. There was a glass of water somewhere there. Perhaps it was on Black’s desk. Molly the ladybug knew the water was there with the same certainty that she knew she was awake. She could also sense the heat coming from Theobald Black’s body. It was a very strange sensation.
Then Molly nearly jumped out of her shell. A massive ladybug, like some sort of monster from a horror film, landed beside her. As suddenly as the surprise arrival of this creature had hit her, the shock subsided.
“Don’t know why we’re called ladybugs. I mean, I’m a boy.” Micky’s voice sounded high-pitched and thin, as though it had been whizzed up on an electric voice blender. “How many spots have I got?”
