Mystery Hat
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There is a certain magical hat that, when worn by the wearer for a period of time, causes him or her to be shrouded in an aura of mystery. This aura makes them seem more interesting and mysterious than they actually are.
It also confuses other people’s perceptions of reality. In some cases it causes the wearer to become invisible—in this case, there will be no visual record of what happened. If wearing the hat for too long would cause one or both eyes to be gouged out, then the aura will cause the victim to become blind.
The magic hat has been used many times throughout history by criminals who wanted to escape justice and their victims who needed to disappear without anyone knowing what had happened. There have even been reports of children being kidnapped under the influence of the hat.
This hat can be made from any object with the word “mystery” in its name or title. For example Mystery Mask, Mystery Cloak, and Mystery Hat. The aura will only work if the owner is wearing an item that matches exactly; for example, if a cloak was stolen and the thief wears the cloak but not the matching mask then nothing happens.
A common trick is to wear two items together that were once owned by different owners so as to create the aura. One popular version of the legend claims that whoever possesses the hat becomes invisible whenever he or she wishes, but this is obviously nonsense.
In fact, it should be obvious that such an item could not possibly exist because invisibility is impossible (unless you are a vampire).
However, I’ve read of at least three separate instances where this magic hat has been proven real.
The first account comes from the mid-eighteenth century. During the reign of King Louis XIV, a young lady called Madame de Montesson stole jewels from the palace. She fled France using the royal carriage and horses.
Unfortunately, she forgot to take the crown of state with her, which she had worn during the theft. Her maids searched the castle for several days before eventually locating the missing jewel.
When the king heard about it he decreed that every member of the royal household must wear a copy of the missing crown on special occasions such as Christmas until Madame de Montesson returned the original.
After much searching, she finally turned herself in to authorities and was promptly imprisoned. Upon hearing of his wife’s capture, the king wept, saying, “I know my dear Marie-Antoinette wore the crown last year! Why couldn’t she keep it safe? Oh, how awful.”
The second report involves the famous English playwright William Shakespeare. He supposedly wore a magic hat while writing his plays. While performing Romeo and Juliet at the Globe Theater, a patron threw a bucket of water over him.
Shakespeare was instantly enveloped in a cloud of steam and escaped without injury. However, when another spectator threw something else, this time at the actors’ feet, the entire stage went up in flames. The firemen were forced to use all their efforts to put out the inferno.
Although no one saw anything through the smoke, witnesses claimed that Shakespeare seemed quite calm after the disaster, saying, “Well, the audience won’t get wet tonight, will they?”
A third story comes from ancient China during the reign of Emperor Ling Ti. His ministers noticed that he had gone insane due to a lack of sleep. They tried everything from bribing magicians to sedatives to cure him, but nothing worked.
Finally, they decided to steal the magician’s hat in order to see if this would help. They did not realize that the hat was made of paper and quickly crumbled into dust when removed. When Emperor Ling Ti found out that his ministers had ruined his favorite wizard’s hat, he became very angry and demanded a new one.
After a great deal of discussion, the wizards presented him with a magic mirror instead. This caused more trouble than it solved because the emperor could only ask the mirror questions, like asking how tall he was. But the next day, Ling Ti asked it the same question again. And again. And yet again. Every time he looked at himself in the mirror, he would think, “How tall am I?”
Finally, after several years, he realized that it had been a waste of time and money trying to buy his own reflection. As he lay dying, he cursed his advisors: “From now on, your heads are stuck together!” The next morning, the two men awoke to find their heads had been permanently fused in place.
There is one final story, but it doesn’t have anything to do with any hat. It came to me while reading an old copy of The Wizard’s Magazine (a publication that is sadly defunct). The article described a strange occurrence during the early twentieth century.
The writer, Professor H. P. S. Barlow, told how he had visited England’s famous Tower of London on a particularly windy afternoon. Standing beside the tower, he heard a faint voice whispering in his ear, “Don’t look down.”
He was convinced that it was coming from the tower itself. Then the wind dropped and the words stopped. After looking up at the sky for a long time, Barlow said he was certain there had been nobody around to say that.
That night he dreamed that he had traveled back in time to the reign of Henry VIII, just before he began building the infamous tower. He was standing at the base of the unfinished structure with a man who called himself “the builder”.
The builder had been hired to oversee construction and was in charge of hiring all the other laborers. He explained that, since the job involved such a huge amount of labor, he needed help fast. So far, he had only managed to hire three men who could manage to work together for extended periods.
In the dream, the first thing that occurred was the death of the third worker—and thus the beginning of the story’s narrator is trapped in a nightmare world. The rest of the narrative is based on what happened after that.
The builder then took his friend to see the men working inside the tower. Most of them were prisoners brought there by a powerful sorcerer named Merlin. A number of the men appeared to be chained together, including one who had recently died.
The builder asked why they were chained up like animals. “It keeps their minds off the fact that we’re going to kill them,” explained the sorcerer. He also pointed out the dead man’s body. “His friends thought his spirit might try to stop us from finishing the tower, so we killed him and bound his spirit to his body,” he continued.
The builder felt sorry for him and wondered aloud if he should have left him alive. “No,” replied the sorcerer. “You’d never be able to work as well if you knew someone was still living here.”
Then the builder saw his friend’s spirit hovering above the ground, wearing the same clothes that he’d been buried in. Suddenly, the man’s ghost started screaming that he couldn’t bear being trapped in this world and begged to be released.
But Merlin wouldn’t let him go. As the man continued crying, Merlin grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it onto his corpse. Then he turned away to continue talking with his companion about the construction progress. The dead man screamed louder, begging desperately to be freed.
While this was happening, Barlow suddenly woke up. In the darkness, he heard something moving across his floor. Thinking it might be an animal, he pulled back his blanket to get a closer look. To his shock, he found himself looking at a huge black spider. It was much bigger than a normal house spider (which is usually gray or brown) and had eight hairy legs.
The creature paused for a moment. Then it jumped into his bed and wrapped its legs around his arm and chest. He was terrified at first, but after a few moments, he decided not to be afraid. After all, this was no ordinary spider. This one wasn’t from Earth!
He reached over to grab it, but it clung tightly and began wrapping itself tighter around him. He was paralyzed by fear for a moment, but then his rational mind kicked in. “This is a spider from some other dimension!” he shouted at his wife. “And it wants to eat me!”
She ran over to him, trying to shake him free. At first, he didn’t realize that she was doing it for real until the creature finally began chewing her arms and hands, leaving deep scars. She fell to the ground with her screams ringing in his ears and was soon too injured to struggle anymore.
After a short while, the spider finished chewing through his wife’s flesh, leaving nothing but bloody bones. Then it leaped off him, flew across the room, and disappeared into the wall. He watched in horror as it scurried deeper and deeper inside the home.
“I’m going after it!” shouted Barlow, struggling against his chains. His wife looked at him sadly, but he ignored her. “Come on! Stop acting like a baby and follow me!” he called to his children. They tried to stop him, but they were too weak to fight him.
Barlow ran down the stairs, ignoring the pain of his wound, and followed the sound of the spider’s movements toward the front door. With great difficulty, he pulled back the bolt, pushed open the door, and stepped outside.
As soon as he did, a wave of energy hit him and he collapsed to his knees. It felt like a massive force of gravity had pulled him to the ground; he was unable to move any part of his body without tremendous effort.
A bright light filled his field of vision—then a huge shadow passed overhead, blocking most of the sunlight. As the sun moved aside again, he was shocked to see that a giant spider was sitting in the sky. The creature was almost as tall as the tallest trees growing nearby, and it seemed to have an endless supply of legs.
As Barlow gazed at the monster, more details began to emerge. Its abdomen was covered in dark purple spots. Each leg was tipped with sharp teeth, which glowed red-hot when he glanced at them.
Above each eye was an enormous horn, similar to the horns found on bulls. It appeared to be flying directly toward him, as though it had just arrived in his yard. “What the hell?” whispered Barlow. “Is this my destiny? Is this God’s punishment for being selfish and cruel?”
It took the creature only seconds to pass over him before it hovered over the forest and landed behind a large tree. As far as he could tell, the creature was still invisible to anyone else, even from across the street.
With trembling fingers, Barlow reached out and touched one of the spider’s legs, but it didn’t give way. It was so strong that it seemed made of metal. It also had a strange, oily feel. He couldn’t decide if it was hot or cold. But there was definitely something very powerful and dangerous about this thing!
When he looked back inside his home, he noticed that it had become completely silent, like an abandoned building. No matter where he went, he couldn’t hear any movement. Even the wind died down.
There was nothing except for the occasional rustling of leaves. And then, suddenly, he realized something important: Whatever was causing this was gone. The power was no longer flowing through his family. It would take days for it to wear off and for everyone to return to their senses … if they ever did.
Suddenly his cell phone rang. The ringtone startled him because he hadn’t used it in months. But when he answered, he was relieved to find that it wasn’t a telemarketer. It was his sister calling from a hospital somewhere in Oregon. He explained what happened, and she told him that she had been worried since she hadn’t heard from him for weeks.
Then she got angry. “Damn it, Jim! You should have called us!”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “You’re right.”
She continued to berate him about his selfishness. “But you never think about anything except yourself. I’ve been trying to call all week, and you’ve left a bunch of messages saying you’ll get back in touch soon. Why can’t you ever answer your damn phone?”
He didn’t know how to respond. She sounded like Mom.
“So don’t say another word,” she shouted. “Just tell me one thing: Can you come over here now? Please?”
He hesitated for a second. “Uh … well …”
“We haven’t seen Dad for three weeks,” said her son. “Maybe he’s dead, or maybe we need to do something for him.”
“No, he’s alive,” Barlow insisted. “And he’s going to be fine. I promise.”
He hung up quickly after that. He knew his sister wouldn’t listen to reason. She always believed that everything had to be a big production. But it was hard for Barlow to argue with her when he couldn’t prove that she was wrong.
“Well, if it isn’t little brother,” laughed Dr. Huxley. He stepped forward with his walking stick. “I see that your powers are intact.”
The old man walked to the front door and looked out at the woods. After a few seconds, he nodded his head as if satisfied. Then he turned and addressed the spider again, saying, “Come on outside.”
“Why don’t you want us to see this?” asked Barlow.
Huxley gave him a sly grin and then chuckled. “This is not a pretty sight. If you want to see it, go ahead, but be prepared for a shock.”
Barlow didn’t understand what was happening, but he followed Huxley’s orders anyway. He approached the house and opened the front door. A blast of frigid wind hit him as soon as he entered the living room, along with several loud bangs. Then he saw what had startled the old man.
One of the spiders from the woods had somehow managed to crawl inside through the window and was scurrying around the living room, eating the furniture and walls as they went. The monster was easily eight feet long, covered in gray-green carapace armor, with two small heads that were attached by short necklaces of bone and leather.
Its eyes were set in the middle of its head, rather than at the ends like other creatures, and it had rows of sharp teeth.
The first thing Barlow noticed was how much bigger and more menacing it looked up close. He could barely recognize the animal it belonged to. The spider’s movements reminded him of something out of science fiction. This creature moved so fast that it appeared to flow instead of walk.
Huxley stood calmly next to the spider while he waited for it to finish consuming the couch. Then, as if he planned this all along, he pulled a gun from behind his back and shot it right between the tiny eyes. There was a brief flash, and the spider jerked violently.
But even though it fell back onto the carpet, it still writhed and squirmed, and it took several shots before it finally stopped moving completely.
“How did you do that?” Barlow gasped in amazement.
The old doctor shrugged and smiled as he returned his gun to his belt. “You can only be amazed for so long. It happens every time.”
Barlow looked out at the woods. There weren’t any spiders there anymore—not even a single web to show they’d ever existed. “What are you doing out here? And why are you shooting them?”
Dr. Huxley pointed at the house. “There’s no point trying to fight them off unless you can kill them without damaging yourself. They can survive anything. So we have to use weapons that won’t hurt us. Otherwise, we might as well surrender. Besides, these things have been coming here since we moved in almost forty years ago. We just never knew what was causing the mess until recently. Now, though, the secret is out.”
As he spoke, he retrieved several items from an old canvas duffel bag that lay on the floor. When he was finished, he began stacking rocks, sticks, and pieces of metal against the wall where the spider had once crawled.
Then he took his walking stick and placed the end into a large hole in the wall. As he pressed down on the handle, he said, “It’s not easy to explain, but I think it will all become clear eventually.”
A loud crack echoed through the house, and Huxley let out a sigh of satisfaction. Then he turned to Barlow and nodded toward the open window. “Go ahead and try it again.”
Barlow walked up to the sill and stared at the woods. His eyes narrowed in thought.
Nothing happened, of course. Not a single insect emerged to attack him.
But then suddenly, a massive spider came crashing out of the trees and launched itself into his face, knocking him backward and onto the porch. Before Barlow could blink, another one was already crawling over his legs.
They were both covered in black, hairy skin, with their two small heads poking out from above a thin line of spines that ran from shoulder to wrist. Both creatures had six legs, and their bodies seemed as thick as a human’s torso or wider.
They moved slowly enough to allow Barlow plenty of time to react. He quickly reached out and grabbed the closest one by a handful of hair, holding the beast suspended in mid-air as he brought his knee upward. The force of his kick knocked it halfway across the deck and landed it in a pile of rotting leaves.
Then Barlow heard a loud pop from his elbow, and he felt hot pain shoot straight through his body. He cried out and let go of the spider as it dropped to the ground and scurried away on its many limbs.
He was about to get up when the second spider launched itself from the grass directly above his head, slamming into the side of his neck and sending him tumbling back into the yard.
“Motherfucker!” he shouted. The spider fell from his shoulders and scuttled off toward the woods.
Barlow tried to stand up, but his legs gave way under him. As he stumbled back onto the porch, Huxley stepped outside and helped him up. “Are you okay?”
The old doctor’s voice sounded concerned. “I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “My fucking arm! I think I broke my fucking arm!”
The End