Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

Now she was flying in a state of nothingness toward it. Within a few seconds, Molly felt herself filtering into the rat. And then she became rat. Immediately, she was overwhelmed with ratty sensations. She felt her whiskers twitching as they read the air about her for other rats’ whisker messages. Her new skin was numb from the cold, and all over her body was the horrid sensation of itchy bites from, Molly supposed, fleas. Her ears were erect and alert, and her ratty instinct was to be almost entirely thinking about food—particularly about the overflowing rubbish bin that cascaded down above her, full of delicious, odorous things.

Molly squished the rat’s true character down under her own. It didn’t object. Molly apologized as she did it. She tried to ignore the ratty gut feeling that she had of climbing into the trash to rummage about there for old bones or thrown-away half-full Chinese takeout boxes. Then she saw Micky, who had morphed into a darker gray rat.

“Over here.” He was beckoning, his whiskers twitching. “Fast! Hurry!” he squeaked.

Molly scrunched up her nose at Micky and began to move. As she did, she realized how lithe her new body was. She was all tendon and muscle. Her scabby but svelte form moved like the wind. Molly the rat flattened her body from seven centimeters down to three, her bones dislocating into pancake mode, and she slid through a crack in the pavement. Her clawed feet gripped the underside of the paving stone, and she found herself gracefully landing upright, underneath the ground.

Black stood by an empty taxi stand, waiting for a cab. Then he noticed a scent of lavender and powder and saw Miss Teriyaki and Miss Suzette hovering in the shadows near him. He was at once suspicious of them, especially when he saw that the fat woman in the cream cape held a basket carrying two of the cats that had been standing by the letterbox. He gripped his bag with the hypnotism book inside it and hailed a cab.

Before climbing into the taxi, he stopped. A tall businessman in a black suit and a bowler hat was walking past, swinging his umbrella and briefcase and whistling the Seven Dwarfs tune “Whistle While You Work.” Black caught his arm and stared into the man’s eyes. At once his whistling stopped. He was hypnotized and ready to do whatever Black wanted.

“I am getting into this cab,” Black told him. “The two woman behind you—the lady in the cream cape and the Japanese woman in red—must not follow me. You will obstruct them so that they cannot catch a cab for ten minutes. What is more, when they try to hypnotize you, you will be unhypnotizable. Afterward, you will go on your way and forget you were ever hypnotized by me, and you won’t remember what happened here. I lock these instructions in with the words ‘Snow White.’”

The man nodded, and Black climbed into the cab. With a kick of exhaust, it was away.

Miss Teriyaki and Miss Suzette immediately stepped out of the shadows. Eagerly they approached the next cab.

“TAXI!” Miss Suzette shouted in a voice surprisingly deep for her tiny, tubby form.

“Follow that cab!” Miss Teriyaki bossily ordered the driver as he wound down his window.

But then the businessman stepped in front of them.

The gutter stank of the smelliest loo Molly had ever encountered, yet in her rat body she rather liked the stench. Now it smelled more sugary than sewage-y. Eager to escape, she followed Micky the dark gray rat farther down into the sewer, to a ledge near a tunnel that flowed with smelly water. The ceiling above the ledge was tall, making the place feel like a hall. It was lit by streetlights that shined through the gutter cover above, and here there were other rats. One bared its teeth at Molly, and at once she felt a pang of fear. Why had she and Micky come down this far under the ground?

“Micky,” she hissed.

But the dark gray rat ahead turned and, in a gruff voice, squeaked back, “Big water come night.”

And in a flash, Molly saw that this rat wasn’t Micky at all. She turned frantically toward the ledge down which she had just been led, but there was no Micky there either. Instead a fat, bushy rat with a scarred cheek and a missing ear stood solid as a tree trunk, blocking the way.

“Ah ooh, darlin’. Like me?” he croaked. The rat’s eyes were beady and mean.

“Not likely!” Molly found herself squeaking back. “Go and jump in the sewer!” And she edged up against the wall. “Micky!” she shouted. “HELP!” The fat rat stepped toward her.

“No callin’. No one carin’,” he snarled. “You call again, I bite, missy.”

The businessman was doing a very good job preventing the two spinsters from catching a cab. Time after time they tried. At one point the two ladies split, hoping that this way at least one of them would catch a taxi. But even though Miss Suzette waddled as fast as she could and Miss Teriyaki did a fast crutch hobble for another taxi, they were too slow for the young man.