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Coraline

Neil Gaimanwith Illustrations by Dave McKean

I started this for HollyI finished it for Maddy

ContentsE-book extras by Neil Gaiman and Dave

McKean

EPIGRAPH

I. CORALINE DISCOVERED THE

DOOR a little while after they movedinto the house.

II. THE NEXT DAY IT HAD stoppedraining, but a thick white fog hadlowered over the house.

III. THE NEXT DAY THE sunshone, and Coraline’s mother tookher into the nearest large town

IV. THE HOUSE LOOKED EXACTLY

the same from the outside. Or al-most exactly the same: around…

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V. CORALINE LOCKED THE DOOR ofthe drawing room withthe cold black key.

VI. CORALINE WAS WOKEN BY themidmorning sun, full on her face.

VII. SOMEWHERE INSIDE HER

Coraline could feel a huge sobwelling up.

VIII. THE OTHER MOTHER lookedhealthier than before: there was alittle blush to her cheeks…

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IX. OUTSIDE, THE WORLD HAD be-come a formless, swirling mist withno shapes or shadows…

X. CORALINE WALKED UP thestairs outside the building to thetopmost flat…

XI. ONCE INSIDE, IN HER FLAT, orrather, in the flat that was not hers,Coraline…

XII. HER MOTHER SHOOK HER

gently awake.“Coraline?” she said.

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XIII. CORALINE’S PARENTS NEVER

seemed to remember anything…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CREDITS

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

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Fairy tales are more thantrue: not because they tellus that dragons exist, butbecause they tell us thatdragons can be beaten.

—G. K. Chesterton

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I.CORALINE DISCOVERED THE DOOR a little whileafter they moved into the house.

It was a very old house—it had an atticunder the roof and a cellar under the groundand an overgrown garden with huge old treesin it.

Coraline’s family didn’t own all of thehouse—it was too big for that. Instead theyowned part of it.

There were other people who lived inthe old house.

Miss Spink and Miss Forcible lived inthe flat below Coraline’s, on the ground floor.They were both old and round, and theylived in their flat with a number of ageingHighland terriers who had names like Ham-ish and Andrew and Jock. Once upon a timeMiss Spink and Miss Forcible had been act-resses, as Miss Spink told Coraline the firsttime she met her.

“You see, Caroline,” Miss Spink said,getting Coraline’s name wrong, “both myselfand Miss Forcible were famous actresses, inour time. We trod the boards, luvvy. Oh,don’t let Hamish eat the fruitcake, or he’ll beup all night with his tummy.”

“It’s Coraline. Not Caroline. Coraline,”said Coraline.

In the flat above Coraline’s, under theroof, was a crazy old man with a big mus-tache. He told Coraline that he was training amouse circus. He wouldn’t let anyone see it.

“One day, little Caroline, when they areall ready, everyone in the whole world willsee the wonders of my mouse circus. You askme why you cannot see it now. Is that whatyou asked me?”

“No,” said Coraline quietly, “I asked younot to call me Caroline. It’s Coraline.”

“The reason you cannot see the mousecircus,” said the man upstairs, “is that themice are not yet ready and rehearsed. Also,

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they refuse to play the songs I have writtenfor them. All the songs I have written for themice to play go oompah oompah. But thewhite mice will only play toodle oodle, likethat. I am thinking of trying them on differ-ent types of cheese.”

Coraline didn’t think there really was amouse circus. She thought the old man wasprobably making it up.

The day after they moved in, Coralinewent exploring.

She explored the garden. It was a biggarden: at the very back was an old tenniscourt, but no one in the house played tennisand the fence around the court had holes init and the net had mostly rotted away; therewas an old rose garden, filled with stunted,flyblown rosebushes; there was a rockerythat was all rocks; there was a fairy ring,made of squidgy brown toadstools whichsmelled dreadful if you accidentally trod onthem.

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There was also a well. On the first dayCoraline’s family moved in, Miss Spink andMiss Forcible made a point of telling Cor-aline how dangerous the well was, and theywarned her to be sure she kept away from it.So Coraline set off to explore for it, so thatshe knew where it was, to keep away from itproperly.

She found it on the third day, in an over-grown meadow beside the tennis court, be-hind a clump of trees—a low brick circle al-most hidden in the high grass. The well hadbeen covered up by wooden boards, to stopanyone falling in. There was a small knotholein one of the boards, and Coraline spent anafternoon dropping pebbles and acornsthrough the hole and waiting, and counting,until she heard the plop as they hit the waterfar below.

Coraline also explored for animals. Shefound a hedgehog, and a snakeskin (but no

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snake), and a rock that looked just like afrog, and a toad that looked just like a rock.

There was also a haughty black cat, whosat on walls and tree stumps and watchedher but slipped away if ever she went over totry to play with it.

That was how she spent her first twoweeks in the house—exploring the gardenand the grounds.

Her mother made her come back insidefor dinner and for lunch. And Coraline hadto make sure she dressed up warm beforeshe went out, for it was a very cold summerthat year; but go out she did, exploring, everyday until the day it rained, when Coralinehad to stay inside.

“What should I do?” asked Coraline.“Read a book,” said her mother. “Watch

a video. Play with your toys. Go and pesterMiss Spink or Miss Forcible, or the crazy oldman upstairs.”

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“No,” said Coraline. “I don’t want to dothose things. I want to explore.”

“I don’t really mind what you do,” saidCoraline’s mother, “as long as you don’tmake a mess.”

Coraline went over to the window andwatched the rain come down. It wasn’t thekind of rain you could go out in—it was theother kind, the kind that threw itself downfrom the sky and splashed where it landed. Itwas rain that meant business, and currentlyits business was turning the garden into amuddy, wet soup.

Coraline had watched all the videos. Shewas bored with her toys, and she’d read allher books.

She turned on the television. She wentfrom channel to channel to channel, butthere was nothing on but men in suits talkingabout the stock market, and talk shows.Eventually, she found something to watch: itwas the last half of a natural history program

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about something called protective coloration.She watched animals, birds, and insectswhich disguised themselves as leaves ortwigs or other animals to escape from thingsthat could hurt them. She enjoyed it, but itended too soon and was followed by a pro-gram about a cake factory.

It was time to talk to her father.Coraline’s father was home. Both of her

parents worked, doing things on computers,which meant that they were home a lot of thetime. Each of them had their own study.

“Hello Coraline,” he said when she camein, without turning round.

“Mmph,” said Coraline. “It’s raining.”“Yup,” said her father. “It’s bucketing

down.”“No,” said Coraline. “It’s just raining.

Can I go outside?”“What does your mother say?”“She says you’re not going out in weath-

er like that, Coraline Jones.”

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“Then, no.”“But I want to carry on exploring.”“Then explore the flat,” suggested her

father. “Look—here’s a piece of paper and apen. Count all the doors and windows. Listeverything blue. Mount an expedition to dis-cover the hot water tank. And leave me aloneto work.”

“Can I go into the drawing room?” Thedrawing room was where the Joneses keptthe expensive (and uncomfortable) furnitureCoraline’s grandmother had left them whenshe died. Coraline wasn’t allowed in there.Nobody went in there. It was only for best.

“If you don’t make a mess. And youdon’t touch anything.”

Coraline considered this carefully, thenshe took the paper and pen and went off toexplore the inside of the flat.

She discovered the hot water tank (itwas in a cupboard in the kitchen).

She counted everything blue (153).

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She counted the windows (21).She counted the doors (14).Of the doors that she found, thirteen

opened and closed. The other—the big,carved, brown wooden door at the far cornerof the drawing room—was locked.

She said to her mother, “Where doesthat door go?”

“Nowhere, dear.”“It has to go somewhere.”Her mother shook her head. “Look,” she

told Coraline.She reached up and took a string of keys

from the top of the kitchen doorframe. Shesorted through them carefully, and selectedthe oldest, biggest, blackest, rustiest key.They went into the drawing room. She un-locked the door with the key.

The door swung open.Her mother was right. The door didn’t

go anywhere. It opened onto a brick wall.

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“When this place was just one house,”said Coraline’s mother, “that door wentsomewhere. When they turned the house in-to flats, they simply bricked it up. The otherside is the empty flat on the other side of thehouse, the one that’s still for sale.”

She shut the door and put the string ofkeys back on top of the kitchen doorframe.

“You didn’t lock it,” said Coraline.Her mother shrugged. “Why should I

lock it?” she asked. “It doesn’t go anywhere.”Coraline didn’t say anything.It was nearly dark outside now, and the

rain was still coming down, pattering againstthe windows and blurring the lights of thecars in the street outside.

Coraline’s father stopped working andmade them all dinner.

Coraline was disgusted. “Daddy,” shesaid, “you’ve made a recipe again.”

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“It’s leek and potato stew with a tar-ragon garnish and melted Gruyère cheese,”he admitted.

Coraline sighed. Then she went to thefreezer and got out some microwave chipsand a microwave minipizza.

“You know I don’t like recipes,” she toldher father, while her dinner went around andaround and the little red numbers on the mi-crowave oven counted down to zero.

“If you tried it, maybe you’d like it,” saidCoraline’s father, but she shook her head.

That night, Coraline lay awake in herbed. The rain had stopped, and she was al-most asleep when something went t-t-t-t-t-t.She sat up in bed.

Something went kreeee……aaaak

Coraline got out of bed and looked downthe hall, but saw nothing strange. She walkeddown the hall. From her parents’ bedroomcame a low snoring—that was her

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father—and an occasional sleeping mut-ter—that was her mother.

Coraline wondered if she’d dreamed it,whatever it was.

Something moved.It was little more than a shadow, and it

scuttled down the darkened hall fast, like alittle patch of night.

She hoped it wasn’t a spider. Spidersmade Coraline intensely uncomfortable.

The black shape went into the drawingroom, and Coraline followed it a littlenervously.

The room was dark. The only light camefrom the hall, and Coraline, who was stand-ing in the doorway, cast a huge and distortedshadow onto the drawing room carpet—shelooked like a thin giant woman.

Coraline was just wondering whether ornot she ought to turn on the lights when shesaw the black shape edge slowly out from be-neath the sofa. It paused, and then dashed

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silently across the carpet toward the farthestcorner of the room.

There was no furniture in that corner ofthe room.

Coraline turned on the light.There was nothing in the corner. Noth-

ing but the old door that opened onto thebrick wall.

She was sure that her mother had shutthe door, but now it was ever so slightlyopen. Just a crack. Coraline went over to itand looked in. There was nothing there—justa wall, built of red bricks.

Coraline closed the old wooden door,turned out the light, and went to bed.

She dreamed of black shapes that slidfrom place to place, avoiding the light, untilthey were all gathered together under themoon. Little black shapes with little red eyesand sharp yellow teeth.

They started to sing,We are small but we are many

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We are many we are smallWe were here before you roseWe will be here when you fall.

Their voices were high and whisperingand slightly whiney. They made Coraline feeluncomfortable.

Then Coraline dreamed a few commer-cials, and after that she dreamed of nothingat all.

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II.THE NEXT DAY IT HAD stopped raining, but athick white fog had lowered over the house.

“I’m going for a walk,” said Coraline.“Don’t go too far,” said her mother.

“And dress up warmly.”Coraline put on her blue coat with a

hood, her red scarf, and her yellow Welling-ton boots.

She went out.Miss Spink was walking her dogs.

“Hello, Caroline,” said Miss Spink. “Rottenweather.”

“Yes,” said Coraline.“I played Portia once,” said Miss Spink.

“Miss Forcible talks about her Ophelia, but itwas my Portia they came to see. When wetrod the boards.”

Miss Spink was bundled up in pulloversand cardigans, so she seemed more smalland circular than ever. She looked like a

large, fluffy egg. She wore thick glasses thatmade her eyes seem huge.

“They used to send flowers to my dress-ing room. They did,” she said.

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“Who did?” asked Coraline.Miss Spink looked around cautiously,

looking over first one shoulder and then overthe other, peering into the mists as thoughsomeone might be listening.

“Men,” she whispered. Then she tuggedthe dogs to heel and waddled off back towardthe house.

Coraline continued her walk.She was three quarters of the way

around the house when she saw Miss For-cible, standing at the door to the flat sheshared with Miss Spink.

“Have you seen Miss Spink, Caroline?”Coraline told her that she had, and that

Miss Spink was out walking the dogs.“I do hope she doesn’t get lost—it’ll

bring on her shingles if she does, you’ll see,”said Miss Forcible. “You’d have to be an ex-plorer to find your way around in this fog.”

“I’m an explorer,” said Coraline.

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“Of course you are, luvvy,” said MissForcible. “Don’t get lost, now.”

Coraline continued walking through thegardens in the gray mist. She always kept insight of the house. After about ten minutes ofwalking she found herself back where shehad started.

The hair over her eyes was limp and wet,and her face felt damp.

“Ahoy! Caroline!” called the crazy oldman upstairs.

“Oh, hullo,” said Coraline.She could hardly see the old man

through the mist.He walked down the steps on the out-

side of the house that led up past Coraline’sfront door to the door of his flat. He walkeddown very slowly. Coraline waited at the bot-tom of the stairs.

“The mice do not like the mist,” he toldher. “It makes their whiskers droop.”

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“I don’t like the mist much, either,” ad-mitted Coraline.

The old man leaned down, so close thatthe bottoms of his mustache tickled Cor-aline’s ear. “The mice have a message foryou,” he whispered.

Coraline didn’t know what to say.“The message is this. Don’t go through

the door.” He paused. “Does that mean any-thing to you?”

“No,” said Coraline.The old man shrugged. “They are funny,

the mice. They get things wrong. They gotyour name wrong, you know. They kept say-ing Coraline. Not Caroline. Not Caroline atall.”

He picked up a milk bottle from the bot-tom of the stairs and started back up to hisattic flat.

Coraline went indoors. Her mother wasworking in her study. Her mother’s studysmelled of flowers.

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“What shall I do?” asked Coraline.“When do you go back to school?” asked

her mother.“Next week,” said Coraline.“Hmph,” said her mother. “I suppose I

shall have to get you new school clothes. Re-mind me, dear, or else I’ll forget,” and shewent back to typing things on the computerscreen.

“What shall I do?” repeated Coraline.“Draw something,” Her mother passed

her a sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen.Coraline tried drawing the mist. After

ten minutes of drawing she still had a whitesheet of paper with

written on it in one corner in slightly wigglyletters. She grunted and passed it to hermother.

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“Mm. Very modern, dear,” said Cor-aline’s mother.

Coraline crept into the drawing roomand tried to open the old door in the corner.It was locked once more. She supposed hermother must have locked it again. Sheshrugged.

Coraline went to see her father.He had his back to the door as he typed.

“Go away,” he said cheerfully as she walkedin.

“I’m bored,” she said.“Learn how to tap-dance,” he suggested,

without turning around.Coraline shook her head. “Why don’t

you play with me?” she asked.“Busy,” he said. “Working,” he added.

He still hadn’t turned around to look at her.“Why don’t you go and bother Miss Spinkand Miss Forcible?”

Coraline put on her coat and pulled upher hood and went out of the house. She

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went downstairs. She rang the door of MissSpink and Miss Forcible’s flat. Coraline couldhear a frenzied woofing as the Scottie dogsran out into the hall. After a while MissSpink opened the door.

“Oh, it’s you, Caroline,” she said.“Angus, Hamish, Bruce, down now, luvvies.It’s only Caroline. Come in, dear. Would youlike a cup of tea?”

The flat smelled of furniture polish anddogs.

“Yes, please,” said Coraline. Miss Spinkled her into a dusty little room, which shecalled the parlor. On the walls were black-and-white photographs of pretty women,and theater programs in frames. Miss For-cible was sitting in one of the armchairs,knitting hard.

They poured Coraline a cup of tea in alittle pink bone china cup, with a saucer.They gave her a dry Garibaldi biscuit to gowith it.

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Miss Forcible looked at Miss Spink,picked up her knitting, and took a deepbreath. “Anyway, April. As I was saying: youstill have to admit, there’s life in the old dogyet.”

“Miriam, dear, neither of us is as youngas we were.”

“Madame Arcati,” replied Miss Forcible.“The nurse in Romeo. Lady Bracknell. Char-acter parts. They can’t retire you from thestage.”

“Now, Miriam, we agreed,” said MissSpink. Coraline wondered if they’d forgottenshe was there. They weren’t making muchsense; she decided they were having an argu-ment as old and comfortable as an armchair,the kind of argument that no one ever reallywins or loses but which can go on forever, ifboth parties are willing.

She sipped her tea.“I’ll read the leaves, if you want,” said

Miss Spink to Coraline.

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“Sorry?” said Coraline.“The tea leaves, dear. I’ll read your

future.”Coraline passed Miss Spink her cup.

Miss Spink peered shortsightedly at theblack tea leaves in the bottom. She pursedher lips.

“You know, Caroline,” she said, after awhile, “you are in terrible danger.”

Miss Forcible snorted, and put down herknitting. “Don’t be silly, April. Stop scaringthe girl. Your eyes are going. Pass me thatcup, child.”

Coraline carried the cup over to MissForcible. Miss Forcible looked into it care-fully, shook her head, and looked into itagain.

“Oh dear,” she said. “You were right,April. She is in danger.”

“See, Miriam,” said Miss Spink tri-umphantly. “My eyes are as good as they everwere… .”

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“What am I in danger from?” askedCoraline.

Misses Spink and Forcible stared at herblankly. “It didn’t say,” said Miss Spink. “Tealeaves aren’t reliable for that kind of thing.Not really. They’re good for general, but notfor specifics.”

“What should I do then?” asked Cor-aline, who was slightly alarmed by this.

“Don’t wear green in your dressingroom,” suggested Miss Spink.

“Or mention the Scottish play,” addedMiss Forcible.

Coraline wondered why so few of theadults she had met made any sense. Shesometimes wondered who they thought theywere talking to.

“And be very, very careful,” said MissSpink. She got up from the armchair andwent over to the fireplace. On the mantel-piece was a small jar, and Miss Spink took offthe top of the jar and began to pull things out

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of it. There was a tiny china duck, a thimble,a strange little brass coin, two paper clipsand a stone with a hole in it.

She passed Coraline the stone with ahole in it.

“What’s it for?” asked Coraline. The holewent all the way through the middle of thestone. She held it up to the window andlooked through it.

“It might help,” said Miss Spink.“They’re good for bad things, sometimes.”

Coraline put on her coat, said good-byeto Misses Spink and Forcible and to the dogs,and went outside.

The mist hung like blindness around thehouse. She walked slowly to the stairs up toher family’s flat, and then stopped andlooked around.

In the mist, it was a ghost-world. Indanger? thought Coraline to herself. It soun-ded exciting. It didn’t sound like a bad thing.Not really.

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Coraline went back upstairs, her fistclosed tightly around her new stone.

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III.THE NEXT DAY THE sun shone, and Coraline’smother took her into the nearest large townto buy clothes for school. They dropped herfather off at the railway station. He was go-ing into London for the day to see somepeople.

Coraline waved him good-bye.They went to the department store to

buy the school clothes.Coraline saw some Day-Glo green gloves

she liked a lot. Her mother refused to buythem for her, preferring instead to buy whitesocks, navy blue school underpants, fourgray blouses, and a dark gray skirt.

“But Mum, everybody at school’s gotgray blouses and everything. Nobody’s gotgreen gloves. I could be the only one.”

Her mother ignored her; she was talkingto the shop assistant. They were talkingabout which kind of sweater to get for

Coraline, and were agreeing that the bestthing to do would be to get one that was em-barrassingly large and baggy, in the hopesthat one day she might grow into it.

Coraline wandered off and looked at adisplay of Wellington boots shaped like frogsand ducks and rabbits.

Then she wandered back.“Coraline? Oh, there you are. Where on

earth were you?”“I was kidnapped by aliens,” said Cor-

aline. “They came down from outer spacewith ray guns, but I fooled them by wearing awig and laughing in a foreign accent, and Iescaped.”

“Yes, dear. Now, I think you could dowith some more hair clips, don’t you?”

“No.”“Well, let’s say half a dozen, to be on the

safe side,” said her mother.Coraline didn’t say anything.

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In the car on the way back home, Cor-aline said, “What’s in the empty flat?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, I expect. Itprobably looks like our flat before we movedin. Empty rooms.”

“Do you think you could get into it fromour flat?”

“Not unless you can walk throughbricks, dear.”

“Oh.”They got home around lunchtime. The

sun was shining, although the day was cold.Coraline’s mother looked in the fridge andfound a sad little tomato and a piece ofcheese with green stuff growing on it. Therewas only a crust in the bread bin.

“I’d better dash down to the shops andget some fish fingers or something,” said hermother. “Do you want to come?”

“No,” said Coraline.

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“Suit yourself,” said her mother, andleft. Then she came back and got her purseand car keys and went out again.

Coraline was bored.She flipped through a book her mother

was reading about native people in a distantcountry; how every day they would takepieces of white silk and draw on them inwax, then dip the silks in dye, then draw onthem more in wax and dye them some more,then boil the wax out in hot water, and thenfinally, throw the now-beautiful cloths on afire and burn them to ashes.

It seemed particularly pointless to Cor-aline, but she hoped that the people enjoyedit.

She was still bored, and her motherwasn’t yet home.

Coraline got a chair and pushed it overto the kitchen door. She climbed onto thechair and reached up. She got down, then gota broom from the broom cupboard. She

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climbed back on the chair again and reachedup with the broom.

Chink.She climbed down from the chair and

picked up the keys. She smiled triumphantly.Then she leaned the broom against the walland went into the drawing room.

The family did not use the drawingroom. They had inherited the furniture fromCoraline’s grandmother, along with awooden coffee table, a side table, a heavyglass ashtray, and the oil painting of a bowlof fruit. Coraline could never work out whyanyone would want to paint a bowl of fruit.Other than that, the room was empty: therewere no knickknacks on the mantelpiece, nostatues or clocks; nothing that made it feelcomfortable or lived-in.

The old black key felt colder than any ofthe others. She pushed it into the keyhole. Itturned smoothly, with a satisfying clunk.

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Coraline stopped and listened. She knewshe was doing something wrong, and she wastrying to listen for her mother coming back,but she heard nothing. Then Coraline put herhand on the doorknob and turned it; and, fi-nally, she opened the door.

It opened on to a dark hallway. Thebricks had gone as if they’d never been there.There was a cold, musty smell comingthrough the open doorway: it smelled likesomething very old and very slow.

Coraline went through the door.She wondered what the empty flat

would be like—if that was where the corridorled.

Coraline walked down the corridor un-easily. There was something very familiarabout it.

The carpet beneath her feet was thesame carpet they had in her flat. The wallpa-per was the same wallpaper they had. The

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picture hanging in the hall was the same thatthey had hanging in their hallway at home.

She knew where she was: she was in herown home. She hadn’t left.

She shook her head, confused.She stared at the picture hanging on the

wall: no, it wasn’t exactly the same. The pic-ture they had in their own hallway showed aboy in old-fashioned clothes staring at somebubbles. But now the expression on his facewas different—he was looking at the bubblesas if he was planning to do something verynasty indeed to them. And there wassomething peculiar about his eyes.

Coraline stared at his eyes, trying to fig-ure out what exactly was different.

She almost had it when somebody said,“Coraline?”

It sounded like her mother. Coralinewent into the kitchen, where the voice hadcome from. A woman stood in the kitchen

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with her back to Coraline. She looked a littlelike Coraline’s mother. Only…

Only her skin was white as paper.Only she was taller and thinner.Only her fingers were too long, and they

never stopped moving, and her dark red fin-gernails were curved and sharp.

“Coraline?” the woman said. “Is thatyou?”

And then she turned around. Her eyeswere big black buttons.

“Lunchtime, Coraline,” said the woman.“Who are you?” asked Coraline.“I’m your other mother,” said the wo-

man. “Go and tell your other father thatlunch is ready,” She opened the door of theoven. Suddenly Coraline realized howhungry she was. It smelled wonderful. “Well,go on.”

Coraline went down the hall, to whereher father’s study was. She opened the door.There was a man in there, sitting at the

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keyboard, with his back to her. “Hello,” saidCoraline. “I—I mean, she said to say thatlunch is ready.”

The man turned around.His eyes were buttons, big and black and

shiny.“Hello Coraline,” he said. “I’m starving.”He got up and went with her into the

kitchen. They sat at the kitchen table, andCoraline’s other mother brought them lunch.A huge, golden-brown roasted chicken, friedpotatoes, tiny green peas. Coraline shoveledthe food into her mouth. It tasted wonderful.

“We’ve been waiting for you for a longtime,” said Coraline’s other father.

“For me?”“Yes,” said the other mother. “It wasn’t

the same here without you. But we knewyou’d arrive one day, and then we could be aproper family. Would you like some morechicken?”

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It was the best chicken that Coraline hadever eaten. Her mother sometimes madechicken, but it was always out of packets orfrozen, and was very dry, and it never tastedof anything. When Coraline’s father cookedchicken he bought real chicken, but he didstrange things to it, like stewing it in wine, orstuffing it with prunes, or baking it in pastry,and Coraline would always refuse to touch iton principle.

She took some more chicken.“I didn’t know I had another mother,”

said Coraline, cautiously.“Of course you do. Everyone does,” said

the other mother, her black button eyesgleaming. “After lunch I thought you mightlike to play in your room with the rats.”

“The rats?”“From upstairs.”Coraline had never seen a rat, except on

television. She was quite looking forward to

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it. This was turning out to be a very interest-ing day after all.

After lunch her other parents did thewashing up, and Coraline went down the hallto her other bedroom.

It was different from her bedroom athome. For a start it was painted in an off-putting shade of green and a peculiar shadeof pink.

Coraline decided that she wouldn’t wantto have to sleep in there, but that the colorscheme was an awful lot more interestingthan her own bedroom.

There were all sorts of remarkablethings in there she’d never seen before: win-dup angels that fluttered around the bed-room like startled sparrows; books with pic-tures that writhed and crawled andshimmered; little dinosaur skulls thatchattered their teeth as she passed. A wholetoy box filled with wonderful toys.

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This is more like it, thought Coraline.She looked out of the window. Outside, theview was the same one she saw from her ownbedroom: trees, fields, and beyond them, onthe horizon, distant purple hills.

Something black scurried across thefloor and vanished under the bed. Coralinegot down on her knees and looked under thebed. Fifty little red eyes stared back at her.

“Hello,” said Coraline. “Are you therats?”

They came out from under the bed,blinking their eyes in the light. They hadshort, soot-black fur, little red eyes, pinkpaws like tiny hands, and pink, hairless tailslike long, smooth worms.

“Can you talk?” she asked.The largest, blackest of the rats shook its

head. It had an unpleasant sort of smile, Cor-aline thought.

“Well,” asked Coraline, “what do youdo?”

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The rats formed a circle.Then they began to climb on top of each

other, carefully but swiftly, until they hadformed a pyramid with the largest rat at thetop.

The rats began to sing, in high, whisperyvoices,

We have teeth and we have tailsWe have tails we have eyesWe were here before you fellYou will be here when we rise.

It wasn’t a pretty song. Coraline wassure she’d heard it before, or something likeit, although she was unable to remember ex-actly where.

Then the pyramid fell apart, and the ratsscampered, fast and black, toward the door.

The other crazy old man upstairs wasstanding in the doorway, holding a tall blackhat in his hands. The rats scampered up him,burrowing into his pockets, into his shirt, uphis trouser legs, down his neck.

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The largest rat climbed onto the oldman’s shoulders, swung up on the long graymustache, past the big black button eyes,and onto the top of the man’s head.

In seconds the only evidence that therats were there at all were the restless lumpsunder the man’s clothes, forever sliding fromplace to place across him; and there was stillthe largest rat, who stared down, with glitter-ing red eyes, at Coraline from the man’shead.

The old man put his hat on, and the lastrat was gone.

“Hello Coraline,” said the other old manupstairs. “I heard you were here. It is timefor the rats to have their dinner. But you cancome up with me, if you like, and watch themfeed.”

There was something hungry in the oldman’s button eyes that made Coraline feeluncomfortable. “No, thank you,” she said.“I’m going outside to explore.”

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The old man nodded, very slowly. Cor-aline could hear the rats whispering to eachother, although she could not tell what theywere saying.

She was not certain that she wanted toknow what they were saying.

Her other parents stood in the kitchendoorway as she walked down the corridor,smiling identical smiles, and waving slowly.“Have a nice time outside,” said her othermother.

“We’ll just wait here for you to comeback,” said her other father.

When Coraline got to the front door, sheturned back and looked at them. They werestill watching her, and waving, and smiling.

Coraline walked outside, and down thesteps.

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IV.The house looked exactly the same from theoutside. Or almost exactly the same: aroundMiss Spink and Miss Forcible’s door wereblue and red lightbulbs that flashed on andoff spelling out words, the lights chasingeach other around the door. On and off,around and around. astounding! was fol-lowed by a theatrical and then triumph!!!

It was a sunny, cold day, exactly like theone she’d left.

There was a polite noise from behindher.

She turned around. Standing on the wallnext to her was a large black cat, identical tothe large black cat she’d seen in the groundsat home.

“Good afternoon,” said the cat.Its voice sounded like the voice at the

back of Coraline’s head, the voice she

thought words in, but a man’s voice, not agirl’s.

“Hello,” said Coraline. “I saw a cat likeyou in the garden at home. You must be theother cat.”

The cat shook its head. “No,” it said.“I’m not the other anything. I’m me.” Ittipped its head to one side; green eyes glin-ted. “You people are spread all over theplace. Cats, on the other hand, keepourselves together. If you see what I mean.”

“I suppose. But if you’re the same cat Isaw at home, how can you talk?”

Cats don’t have shoulders, not likepeople do. But the cat shrugged, in onesmooth movement that started at the tip ofits tail and ended in a raised movement of itswhiskers. “I can talk.”

“Cats don’t talk at home.”“No?” said the cat.“No,” said Coraline.

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The cat leaped smoothly from the wall tothe grass near Coraline’s feet. It stared up ather.

“Well, you’re the expert on thesethings,” said the cat dryly. “After all, whatwould I know? I’m only a cat.”

It began to walk away, head and tail heldhigh and proud.

“Come back,” said Coraline. “Please. I’msorry. I really am.”

The cat stopped walking, sat down, andbegan to wash itself thoughtfully, apparentlyunaware of Coraline’s existence.

“We…we could be friends, you know,”said Coraline.

“We could be rare specimens of an exot-ic breed of African dancing elephants,” saidthe cat. “But we’re not. At least,” it addedcattily, after darting a brief look at Coraline,“I’m not.”

Coraline sighed.

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“Please. What’s your name?” Coralineasked the cat. “Look, I’m Coraline. Okay?”

The cat yawned slowly, carefully, reveal-ing a mouth and tongue of astounding pink-ness. “Cats don’t have names,” it said.

“No?” said Coraline.“No,” said the cat. “Now, you people

have names. That’s because you don’t knowwho you are. We know who we are, so wedon’t need names.”

There was something irritatingly self-centered about the cat, Coraline decided. Asif it were, in its opinion, the only thing in anyworld or place that could possibly be of anyimportance.

Half of her wanted to be very rude to it;the other half of her wanted to be polite anddeferential. The polite half won.

“Please, what is this place?”The cat glanced around briefly. “It’s

here,” said the cat.

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“I can see that. Well, how did you gethere?”

“Like you did. I walked,” said the cat.“Like this.”

Coraline watched as the cat walkedslowly across the lawn. It walked behind atree, but didn’t come out the other side. Cor-aline went over to the tree and looked behindit. The cat was gone.

She walked back toward the house.There was another polite noise from behindher. It was the cat.

“By the by,” it said. “It was sensible ofyou to bring protection. I’d hang on to it, if Iwere you.”

“Protection?”“That’s what I said,” said the cat. “And

anyway—”It paused, and stared intently at

something that wasn’t there.Then it went down into a low crouch

and moved slowly forward, two or three

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steps. It seemed to be stalking an invisiblemouse. Abruptly, it turned tail and dashedfor the woods.

It vanished among the trees.Coraline wondered what the cat had

meant.She also wondered whether cats could

all talk where she came from and just chosenot to, or whether they could only talk whenthey were here—wherever here was.

She walked down the brick steps to theMisses Spink and Forcible’s front door. Theblue and red lights flashed on and off.

The door was open, just slightly. Sheknocked on it, but her first knock made thedoor swing open, and Coraline went in.

She was in a dark room that smelled ofdust and velvet. The door swung shut behindher, and the room was black. Coraline edgedforward into a small anteroom. Her facebrushed against something soft. It was cloth.

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She reached up her hand and pushed at thecloth. It parted.

She stood blinking on the other side ofthe velvet curtains, in a poorly lit theater. Faraway, at the edge of the room, was a highwooden stage, empty and bare, a dim spot-light shining onto it from high above.

There were seats between Coraline andthe stage. Rows and rows of seats. She hearda shuffling noise, and a light came towardher, swinging from side to side. When it wascloser she saw the light was coming from aflashlight being carried in the mouth of alarge black Scottie dog, its muzzle gray withage.

“Hello,” said Coraline.The dog put the flashlight down on the

floor, and looked up at her. “Right. Let’s seeyour ticket,” he said gruffly.

“Ticket?”

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“That’s what I said. Ticket. I haven’t gotall day, you know. You can’t watch the showwithout a ticket.”

Coraline sighed. “I don’t have a ticket,”she admitted.

“Another one,” said the dog gloomily.“Come in here, bold as anything. ‘Where’syour ticket?’ ‘Haven’t got one,’ I don’tknow…” It shook its head, then shrugged.“Come on, then.”

He picked up the flashlight in his mouthand trotted off into the dark. Coraline fol-lowed him. When he got near the front of thestage he stopped and shone the flashlightonto an empty seat. Coraline sat down, andthe dog wandered off.

As her eyes got used to the darkness sherealized that the other inhabitants of theseats were also dogs.

There was a sudden hissing noise frombehind the stage. Coraline decided it was thesound of a scratchy old record being put onto

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a record player. The hissing became thenoise of trumpets, and Miss Spink and MissForcible came onto the stage.

Miss Spink was riding a one-wheeled bi-cycle and juggling balls. Miss Forcibleskipped behind her, holding a basket offlowers. She scattered the flower petalsacross the stage as she went. They reachedthe front of the stage, and Miss Spink leapednimbly off the unicycle, and the two old wo-men bowed low.

All the dogs thumped their tails andbarked enthusiastically. Coraline clappedpolitely.

Then they unbuttoned their fluffy roundcoats and opened them. But their coats wer-en’t all that opened: their faces opened, too,like empty shells, and out of the old emptyfluffy round bodies stepped two young wo-men. They were thin, and pale, and quitepretty, and had black button eyes.

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The new Miss Spink was wearing greentights, and high brown boots that went mostof the way up her legs. The new Miss For-cible wore a white dress and had flowers inher long yellow hair.

Coraline pressed back against her seat.Miss Spink went off the stage, and the

noise of trumpets squealed as the gramo-phone needle dug its way across the record,and was pulled off.

“This is my favorite bit,” whispered thelittle dog in the seat next to her.

The other Miss Forcible picked a knifeout of a box on the corner of the stage. “Isthis a dagger that I see before me?” sheasked.

“Yes!” shouted all the little dogs. “It is!”Miss Forcible curtsied, and all the dogs

applauded again. Coraline didn’t botherclapping this time.

Miss Spink came back on. She slappedher thigh, and all the little dogs woofed.

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“And now,” Miss Spink said, “Miriamand I proudly present a new and exciting ad-dendum to our theatrical exposition. Do I seea volunteer?”

The little dog next to Coraline nudgedher with its front paw. “That’s you,” it hissed.

Coraline stood up, and walked up thewooden steps to the stage.

“Can I have big round of applause forthe young volunteer?” asked Miss Spink. Thedogs woofed and squealed and thumpedtheir tails on the velvet seats.

“Now Coraline,” said Miss Spink,“what’s your name?”

“Coraline,” said Coraline.“And we don’t know each other, do we?”Coraline looked at the thin young wo-

man with black button eyes and shook herhead slowly.

“Now,” said the other Miss Spink, “standover here.” She led Coraline over to a board

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by the side of the stage, and put a balloon ontop of Coraline’s head.

Miss Spink walked over to Miss For-cible. She blindfolded Miss Forcible’s buttoneyes with a black scarf, and put the knife intoher hands. Then she turned her round threeor four times and pointed her at Coraline.Coraline held her breath and squeezed herfingers into two tight fists.

Miss Forcible threw the knife at the bal-loon. It popped loudly, and the knife stuckinto the board just above Coraline’s head andtwanged there. Coraline breathed out.

The dogs went wild.Miss Spink gave Coraline a very small

box of chocolates and thanked her for beingsuch a good sport. Coraline went back to herseat.

“You were very good,” said the little dog.“Thank you,” said Coraline.Miss Forcible and Miss Spink began jug-

gling with huge wooden clubs. Coraline

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opened the box of chocolates. The doglooked at them longingly.

“Would you like one?” she asked thelittle dog.

“Yes, please,” whispered the dog. “Onlynot toffee ones. They make me drool.”

“I thought chocolates weren’t very goodfor dogs,” she said, remembering somethingMiss Forcible had once told her.

“Maybe where you come from,”whispered the little dog. “Here, it’s all weeat.”

Coraline couldn’t see what the chocol-ates were, in the dark. She took an experi-mental bite of one which turned out to becoconut. Coraline didn’t like coconut. Shegave it to the dog.

“Thank you,” said the dog.“You’re welcome,” said Coraline.Miss Forcible and Miss Spink were do-

ing some acting. Miss Forcible was sitting on

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a stepladder, and Miss Spink was standing atthe bottom.

“What’s in a name?” asked Miss For-cible. “That which we call a rose by any othername would smell as sweet.”

“Have you got any more chocolates?”said the dog.

Coraline gave the dog another chocolate.“I know not how to tell thee who I am,”

said Miss Spink to Miss Forcible.“This bit finishes soon,” whispered the

dog. “Then they start folk dancing.”“How long does this go on for?” asked

Coraline. “The theater?”“All the time,” said the dog. “For ever

and always.”“Here,” said Coraline. “Keep the

chocolates.”“Thank you,” said the dog. Coraline

stood up.“See you soon,” said the dog.

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“Bye,” said Coraline. She walked out ofthe theater and back into the garden. Shehad to blink her eyes at the daylight.

Her other parents were waiting for herin the garden, standing side by side. Theywere smiling.

“Did you have a nice time?” asked herother mother.

“It was interesting,” said Coraline.The three of them walked back up to

Coraline’s other house together. Coraline’sother mother stroked Coraline’s hair withher long white fingers. Coraline shook herhead. “Don’t do that,” said Coraline.

Her other mother took her hand away.“So,” said her other father. “Do you like

it here?”“I suppose,” said Coraline. “It’s much

more interesting than at home.”They went inside.“I’m glad you like it,” said Coraline’s

mother. “Because we’d like to think that this

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is your home. You can stay here for ever andalways. If you want to.”

“Hmm,” said Coraline. She put her handin her pockets, and thought about it. Herhand touched the stone that the real MissesSpink and Forcible had given her the day be-fore, the stone with the hole in it.

“If you want to stay,” said her other fath-er, “there’s only one little thing we’ll have todo, so you can stay here for ever and always.”

They went into the kitchen. On a chinaplate on the kitchen table was a spool ofblack cotton, and a long silver needle, and,beside them, two large black buttons.

“I don’t think so,” said Coraline.“Oh, but we want you to,” said her other

mother. “We want you to stay. And it’s just alittle thing.”

“It won’t hurt,” said her other father.Coraline knew that when grown-ups told

you something wouldn’t hurt it almost al-ways did. She shook her head.

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Her other mother smiled brightly andthe hair on her head drifted like plants underthe sea. “We only want what’s best for you,”she said.

She put her hand on Coraline’sshoulder. Coraline backed away.

“I’m going now,” said Coraline. She puther hands in her pockets. Her fingers closedaround the stone with the hole in it.

Her other mother’s hand scuttled offCoraline’s shoulder like a frightened spider.

“If that’s what you want,” she said.“Yes,” said Coraline.“We’ll see you soon, though,” said her

other father. “When you come back.”“Um,” said Coraline.“And then we’ll all be together as one big

happy family,” said her other mother. “Forever and always.”

Coraline backed away. She turned andhurried into the drawing room and pulledopen the door in the corner. There was no

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brick wall there now—just darkness, a night-black underground darkness that seemed asif things in it might be moving.

Coraline hesitated. She turned back. Herother mother and her other father werewalking toward her, holding hands. Theywere looking at her with their black buttoneyes. Or at least she thought they were look-ing at her. She couldn’t be sure.

Her other mother reached out her freehand and beckoned, gently, with one whitefinger. Her pale lips mouthed, “Come backsoon,” although she said nothing aloud.

Coraline took a deep breath and steppedinto the darkness, where strange voiceswhispered and distant winds howled. She be-came certain that there was something in thedark behind her: something very old andvery slow. Her heart beat so hard and soloudly she was scared it would burst out ofher chest. She closed her eyes against thedark.

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Eventually she bumped into something,and opened her eyes, startled. She hadbumped into an armchair, in her drawingroom.

The open doorway behind her wasblocked by rough red bricks.

She was home.

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V.CORALINE LOCKED THE DOOR of the drawingroom with the cold black key.

She went back into the kitchen andclimbed onto a chair. She tried to put thebunch of keys back on top of the doorframeagain. She tried four or five times before shewas forced to accept that she just wasn’t bigenough, and she put them down on thecounter next to the door.

Her mother still hadn’t returned fromher shopping expedition.

Coraline went to the freezer and tookout the spare loaf of frozen bread in the bot-tom compartment. She made herself sometoast, with jam and peanut butter. She dranka glass of water.

She waited for her parents to come back.When it began to get dark, Coraline mi-

crowaved herself a frozen pizza.

Then Coraline watched television. Shewondered why grown-ups gave themselvesall the good programs, with all the shoutingand running around in.

After a while she started yawning. Thenshe undressed, brushed her teeth, and putherself to bed.

In the morning she went into her par-ents’ room, but their bed hadn’t been sleptin, and they weren’t around. She ate cannedspaghetti for breakfast.

For lunch she had a block of cookingchocolate and an apple. The apple was yellowand slightly shriveled, but it tasted sweet andgood.

For tea she went down to see MissesSpink and Forcible. She had three digestivebiscuits, a glass of limeade, and a cup ofweak tea. The limeade was very interesting.It didn’t taste anything like limes. It tastedbright green and vaguely chemical. Coraline

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liked it enormously. She wished they had itat home.

“How are your dear mother and father?”asked Miss Spink.

“Missing,” said Coraline. “I haven’t seeneither of them since yesterday. I’m on myown. I think I’ve probably become a singlechild family.”

“Tell your mother that we found theGlasgow Empire press clippings we weretelling her about. She seemed very interestedwhen Miriam mentioned them to her.”

“She’s vanished under mysterious cir-cumstances,” said Coraline, “and I believemy father has as well.”

“I’m afraid we’ll be out all day tomor-row, Caroline, luvvy,” said Miss Forcible.“We’ll be staying over with April’s niece inRoyal Tunbridge Wells.”

They showed Coraline a photographicalbum, with photographs of Miss Spink’sniece in it, and then Coraline went home.

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She opened her money box and walkeddown to the supermarket. She bought twolarge bottles of limeade, a chocolate cake,and a new bag of apples, and went backhome and ate them for dinner.

She cleaned her teeth, and went into herfather’s office. She woke up his computerand wrote a story.

CORALINE’S STORY.THERE WAS A GIRL HER NAMEWAS APPLE. SHE USED TODANCE A LOT. SHE DANCEDAND DANCED UNTIL HER FEETTURND INTO SOSSAJES THEEND.

She printed out the story and turned offthe computer. Then she drew a picture of thelittle girl dancing underneath the words onthe paper.

She ran herself a bath with too muchbubble bath in it, and the bubbles ran overthe side and went all over the floor. She dried

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herself, and the floor as best she could, andwent to bed.

Coraline woke up in the night. She wentinto her parents’ bedroom, but the bed wasmade and empty. The glowing green num-bers on the digital clock glowed 3:12 A.M.

All alone, in the middle of the night,Coraline began to cry. There was no othersound in the empty flat.

She climbed into her parents’ bed, and,after a while, she went to sleep.

Coraline was woken by cold paws bat-ting her face. She opened her eyes. Big greeneyes stared back at her. It was the cat.

“Hullo,” said Coraline. “How did you getin?”

The cat didn’t say anything. Coraline gotout of bed. She was wearing a long T-shirtand pajama bottoms. “Have you come to tellme something?”

The cat yawned, which made its eyesflash green.

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“Do you know where Mummy andDaddy are?”

The cat blinked at her, slowly.“Is that a yes?”The cat blinked again. Coraline decided

that that was indeed a yes. “Will you take meto them?”

The cat stared at her. Then it walked outinto the hall. She followed it. It walked thelength of the corridor and stopped down atthe very end, where a full-length mirrorhung. The mirror had been, a long time be-fore, the inside of a wardrobe door. It hadbeen hanging there on the wall when theymoved in, and, although Coraline’s motherhad spoken occasionally of replacing it withsomething newer, she never had.

Coraline turned on the light in the hall.The mirror showed the corridor behind

her; that was only to be expected. But reflec-ted in the mirror were her parents. Theystood awkwardly in the reflection of the hall.

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They seemed sad and alone. As Coralinewatched, they waved to her, slowly, withlimp hands. Coraline’s father had his armaround her mother.

In the mirror Coraline’s mother andfather stared at her. Her father opened hismouth and said something, but she couldhear nothing at all. Her mother breathed onthe inside of the mirror glass, and quickly,before the fog faded, she wrote

with the tip of her forefinger. The fog on theinside of the mirror faded, and so did herparents, and now the mirror reflected onlythe corridor, and Coraline, and the cat.

“Where are they?” Coraline asked thecat. The cat made no reply, but Coralinecould imagine its voice, dry as a dead fly on awindowsill in winter, saying Well, where doyou think they are?

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“They aren’t going to come back, arethey?” said Coraline. “Not under their ownsteam.”

The cat blinked at her. Coraline took itas a yes.

“Right,” said Coraline. “Then I supposethere is only one thing left to do.”

She walked into her father’s study. Shesat down at his desk. Then she picked up thetelephone, and she opened the phone bookand telephoned the local police station.

“Police,” said a gruff male voice.“Hello,” she said. “My name is Coraline

Jones.”“You’re up a bit after your bedtime,

aren’t you, young lady?” said the policeman.“Possibly,” said Coraline, who was not

going to be diverted, “but I am ringing to re-port a crime.”

“And what sort of crime would that be?”“Kidnapping. Grown-up-napping really.

My parents have been stolen away into a

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world on the other side of the mirror in ourhall.”

“And do you know who stole them?”asked the police officer. Coraline could hearthe smile in his voice, and she tried extrahard to sound like an adult might sound, tomake him take her seriously.

“I think my other mother has them bothin her clutches. She may want to keep themand sew their eyes with black buttons, or shemay simply have them in order to lure meback into reach of her fingers. I’m not sure.”

“Ah. The nefarious clutches of herfiendish fingers, is it?” he said. “Mm. Youknow what I suggest, Miss Jones?”

“No,” said Coraline. “What?”“You ask your mother to make you a big

old mug of hot chocolate, and then give you agreat big old hug. There’s nothing like hotchocolate and a hug for making the night-mares go away. And if she starts to tell youoff for waking her up at this time of night,

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why you tell her that that’s what the police-man said.” He had a deep, reassuring voice.

Coraline was not reassured.“When I see her,” said Coraline, “I shall

tell her that.” And she put down thetelephone.

The black cat, who had sat on the floor,grooming his fur, through this entire conver-sation now stood up and led the way into thehall.

Coraline went back into her bedroomand put on her blue dressing gown and herslippers. She looked under the sink for aflashlight, and found one, but the batterieshad long since run down, and it barelyglowed with the faintest straw-colored light.She put it down again and found a box of in-case-of-emergency white wax candles, andthrust one into a candlestick. She put anapple into each pocket. She picked up thering of keys and took the old black key off thering.

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She walked into the drawing room andlooked at the door. She had the feeling thatthe door was looking at her, which she knewwas silly, and knew on a deeper level wassomehow true.

She went back into her bedroom, andrummaged in the pocket of her jeans. Shefound the stone with the hole in it, and put itinto her dressing-gown pocket.

She lit the candlewick with a match andwatched it sputter and light, then she pickedup the black key. It was cold in her hand. Sheput it into the keyhole in the door, but didnot turn the key.

“When I was a little girl,” said Coralineto the cat, “when we lived in our old house, along, long time ago, my dad took me for awalk on the wasteland between our houseand the shops.

“It wasn’t the best place to go for a walk,really. There were all these things thatpeople had thrown away back there—old

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cookers and broken dishes and dolls with noarms and no legs and empty cans and brokenbottles. Mum and Dad made me promise notto go exploring back there, because therewere too many sharp things, and tetanus andsuch.

“But I kept telling them I wanted to ex-plore it. So one day my dad put on his bigbrown boots and his gloves and put my bootson me and my jeans and sweater, and wewent for a walk.

“We must have walked for about twentyminutes. We went down this hill, to the bot-tom of a gully where a stream was, when mydad suddenly said to me, “Coraline—runaway. Up the hill. Now!” He said it in a tightsort of way, urgently, so I did. I ran away upthe hill. Something hurt me on the back ofmy arm as I ran, but I kept running.

“As I got to the top of the hill I heardsomebody thundering up the hill behind me.It was my dad, charging like a rhino. When

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he reached me he picked me up in his armsand swept me over the edge of the hill.

“And then we stopped and we puffedand we panted, and we looked back down thegully.

“The air was alive with yellow wasps. Wemust have stepped on a wasps’ nest in a rot-ten branch as we walked. And while I wasrunning up the hill, my dad stayed and gotstung, to give me time to run away. Hisglasses had fallen off when he ran.

“I only had the one sting on the back ofmy arm. He had thirty-nine stings, all overhim. We counted later, in the bath.”

The black cat began to wash its face andwhiskers in a manner that indicated increas-ing impatience. Coraline reached down andstroked the back of its head and neck. Thecat stood up, walked several paces until itwas out of her reach, then it sat down andlooked up at her again.

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“So,” said Coraline, “later that afternoonmy dad went back again to the wasteland, toget his glasses back. He said if he left it an-other day he wouldn’t be able to rememberwhere they’d fallen.

“And soon he got home, wearing hisglasses. He said that he wasn’t scared whenhe was standing there and the wasps werestinging him and hurting him and he waswatching me run away. Because he knew hehad to give me enough time to run, or thewasps would have come after both of us.”

Coraline turned the key in the door. Itturned with a loud clunk.

The door swung open.There was no brick wall on the other

side of the door: only darkness. A cold windblew through the passageway.

Coraline made no move to walk throughthe door.

“And he said that wasn’t brave of him,doing that, just standing there and being

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stung,” said Coraline to the cat. “It wasn’tbrave because he wasn’t scared: it was theonly thing he could do. But going back againto get his glasses, when he knew the waspswere there, when he was really scared. Thatwas brave.”

She took her first step down the darkcorridor.

She could smell dust and damp andmustiness.

The cat padded along beside her.“And why was that?” asked the cat, al-

though it sounded barely interested.“Because,” she said, “when you’re scared

but you still do it anyway, that’s brave.”The candle cast huge, strange, flickering

shadows along the wall. She heardsomething moving in the darkness—besideher or to one side of her, she could not tell. Itseemed as if it was keeping pace with her,whatever it was.

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“And that’s why you’re going back to herworld, then?” said the cat. “Because yourfather once saved you from wasps?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Coraline. “I’m go-ing back for them because they are my par-ents. And if they noticed I was gone I’m surethey would do the same for me. You knowyou’re talking again?”

“How fortunate I am,” said the cat, “inhaving a traveling companion of such wis-dom and intelligence.” Its tone remained sar-castic, but its fur was bristling, and its brushof a tail stuck up in the air.

Coraline was going to say something,like sorry or wasn’t it a lot shorter walk lasttime? when the candle went out as suddenlyas if it had been snuffed by someone’s hand.

There was a scrabbling and a pattering,and Coraline could feel her heart poundingagainst her ribs. She put out one hand…andfelt something wispy, like a spider’s web,brush her hands and her face.

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At the end of the corridor the electriclight went on, blinding after the darkness. Awoman stood, silhouetted by the light, a littleahead of Coraline.

“Coraline? Darling?” she called.“Mum!” said Coraline, and she ran for-

ward, eager and relieved.“Darling,” said the woman. “Why did

you ever run away from me?”Coraline was too close to stop, and she

felt the other mother’s cold arms enfold her.She stood there, rigid and trembling as theother mother held her tightly.

“Where are my parents?” Coralineasked.

“We’re here,” said her other mother, in avoice so close to her real mother’s that Cor-aline could scarcely tell them apart. “We’rehere. We’re ready to love you and play withyou and feed you and make your lifeinteresting.”

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Coraline pulled back, and the othermother let her go, with reluctance.

The other father, who had been sittingon a chair in the hallway, stood up andsmiled. “Come on into the kitchen,” he said.“I’ll make us a midnight snack. And you’llwant something to drink—hot chocolateperhaps?”

Coraline walked down the hallway untilshe reached the mirror at the end. There wasnothing reflected in it but a young girl in herdressing gown and slippers, who looked likeshe had recently been crying but whose eyeswere real eyes, not black buttons, and whowas holding tightly to a burned-out candle ina candlestick.

She looked at the girl in the mirror andthe girl in the mirror looked back at her.

I will be brave, thought Coraline. No, Iam brave.

She put down the candlestick on thefloor, then turned around. The other mother

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and the other father were looking at herhungrily

“I don’t need a snack,” she said. “I havean apple. See?” And she took an apple fromher dressing-gown pocket, then bit into itwith relish and an enthusiasm that she didnot really feel.

The other father looked disappointed.The other mother smiled, showing a full setof teeth, and each of the teeth was a tiny bittoo long. The lights in the hallway made herblack button eyes glitter and gleam.

“You don’t frighten me,” said Coraline,although they did frighten her, very much. “Iwant my parents back.”

The world seemed to shimmer a little atthe edges.

“Whatever would I have done with yourold parents? If they have left you, Coraline, itmust be because they became bored of you,or tired. Now, I will never become bored ofyou, and I will never abandon you. You will

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always be safe here with me.” The othermother’s wet-looking black hair driftedaround her head, like the tentacles of acreature in the deep ocean.

“They weren’t bored of me,” said Cor-aline. “You’re lying. You stole them.”

“Silly, silly Coraline. They are finewherever they are.”

Coraline simply glared at the othermother.

“I’ll prove it,” said the other mother, andbrushed the surface of the mirror with herlong white fingers. It clouded over, as if adragon had breathed on it, and then itcleared.

In the mirror it was daytime already.Coraline was looking at the hallway, all theway down to her front door. The dooropened from the outside and Coraline’smother and father walked inside. They car-ried suitcases.

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“That was a fine holiday,” said Coraline’sfather.

“How nice it is, not to have Coraline anymore,” said her mother with a happy smile.“Now we can do all the things we alwayswanted to do, like go abroad, but were pre-vented from doing by having a littledaughter.”

“And,” said her father, “I take greatcomfort in knowing that her other motherwill take better care of her than we evercould.”

The mirror fogged and faded and reflec-ted the night once more.

“See?” said her other mother.“No,” said Coraline. “I don’t see. And I

don’t believe it either.”She hoped that what she had just seen

was not real, but she was not as certain asshe sounded. There was a tiny doubt insideher, like a maggot in an apple core. Then shelooked up and saw the expression on her

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other mother’s face: a flash of real anger,which crossed her face like summer light-ning, and Coraline was sure in her heart thatwhat she had seen in the mirror was no morethan an illusion.

Coraline sat down on the sofa and ateher apple.

“Please,” said her other mother. “Don’tbe difficult.” She walked into the drawingroom and clapped her hands twice. Therewas a rustling noise and a black rat ap-peared. It stared up at her. “Bring me thekey,” she said.

The rat chittered, then it ran throughthe open door that led back to Coraline’s ownflat.

The rat returned, dragging the key be-hind it.

“Why don’t you have your own key onthis side?” asked Coraline.

“There is only one key. Only one door,”said the other father.

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“Hush,” said the other mother. “Youmust not bother our darling Coraline’s headwith such trivialities.” She put the key in thekeyhole and twisted. The lock was stiff, but itclunked closed.

She dropped the key into her apronpocket.

Outside, the sky had begun to lighten toa luminous gray.

“If we aren’t going to have a midnightsnack,” said the other mother, “we still needour beauty sleep. I am going back to bed,Coraline. I would strongly suggest that youdo the same.”

She placed her long white fingers on theshoulders of the other father, and she walkedhim out of the room.

Coraline walked over to the door at thefar corner of the drawing room. She tuggedon it, but it was tightly locked. The door ofher other parents’ bedroom was now closed.

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She was indeed tired, but she did notwant to sleep in the bedroom. She did notwant to sleep under the same roof as her oth-er mother.

The front door was not locked. Coralinewalked out into the dawn and down thestone stairs. She sat down on the bottomstep. It was cold.

Something furry pushed itself againsther side in one smooth, insinuating motion.Coraline jumped, then breathed a sigh of re-lief when she saw what it was.

“Oh. It’s you,” she said to the black cat.“See?” said the cat. “It wasn’t so hard re-

cognizing me, was it? Even without names.”“Well, what if I wanted to call you?”The cat wrinkled its nose and managed

to look unimpressed. “Calling cats,” it con-fided, “tends to be a rather overrated activity.Might as well call a whirlwind.”

“What if it was dinnertime?” asked Cor-aline. “Wouldn’t you want to be called then?”

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“Of course,” said the cat. “But a simplecry of ‘dinner!’ would do nicely. See? Noneed for names.”

“Why does she want me?” Coralineasked the cat. “Why does she want me to stayhere with her?”

“She wants something to love, I think,”said the cat. “Something that isn’t her. Shemight want something to eat as well. It’shard to tell with creatures like that.”

“Do you have any advice?” askedCoraline.

The cat looked as if it were about to saysomething else sarcastic. Then it flicked itswhiskers and said, “Challenge her. There’sno guarantee she’ll play fair, but her kind ofthing loves games and challenges.”

“What kind of thing is that?” askedCoraline.

But the cat made no answer, simplystretched luxuriantly and walked away. Thenit stopped, and turned, and said, “I’d go

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inside if I were you. Get some sleep. Youhave a long day ahead of you.”

And then the cat was gone. Still, Cor-aline realized, it had a point. She crept backinto the silent house, past the closed bed-room door inside which the other motherand the other father…what? she wondered.Slept? Waited? And then it came to her that,should she open the bedroom door shewould find it empty, or more precisely, thatit was an empty room and it would remainempty until the exact moment that sheopened the door.

Somehow, that made it easier. Coralinewalked into the green-and-pink parody ofher own bedroom. She closed the door andhauled the toy box in front of it—it would notkeep anyone out, but the noise somebodywould make trying to dislodge it would wakeher, she hoped.

The toys in the toy box were still mostlyasleep, and they stirred and muttered as she

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moved their box, and then they went back tosleep. Coraline checked under her bed, look-ing for rats, but there was nothing there. Shetook off her dressing gown and slippers andclimbed into bed and fell asleep with barelyenough time to reflect, as she did so, on whatthe cat could have meant by a challenge.

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VI.CORALINE WAS WOKEN BY the midmorningsun, full on her face.

For a moment she felt utterly dislocated.She did not know where she was; she was notentirely sure who she was. It is astonishingjust how much of what we are can be tied tothe beds we wake up in in the morning, andit is astonishing how fragile that can be.

Sometimes Coraline would forget whoshe was while she was daydreaming that shewas exploring the Arctic, or the Amazon rainforest, or Darkest Africa, and it was not untilsomeone tapped her on the shoulder or saidher name that Coraline would come backfrom a million miles away with a start, andall in a fraction of a second have to remem-ber who she was, and what her name was,and that she was even there at all.

Now there was sun on her face, and shewas Coraline Jones. Yes. And then the green

and pinkness of the room she was in, and therustling of a large painted paper butterfly asit fluttered and beat its way about the ceiling,told her where she had woken up.

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She climbed out of the bed. She couldnot wear her pajamas, dressing gown, andslippers during the day, she decided, even ifit meant wearing the other Coraline’sclothes. (Was there an other Coraline? No,she realized, there wasn’t. There was justher.) There were no regular clothes in thecupboard, though. They were more likedressing-up clothes or (she thought) the kindof clothes she would love to have hanging inher own wardrobe at home: there was araggedy witch costume; a patched scarecrowcostume; a future-warrior costume with littledigital lights in it that glittered and blinked;a slinky evening dress all covered in feathersand mirrors. Finally, in a drawer, she found apair of black jeans that seemed to be made ofvelvet night, and a gray sweater the color ofthick smoke with faint and tiny stars in thefabric which twinkled.

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She pulled on the jeans and the sweater.Then she put on a pair of bright orange bootsshe found at the bottom of the cupboard.

She took her last apple out of the pocketof her dressing gown and then took, from thesame pocket, the stone with the hole in it.

She put the stone into the pocket of herjeans, and it was as if her head had cleared alittle. As if she had come out of some sort of afog.

She went into the kitchen, but it wasdeserted.

Still, she was sure that there wassomeone in the flat. She walked down thehall until she reached her father’s study, anddiscovered that it was occupied.

“Where’s the other mother?” she askedthe other father. He was sitting in the study,at a desk which looked just like her father’s,but he was not doing anything at all, noteven reading gardening catalogs as her own

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father did when he was only pretending to beworking.

“Out,” he told her. “Fixing the doors.There are some vermin problems.” Heseemed pleased to have somebody to talk to.

“The rats, you mean?”“No, the rats are our friends. This is the

other kind. Big black fellow, with his tailhigh.”

“The cat, you mean?”“That’s the one,” said her other father.He looked less like her true father today.

There was something slightly vague abouthis face—like bread dough that had begun torise, smoothing out the bumps and cracksand depressions.

“Really, I mustn’t talk to you when she’snot here,” he said. “But don’t you worry. Shewon’t be gone often. I shall demonstrate ourtender hospitality to you, such that you willnot even think about ever going back.” He

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closed his mouth and folded his hands in hislap.

“So what am I to do now?” askedCoraline.

The other father pointed to his lips.Silence.

“If you won’t even talk to me,” said Cor-aline, “I am going exploring.”

“No point,” said the other father. “Thereisn’t anywhere but here. This is all she made:the house, the grounds, and the people in thehouse. She made it and she waited.” Then helooked embarrassed and he put one finger tohis lips again, as if he had just said too much.

Coraline walked out of his study. Shewent into the drawing room, over to the olddoor, and she pulled it, rattled and shook it.No, it was locked fast, and the other motherhad the key.

She looked around the room. It was sofamiliar—that was what made it feel so trulystrange. Everything was exactly the same as

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she remembered: there was all her grand-mother’s strange-smelling furniture, therewas the painting of the bowl of fruit (a bunchof grapes, two plums, a peach and an apple)hanging on the wall, there was the lowwooden table with the lion’s feet, and theempty fireplace which seemed to suck heatfrom the room.

But there was something else,something she did not remember seeing be-fore. A ball of glass, up on the mantelpiece.

She went over to the fireplace, went upon tiptoes, and lifted it down. It was a snowglobe, with two little people in it. Coralineshook it and set the snow flying, white snowthat glittered as it tumbled through thewater.

Then she put the snow globe back on themantelpiece, and carried on looking for hertrue parents and for a way out.

She went out of the flat. Past theflashing-lights door, behind which the other

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Misses Spink and Forcible performed theirshow forever, and she set off into the woods.

Where Coraline came from, once youwere through the patch of trees, you sawnothing but the meadow and the old tenniscourt. In this place, the woods went onfarther, the trees becoming cruder and lesstreelike the farther you went.

Pretty soon they seemed very approxim-ate, like the idea of trees: a grayish-browntrunk below, a greenish splodge ofsomething that might have been leavesabove.

Coraline wondered if the other motherwasn’t interested in trees, or if she justhadn’t bothered with this bit properly be-cause nobody was expected to come out thisfar.

She kept walking.And then the mist began.It was not damp, like a normal fog or

mist. It was not cold and it was not warm. It

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felt to Coraline like she was walking intonothing.

I’m an explorer, thought Coraline toherself. And I need all the ways out of herethat I can get. So I shall keep walking.

The world she was walking through wasa pale nothingness, like a blank sheet of pa-per or an enormous, empty white room. Ithad no temperature, no smell, no texture,and no taste.

It certainly isn’t mist, thought Coraline,although she did not know what it was. For amoment she wondered if she might not havegone blind. But no, she could see herself,plain as day. But there was no ground be-neath her feet, just a misty, milky whiteness.

“And what do you think you’re doing?”said a shape to one side of her.

It took a few moments for her eyes to fo-cus on it properly: she thought it might besome kind of lion, at first, some distanceaway from her; and then she thought it

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might be a mouse, close beside her. And thenshe knew what it was.

“I’m exploring,” Coraline told the cat.Its fur stood straight out from its body

and its eyes were wide, while its tail wasdown and between its legs. It did not look ahappy cat.

“Bad place,” said the cat. “If you want tocall it a place, which I don’t. What are youdoing here?”

“I’m exploring.”“Nothing to find here,” said the cat.

“This is just the outside, the part of the placeshe hasn’t bothered to create.”

“She?”“The one who says she’s your other

mother,” said the cat.“What is she?” asked Coraline.The cat did not answer, just padded

through the pale mist beside Coraline.

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A shape began to appear in front ofthem, something high and towering anddark.

“You were wrong!” she told the cat.“There is something there!”

And then it took shape in the mist: adark house, which loomed at them out of theformless whiteness.

“But that’s—” said Coraline.“The house you just left,” agreed the cat.

“Precisely.”“Maybe I just got turned around in the

mist,” said Coraline.The cat curled the high tip of its tail into

a question mark, and tipped its head to oneside. “You might have done,” it said. “I cer-tainly would not. Wrong, indeed.”

“But how can you walk away fromsomething and still come back to it?”

“Easy,” said the cat. “Think of somebodywalking around the world. You start out

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walking away from something and end upcoming back to it.”

“Small world,” said Coraline.“It’s big enough for her,” said the cat.

“Spiders’ webs only have to be large enoughto catch flies.”

Coraline shivered.“He said that she’s fixing all the gates

and the doors,” she told the cat, “to keep youout.”

“She may try,” said the cat, unim-pressed. “Oh yes. She may try.” They werestanding under a clump of trees now, besidethe house. These trees looked much morelikely. “There’s ways in and ways out ofplaces like this that even she doesn’t knowabout.”

“Did she make this place, then?” askedCoraline.

“Made it, found it—what’s the differ-ence?” asked the cat. “Either way, she’s hadit a very long time. Hang on—” And it gave a

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shiver and a leap and before Coraline couldblink the cat was sitting with its paw holdingdown a big black rat. “It’s not that I like ratsat the best of times,” said the cat, conversa-tionally, as if nothing had happened, “but therats in this place are all spies for her. Sheuses them as her eyes and hands…” And withthat the cat let the rat go.

It ran several feet and then the cat, withone bound, was upon it, batting it hard withone sharp-clawed paw, while with the otherpaw it held the rat down. “I love this bit,”said the cat, happily. “Want to see me do thatagain?”

“No,” said Coraline. “Why do you do it?You’re torturing it.”

“Mm,” said the cat. It let the rat go.The rat stumbled, dazed, for a few steps,

then it began to run. With a blow of its paw,the cat knocked the rat into the air, andcaught it in its mouth.

“Stop it!” said Coraline.

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The cat dropped the rat between its twofront paws. “There are those,” it said with asigh, in tones as smooth as oiled silk, “whohave suggested that the tendency of a cat toplay with its prey is a merciful one—after all,it permits the occasional funny little runningsnack to escape, from time to time. How of-ten does your dinner get to escape?”

And then it picked the rat up in itsmouth and carried it off into the woods, be-hind a tree.

Coraline walked back into the house.All was quiet and empty and deserted.

Even her footsteps on the carpeted floorseemed loud. Dust motes hung in a beam ofsunlight.

At the far end of the hall was the mirror.She could see herself walking toward themirror, looking, reflected, a little braver thanshe actually felt. There was nothing elsethere in the mirror. Just her, in the corridor.

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A hand touched her shoulder, and shelooked up. The other mother stared down atCoraline with big black button eyes.

“Coraline, my darling,” she said. “Ithought we could play some games togetherthis morning, now you’re back from yourwalk. Hopscotch? Happy Families?Monopoly?”

“You weren’t in the mirror,” saidCoraline.

The other mother smiled. “Mirrors,” shesaid, “are never to be trusted. Now, whatgame shall we play?”

Coraline shook her head. “I don’t wantto play with you,” she said. “I want to gohome and be with my real parents. I wantyou to let them go. To let us all go.”

The other mother shook her head, veryslowly. “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” shesaid, “is a daughter’s ingratitude. Still, theproudest spirit can be broken, with love.”

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And her long white fingers waggled andcaressed the air.

“I have no plans to love you,” said Cor-aline. “No matter what. You can’t make melove you.”

“Let’s talk about it,” said the othermother, and she turned and walked into thelounge. Coraline followed her.

The other mother sat down on the bigsofa. She picked up a shopping bag from be-side the sofa and took out a white, rustling,paper bag from inside it.

She extended the hand with it to Cor-aline. “Would you like one?” she askedpolitely.

Expecting it to be a toffee or a butter-scotch ball, Coraline looked down. The bagwas half filled with large shiny blackbeetles,crawling over each other in their efforts toget out of the bag.

“No,” said Coraline. “I don’t want one.”

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“Suit yourself,” said her other mother.She carefully picked out a particularly largeand black beetle, pulled off its legs (whichshe dropped, neatly, into a big glass ashtrayon the small table beside the sofa), andpopped the beetle into her mouth. Shecrunched it happily.

“Yum,” she said, and took another.“You’re sick,” said Coraline. “Sick and

evil and weird.”“Is that any way to talk to your mother?”

her other mother asked, with her mouth fullof blackbeetles.

“You aren’t my mother,” said Coraline.Her other mother ignored this. “Now, I

think you are a little overexcited, Coraline.Perhaps this afternoon we could do a littleembroidery together, or some watercolorpainting. Then dinner, and then, if you havebeen good, you may play with the rats a littlebefore bed. And I shall read you a story andtuck you in, and kiss you good night.” Her

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long white fingers fluttered gently, like atired butterfly, and Coraline shivered.

“No,” said Coraline.The other mother sat on the sofa. Her

mouth was set in a line; her lips were pursed.She popped another blackbeetle into hermouth and then another, like someone witha bag of chocolate-covered raisins. Her bigblack button eyes stared into Coraline’s hazeleyes. Her shiny black hair twined and twis-ted about her neck and shoulders, as if itwere blowing in some wind that Coralinecould not touch or feel.

They stared at each other for over aminute. Then the other mother said, “Man-ners!” She folded the white paper bag care-fully so no blackbeetles could escape, andshe placed it back in the shopping bag. Thenshe stood up, and up, and up: she seemedtaller than Coraline remembered. Shereached into her apron pocket and pulledout, first the black door key, which she

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frowned at and tossed into her shopping bag,then a tiny silver-colored key. She held it uptriumphantly. “There we are,” she said. “Thisis for you, Coraline. For your own good. Be-cause I love you. To teach you manners.Manners makyth man, after all.”

She pulled Coraline back into the hall-way and advanced upon the mirror at theend of the hall. Then she pushed the tiny keyinto the fabric of the mirror, and she twistedit.

It opened like a door, revealing a darkspace behind it. “You may come out whenyou’ve learned some manners,” said the oth-er mother. “And when you’re ready to be aloving daughter.”

She picked Coraline up and pushed herinto the dim space behind the mirror. A frag-ment of beetle was sticking to her lower lip,and there was no expression at all in herblack button eyes.

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Then she swung the mirror door closed,and left Coraline in darkness.

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VII.SOMEWHERE INSIDE HER Coraline could feel ahuge sob welling up. And then she stoppedit, before it came out. She took a deep breathand let it go. She put out her hands to touchthe space in which she was imprisoned. Itwas the size of a broom closet: tall enough tostand in or to sit in, not wide or deep enoughto lie down in.

One wall was glass, and it felt cold to thetouch.

She went around the tiny room a secondtime, running her hands over every surfacethat she could reach, feeling for doorknobsor switches or concealed catches—some kindof way out—and found nothing.

A spider scuttled over the back of herhand and she choked back a shriek. Butapart from the spider she was alone in thecloset in the pitch dark.

And then her hand touched somethingthat felt for all the world like somebody’scheek and lips, small and cold; and a voicewhispered in her ear, “Hush! And shush! Saynothing, for the beldam might be listening!”

Coraline said nothing.

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She felt a cold hand touch her face, fin-gers running over it like the gentle beat of amoth’s wings.

Another voice, hesitant and so faint Cor-aline wondered if she were imagining it, said,“Art thou—art thou alive?”

“Yes,” whispered Coraline.“Poor child,” said the first voice.“Who are you?” whispered Coraline.“Names, names, names,” said another

voice, all faraway and lost. “The names arethe first things to go, after the breath hasgone, and the beating of the heart. We keepour memories longer than our names. I stillkeep pictures in my mind of my governess onsome May morning, carrying my hoop andstick, and the morning sun behind her, andall the tulips bobbing in the breeze. But Ihave forgotten the name of my governess,and of the tulips too.”

“I don’t think tulips have names,” saidCoraline. “They’re just tulips.”

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“Perhaps,” said the voice, sadly. “But Ihave always thought that these tulips musthave had names. They were red, and orangeand red, and red and orange and yellow, likethe embers in the nursery fire of a winter’sevening. I remember them.”

The voice sounded so sad that Coralineput out a hand to the place where the voicewas coming from, and she found a cold hand,and she squeezed it tightly.

Her eyes were beginning to get used tothe darkness. Now Coraline saw, or imaginedshe saw, three shapes, each as faint and paleas the moon in the daytime sky. They werethe shapes of children about her own size.The cold hand squeezed her hand back.“Thank you,” said the voice.

“Are you a girl?” asked Coraline. “Or aboy?”

There was a pause. “When I was small Iwore skirts and my hair was long andcurled,” it said, doubtfully. “But now that you

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ask, it does seem to me that one day theytook my skirts and gave me britches and cutmy hair.”

“’Tain’t something we give a mind to,”said the first of the voices.

“A boy, perhaps, then,” continued theone whose hand she was holding. “I believe Iwas once a boy.” And it glowed a little morebrightly in the darkness of the room behindthe mirror.

“What happened to you all?” asked Cor-aline. “How did you come here?”

“She left us here,” said one of the voices.“She stole our hearts, and she stole our souls,and she took our lives away, and she left ushere, and she forgot about us in the dark.”

“You poor things,” said Coraline. “Howlong have you been here?”

“So very long a time,” said a voice.“Aye. Time beyond reckoning,” said an-

other voice.

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“I walked through the scullery door,”said the voice of the one that thought itmight be a boy, “and I found myself back inthe parlor. But she was waiting for me. Shetold me she was my other mamma, but I nev-er saw my true mamma again.”

“Flee!” said the very first of thevoices—another girl, Coraline fancied. “Flee,while there’s still air in your lungs and bloodin your veins and warmth in your heart. Fleewhile you still have your mind and yoursoul.”

“I’m not running away,” said Coraline.“She has my parents. I came to get themback.”

“Ah, but she’ll keep you here while thedays turn to dust and the leaves fall and theyears pass one after the next like the tick-tick-ticking of a clock.”

“No,” said Coraline. “She won’t.”There was silence then in the room be-

hind the mirror.

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“Peradventure,” said a voice in the dark-ness, “if you could win your mamma andyour papa back from the beldam, you couldalso win free our souls.”

“Has she taken them?” asked Coraline,shocked.

“Aye. And hidden them.”“That is why we could not leave here,

when we died. She kept us, and she fed onus, until now we’ve nothing left of ourselves,only snakeskins and spider husks. Find oursecret hearts, young mistress.”

“And what will happen to you if I do?”asked Coraline.

The voices said nothing.“And what is she going to do to me?” she

said.The pale figures pulsed faintly; she

could imagine that they were nothing morethan afterimages, like the glow left by abright light in your eyes, after the lights goout.

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“It doth not hurt,” whispered one faintvoice.

“She will take your life and all you areand all you care’st for, and she will leave youwith nothing but mist and fog. She’ll takeyour joy. And one day you’ll awake and yourheart and your soul will have gone. A huskyou’ll be, a wisp you’ll be, and a thing nomore than a dream on waking, or a memoryof something forgotten.”

“Hollow,” whispered the third voice.“Hollow, hollow, hollow, hollow, hollow.”

“You must flee,” sighed a voice faintly.“I don’t think so,” said Coraline. “I tried

running away, and it didn’t work. She justtook my parents. Can you tell me how to getout of this room?”

“If we knew then we would tell you.”“Poor things,” said Coraline to herself.She sat down. She took off her sweater

and rolled it up and put it behind her head asa pillow. “She won’t keep me in the dark

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forever,” said Coraline. “She brought mehere to play games. Games and challenges,the cat said. I’m not much of a challenge herein the dark.” She tried to get comfortable,twisting and bending herself to fit thecramped space behind the mirror.

Her stomach rumbled. She ate her lastapple, taking the tiniest bites, making it lastas long as she could. When she had finishedshe was still hungry.

Then an idea struck her, and shewhispered, “When she comes to let me out,why don’t you three come with me?”

“We wish that we could,” they sighed toher, in their barely-there voices. “But she hasour hearts in her keeping. Now we belong tothe dark and to the empty places. The lightwould shrivel us, and burn.”

“Oh,” said Coraline.She closed her eyes, which made the

darkness darker, and she rested her head onthe rolled-up sweater, and she went to sleep.

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And as she fell asleep she thought she felt aghost kiss her cheek, tenderly, and a smallvoice whisper into her ear, a voice so faint itwas barely there at all, a gentle wispy noth-ing of a voice so hushed that Coraline couldalmost believe she was imagining it. “Lookthrough the stone,” it said to her.

And then she slept.

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VIII.THE OTHER MOTHER looked healthier than be-fore: there was a little blush to her cheeks,and her hair was wriggling like lazy snakeson a warm day. Her black button eyesseemed as if they had been freshly polished.

She had pushed through the mirror as ifshe were walking through nothing more solidthan water and had stared down at Coraline.Then she had opened the door with the littlesilver key. She picked Coraline up, just asCoraline’s real mother had when Coralinewas much younger, cradling the half-sleep-ing child as if she were a baby.

The other mother carried Coraline intothe kitchen and put her down very gentlyupon the countertop.

Coraline struggled to wake herself up,conscious only for the moment of havingbeen cuddled and loved, and wanting more

of it, then realizing where she was and whoshe was with.

“There, my sweet Coraline,” said herother mother. “I came and fetched you out ofthe cupboard. You needed to be taught a les-son, but we temper our justice with mercyhere; we love the sinner and we hate the sin.Now, if you will be a good child who lovesher mother, be compliant and fair-spoken,you and I shall understand each other per-fectly and we shall love each other perfectlyas well.”

Coraline scratched the sleep grit fromher eyes.

“There were other children in there,” shesaid. “Old ones, from a long time ago.”

“Were there?” said the other mother.She was bustling between the pans and thefridge, bringing out eggs and cheeses, butterand a slab of sliced pink bacon.

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“Yes,” said Coraline. “There were. Ithink you’re planning to turn me into one ofthem. A dead shell.”

Her other mother smiled gently. Withone hand she cracked the eggs into a bowl;with the other she whisked them and whirledthem. Then she dropped a pat of butter intoa frying pan, where it hissed and fizzled andspun as she sliced thin slices of cheese. Shepoured the melted butter and the cheese intothe egg-mixture, and whisked it some more.

“Now, I think you’re being silly, dear,”said the other mother. “I love you. I will al-ways love you. Nobody sensible believes inghosts anyway—that’s because they’re allsuch liars. Smell the lovely breakfast I’mmaking for you.” She poured the yellow mix-ture into the pan. “Cheese omelette. Yourfavorite.”

Coraline’s mouth watered. “You likegames,” she said. “That’s what I’ve beentold.”

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The other mother’s black eyes flashed.“Everybody likes games,” was all she said.

“Yes,” said Coraline. She climbed downfrom the counter and sat at the table.

The bacon was sizzling and spitting un-der the grill. It smelled wonderful.

“Wouldn’t you be happier if you wonme, fair and square?” asked Coraline.

“Possibly,” said the other mother. Shehad a show of unconcernedness, but her fin-gers twitched and drummed and she lickedher lips with her scarlet tongue. “What ex-actly are you offering?”

“Me,” said Coraline, and she gripped herknees under the table, to stop them fromshaking. “If I lose I’ll stay here with youforever and I’ll let you love me. I’ll be a mostdutiful daughter. I’ll eat your food and playHappy Families. And I’ll let you sew yourbuttons into my eyes.”

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Her other mother stared at her, blackbuttons unblinking. “That sounds very fine,”she said. “And if you do not lose?”

“Then you let me go. You let everyonego—my real father and mother, the deadchildren, everyone you’ve trapped here.”

The other mother took the bacon fromunder the grill and put it on a plate. Then sheslipped the cheese omelette from the panonto the plate, flipping it as she did so, let-ting it fold itself into a perfect omeletteshape.

She placed the breakfast plate in front ofCoraline, along with a glass of freshlysqueezed orange juice and a mug of frothyhot chocolate.

“Yes,” she said. “I think I like this game.But what kind of game shall it be? A riddlegame? A test of knowledge or of skill?

“An exploring game,” suggested Cor-aline. “A finding-things game.”

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“And what is it you think you should befinding in this hide-and-go-seek game, Cor-aline Jones?”

Coraline hesitated. Then, “My parents,”said Coraline. “And the souls of the childrenbehind the mirror.”

The other mother smiled at this, tri-umphantly, and Coraline wondered if shehad made the right choice. Still, it was toolate to change her mind now.

“A deal,” said the other mother. “Noweat up your breakfast, my sweet. Don’tworry—it won’t hurt you.”

Coraline stared at the breakfast, hatingherself for giving in so easily, but she wasstarving.

“How do I know you’ll keep your word?”asked Coraline.

“I swear it,” said the other mother. “Iswear it on my own mother’s grave.”

“Does she have a grave?” askedCoraline.

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“Oh yes,” said the other mother. “I puther in there myself. And when I found hertrying to crawl out, I put her back.”

“Swear on something else. So I can trustyou to keep your word.”

“My right hand,” said the other mother,holding it up. She waggled the long fingersslowly, displaying the clawlike nails. “I swearon that.”

Coraline shrugged. “Okay,” she said.“It’s a deal.” She ate the breakfast, trying notto wolf it down. She was hungrier than shehad thought.

As she ate, her other mother stared ather. It was hard to read expressions intothose black button eyes, but Coralinethought that her other mother lookedhungry, too.

She drank the orange juice, but eventhough she knew she would like it she couldnot bring herself to taste the hot chocolate.

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“Where should I start looking?” askedCoraline.

“Where you wish,” said her other moth-er, as if she did not care at all.

Coraline looked at her, and Coralinethought hard. There was no point, she de-cided, in exploring the garden and thegrounds: they didn’t exist; they weren’t real.There was no abandoned tennis court in theother mother’s world, no bottomless well. Allthat was real was the house itself.

She looked around the kitchen. Sheopened the oven, peered into the freezer,poked into the salad compartment of thefridge. The other mother followed her about,looking at Coraline with a smirk always hov-ering at the edge of her lips.

“How big are souls anyway?” askedCoraline.

The other mother sat down at the kit-chen table and leaned back against the wall,saying nothing. She picked at her teeth with

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a long crimson-varnished fingernail, thenshe tapped the finger, gently, tap-tap-tapagainst the polished black surface of herblack button eyes.

“Fine,” said Coraline. “Don’t tell me. Idon’t care. It doesn’t matter if you help me ornot. Everyone knows that a soul is the samesize as a beach ball.”

She was hoping the other mother wouldsay something like “Nonsense, they’re thesize of ripe onions—or suitcases—or grand-father clocks,” but the other mother simplysmiled, and the tap-tap-tapping of her fin-gernail against her eye was as steady and re-lentless as the drip of water droplets fromthe faucet into the sink. And then, Coralinerealized, it was simply the noise of the water,and she was alone in the room.

Coraline shivered. She preferred theother mother to have a location: if she werenowhere, then she could be anywhere. And,after all, it is always easier to be afraid of

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something you cannot see. She put her handsinto her pockets and her fingers closedaround the reassuring shape of the stonewith the hole in it. She pulled it out of herpocket, held it in front of her as if she wereholding a gun, and walked out into the hall.

There was no sound but the tap-tap ofthe water dripping into the metal sink.

She glanced at the mirror at the end ofthe hall. For a moment it clouded over, and itseemed to her that faces swam in the glass,indistinct and shapeless, and then the faceswere gone, and there was nothing in the mir-ror but a girl who was small for her age hold-ing something that glowed gently, like agreen coal.

Coraline looked down at her hand, sur-prised: it was just a stone with a hole in it, anondescript brown pebble. Then she lookedback into the mirror where the stoneglimmered like an emerald. A trail of green

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fire blew from the pebble in the mirror anddrifted toward Coraline’s bedroom.

“Hmm,” said Coraline.She walked into the bedroom. The toys

fluttered excitedly as she walked in, as if theywere pleased to see her, and a little tankrolled out of the toy box to greet her, its treadrolling over several other toys. It fell fromthe toy box onto the floor, tipping as it fell,and it lay on the carpet like a beetle on itsback, grumbling and grinding its treads be-fore Coraline picked it up and turned it over.The tank fled under the bed inembarrassment.

Coraline looked around the room.She looked in the cupboards, and the

drawers. Then she picked up one end of thetoy box and tipped all the toys in it out ontothe carpet, where they grumbled andstretched and wiggled awkwardly free ofeach other. A gray marble rolled across thefloor and clicked against the wall. None of

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the toys looked particularly soul-like, shethought. She picked up and examined a sil-ver charm bracelet from which hung tiny an-imal charms that chased each other aroundthe perimeter of the bracelet, the fox nevercatching the rabbit, the bear never gainingon the fox.

Coraline opened her hand and looked atthe stone with the hole in it, hoping for a cluebut not finding one. Most of the toys that hadbeen in the toy box had now crawled away tohide under the bed, and the few toys thatwere left (a green plastic soldier, the glassmarble, a vivid pink yo-yo, and such) werethe kind of things you find in the bottoms oftoy boxes in the real world: forgotten objects,abandoned and unloved.

She was about to leave and look else-where. And then she remembered a voice inthe darkness, a gentle whispering voice, andwhat it had told her to do. She raised thestone with a hole in it and held it in front of

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her right eye. She closed her left eye andlooked at the room through the hole in thestone.

Through the stone, the world was grayand colorless, like a pencil drawing.Everything in it was gray—no, not quiteeverything: something glinted on the floor,something the color of an ember in a nurseryfireplace, the color of a scarlet-and-orangetulip nodding in the May sun. Coralinereached out her left hand, scared that if shetook her eye off it it would vanish, and shefumbled for the burning thing.

Her fingers closed about somethingsmooth and cool. She snatched it up, andthen lowered the stone with a hole in it fromher eye and looked down. The gray glassmarble from the bottom of the toy box sat,dully, in the pink palm of her hand. Sheraised the stone to her eye once more andlooked through it at the marble. Once again

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the marble burned and flickered with a redfire.

A voice whispered in her mind, “Indeed,lady, it comes to me that I certainly was aboy, now I do think on it. Oh, but you musthurry. There are two of us still to find, andthe beldam is already angry with you for un-covering me.”

If I’m going to do this, thought Coraline,I’m not going to do it in her clothes. Shechanged back into her pajamas and herdressing gown and her slippers, leaving thegray sweater and the black jeans neatly fol-ded up on the bed, the orange boots on thefloor by the toy box.

She put the marble into her dressing-gown pocket and walked out into the hall.

Something stung her face and hands likesand blowing on a beach on a windy day. Shecovered her eyes and pushed forward.

The sand stings got worse, and it gotharder and harder to walk, as if she were

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pushing into the wind on a particularlyblustery day. It was a vicious wind, and acold one.

She took a step backwards, the way shehad come.

“Oh, keep going,” whispered a ghostvoice in her ear, “for the beldam is angry.”

She stepped forward in the hallway, intoanother gust of wind, which stung her cheeksand face with invisible sand, sharp asneedles, sharp as glass.

“Play fair,” shouted Coraline into thewind.

There was no reply, but the windwhipped about her one more time, petu-lantly, and then it dropped away, and wasgone. As she passed the kitchen Coralinecould hear, in the sudden silence, the drip-drip of the water from the leaking tap or per-haps the other mother’s long fingernails tap-ping impatiently against the table. Coralineresisted the urge to look.

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In a couple of strides she reached thefront door, and she walked outside.

Coraline went down the steps andaround the house until she reached the otherMiss Spink and Miss Forcible’s flat. Thelamps around the door were flickering onand off almost randomly now, spelling outno words that Coraline could understand.The door was closed. She was afraid it waslocked, and she pushed on it with all herstrength. First it stuck, then suddenly it gave,and, with a jerk, Coraline stumbled into thedark room beyond.

Coraline closed one hand around thestone with the hole in it and walked forwardinto blackness. She expected to find a cur-tained anteroom, but there was nothingthere. The room was dark. The theater wasempty. She moved ahead cautiously. So-mething rustled above her. She looked up in-to a deeper darkness, and as she did so herfeet knocked against something. She reached

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down, picked up a flashlight, and clicked iton, sweeping the beam around the room.

The theater was derelict and abandoned.Chairs were broken on the floor, and old,dusty spiderwebs draped the walls and hungfrom the rotten wood and the decomposingvelvet hangings.

Something rustled once again. Coralinedirected her light beam upward, toward theceiling. There were things up there, hairless,jellyish. She thought they might once havehad faces, might even once have been dogs;but no dogs had wings like bats or couldhang, like spiders, like bats, upside down.

The light startled the creatures, and oneof them took to the air, its wings whirringheavily through the dust. Coraline ducked asit swooped close to her. It came to rest on afar wall, and it began to clamber, upsidedown, back to the nest of the dog-bats uponthe ceiling.

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Coraline raised the stone to her eye andshe scanned the room through it, looking forsomething that glowed or glinted, a telltalesign that somewhere in this room was anoth-er hidden soul. She ran the beam of theflashlight about the room as she searched,the thick dust in the air making the lightbeam seem almost solid.

There was something up on the backwall behind the ruined stage. It was grayishwhite, twice the size of Coraline herself, andit was stuck to the back wall like a slug. Cor-aline took a deep breath. “I’m not afraid,”she told herself. “I’m not.” She did not be-lieve herself, but she scrambled up onto theold stage, fingers sinking into the rottingwood as she pulled herself up.

As she got closer to the thing on thewall, she saw that it was some kind of a sac,like a spider’s egg case. It twitched in thelight beam. Inside the sac was somethingthat looked like a person, but a person with

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two heads, with twice as many arms and legsas it should have.

The creature in the sac seemed horriblyunformed and unfinished, as if two plasticinepeople had been warmed and rolled togeth-er, squashed and pressed into one thing.

Coraline hesitated. She did not want toapproach the thing. The dog-bats dropped,one by one, from the ceiling and began tocircle the room, coming close to her but nev-er touching her.

Perhaps there are no souls hidden inhere, she thought. Perhaps I can just leaveand go somewhere else. She took a last lookthrough the hole in the stone: the abandonedtheater was still a bleak gray, but now therewas a brown glow, as rich and bright as pol-ished cherrywood, coming from inside thesac. Whatever was glowing was being held inone of the hands of the thing on the wall.

Coraline walked slowly across the dampstage, trying to make as little noise as she

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could, afraid that, if she disturbed the thingin the sac, it would open its eyes, and see her,and then…

But there was nothing that she couldthink of as scary as having it look at her. Herheart pounded in her chest. She took anotherstep forward.

She had never been so scared, but stillshe walked forward until she reached the sac.Then she pushed her hand into the sticky,clinging whiteness of the stuff on the wall. Itcrackled softly, like a tiny fire, as she pushed,and it clung to her skin and clothes like aspiderweb clings, like white cotton candy.She pushed her hand into it, and she reachedupward until she touched a cold hand, whichwas, she could feel, closed around anotherglass marble. The creature’s skin felt slip-pery, as if it had been covered in jelly. Cor-aline tugged at the marble.

At first nothing happened: it was heldtight in the creature’s grasp. Then, one by

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one, the fingers loosened their grip, and themarble slipped into her hand. She pulled herarm back through the sticky webbing, re-lieved that the thing’s eyes had not opened.She shone the light on its faces: they re-sembled, she decided, the younger versionsof Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, but twistedand squeezed together, like two lumps of waxthat had melted and melded together intoone ghastly thing.

Without warning, one of the creature’shands made a grab for Coraline’s arm. Itsfingernails scraped her skin, but it was tooslippery to grip, and Coraline pulled awaysuccessfully. And then the eyes opened, fourblack buttons glinting and staring down ather, and two voices that sounded like novoice that Coraline had ever heard began tospeak to her. One of them wailed andwhispered, the other buzzed like a fat andangry bluebottle at a windowpane, but the

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voices said, as one person, “Thief! Give itback! Stop! Thief!”

The air became alive with dog-bats. Cor-aline began to back away. She realized thenthat, terrifying though the thing on the wallthat had once been the other Misses Spinkand Forcible was, it was attached to the wallby its web, encased in its cocoon. It could notfollow her.

The dog-bats flapped and flutteredabout her, but they did nothing to hurt Cor-aline. She climbed down from the stage,shone the flashlight about the old theaterlooking for the way out.

“Flee, Miss,” wailed a girl’s voice in herhead. “Flee, now. You have two of us. Fleethis place while your blood still flows.”

Coraline dropped the marble into herpocket beside the other. She spotted thedoor, ran to it, and pulled on it until itopened.

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IX.OUTSIDE, THE WORLD HAD become a formless,swirling mist with no shapes or shadows be-hind it, while the house itself seemed to havetwisted and stretched. It seemed to Coralinethat it was crouching, and staring down ather, as if it were not really a house but onlythe idea of a house—and the person who hadhad the idea, she was certain, was not a goodperson. There was sticky web stuff clingingto her arm, and she wiped it off as best shecould. The gray windows of the houseslanted at strange angles.

The other mother was waiting for her,standing on the grass with her arms folded.Her black button eyes were expressionless,but her lips were pressed tightly together in acold fury.

When she saw Coraline she reached outone long white hand, and she crooked a

finger. Coraline walked toward her. The oth-er mother said nothing.

“I got two,” said Coraline. “One soul stillto go.”

The expression on the other mother’sface did not change. She might not haveheard what Coraline said.

“Well, I just thought you’d want toknow,” said Coraline.

“Thank you, Coraline,” said the othermother coldly, and her voice did not justcome from her mouth. It came from the mist,and the fog, and the house, and the sky. Shesaid, “You know that I love you.”

And, despite herself, Coraline nodded. Itwas true: the other mother loved her. But sheloved Coraline as a miser loves money, or adragon loves its gold. In the other mother’sbutton eyes, Coraline knew that she was apossession, nothing more. A tolerated pet,whose behavior was no longer amusing.

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“I don’t want your love,” said Coraline.“I don’t want anything from you.”

“Not even a helping hand?” asked theother mother. “You have been doing so well,after all. I thought you might want a littlehint, to help you with the rest of your treas-ure hunt.”

“I’m doing fine on my own,” saidCoraline.

“Yes,” said the other mother. “But if youwanted to get into the flat in the front—theempty one—to look around, you would findthe door locked, and then where would yoube?”

“Oh,” Coraline pondered this, for a mo-ment. Then she said, “Is there a key?”

The other mother stood there in thepaper-gray fog of the flattening world. Herblack hair drifted about her head, as if it hada mind and a purpose all of its own. Shecoughed suddenly in the back of her throat,and then she opened her mouth.

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The other mother reached up her handand removed a small, brass front-door keyfrom her tongue.

“Here,” she said. “You’ll need this to getin.”

She tossed the key, casually, toward Cor-aline, who caught it, one-handed, before shecould think about whether she wanted it ornot. The key was still slightly damp.

A chill wind blew about them, and Cor-aline shivered and looked away. When shelooked back she was alone.

Uncertainly, she walked around to thefront of the house and stood in front of thedoor to the empty flat. Like all the doors, itwas painted bright green.

“She does not mean you well,”whispered a ghost voice in her ear. “We donot believe that she would help you. It mustbe a trick.”

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Coraline said, “Yes, you’re right, I ex-pect.” Then she put the key in the lock andturned it.

Silently, the door swung open, and si-lently Coraline walked inside.

The flat had walls the color of old milk.The wooden boards of the floor were uncar-peted and dusty with the marks and patternsof old carpets and rugs on them.

There was no furniture in there, onlyplaces where furniture had once been. Noth-ing decorated the walls; there were dis-colored rectangles on the walls to showwhere paintings or photographs had oncehung. It was so silent that Coraline imaginedthat she could hear the motes of dust driftingthrough the air.

She found herself to be quite worriedthat something would jump out at her, so shebegan to whistle. She thought it might makeit harder for things to jump out at her if shewas whistling.

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First she walked through the empty kit-chen. Then she walked through an emptybathroom, containing only a cast-iron bath,and, in the bath, a dead spider the size of asmall cat. The last room she looked at had,she supposed, once been a bedroom; shecould imagine that the rectangular dustshadow on the floorboards had once been abed. Then she saw something, and smiled,grimly. Set into the floorboards was a largemetal ring. Coraline knelt and took the coldring in her hands, and she tugged upward ashard as she could.

Terribly slowly, stiffly, heavily, a hingedsquare of floor lifted: it was a trapdoor. It lif-ted, and through the opening Coraline couldsee only darkness. She reached down, andher hand found a cold switch. She flicked itwithout much hope that it would work, butsomewhere below her a bulb lit, and a thinyellow light came up from the hole in the

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floor. She could see steps, heading down, butnothing else.

Coraline put her hand into her pocketand took out the stone with the hole in it.She looked through it at the cellar but sawnothing. She put the stone back into herpocket.

Up through the hole came the smell ofdamp clay, and something else, an acrid tanglike sour vinegar.

Coraline let herself down into the hole,looking nervously at the trapdoor. It was soheavy that if it fell she was sure she would betrapped down in the darkness forever. Sheput up a hand and touched it, but it stayed inposition. And then she turned toward thedarkness below, and she walked down thesteps. Set into the wall at the bottom of thesteps was another light switch, metal andrusting. She pushed it until it clicked down,and a naked bulb hanging from a wire fromthe low ceiling came on. It did not give up

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enough light even for Coraline to make outthe things that had been painted onto theflaking cellar walls. The paintings seemedcrude. There were eyes, she could see that,and things that might have been grapes. Andother things, below them. Coraline could notbe sure that they were paintings of people.

There was a pile of rubbish in onecorner of the room: cardboard boxes filledwith mildewed papers and decaying curtainsin a heap beside them.

Coraline’s slippers crunched across thecement floor. The bad smell was worse, now.She was ready to turn and leave, when shesaw the foot sticking out from beneath thepile of curtains.

She took a deep breath (the smells ofsour wine and moldy bread filled her head)and she pulled away the damp cloth, to re-veal something more or less the size andshape of a person.

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In that dim light, it took her severalseconds to recognize it for what it was: thething was pale and swollen like a grub, withthin, sticklike arms and feet. It had almostno features on its face, which had puffed andswollen like risen bread dough.

The thing had two large black buttonswhere its eyes should have been.

Coraline made a noise, a sound of revul-sion and horror, and, as if it had heard herand awakened, the thing began to sit up.Coraline stood there, frozen. The thingturned its head until both its black buttoneyes were pointed straight at her. A mouthopened in the mouthless face, strands of palestuff sticking to the lips, and a voice that nolonger even faintly resembled her father’swhispered, “Coraline.”

“Well,” said Coraline to the thing thathad once been her other father, “at least youdidn’t jump out at me.”

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The creature’s twiglike hands moved toits face and pushed the pale clay about, mak-ing something like a nose. It said nothing.

“I’m looking for my parents,” said Cor-aline. “Or a stolen soul from one of the otherchildren. Are they down here?”

“There is nothing down here,” said thepale thing indistinctly. “Nothing but dustand damp and forgetting.” The thing waswhite, and huge, and swollen. Monstrous,thought Coraline, but also miserable. Sheraised the stone with the hole in it to her eyeand looked through it. Nothing. The palething was telling her the truth.

“Poor thing,” she said. “I bet she madeyou come down here as a punishment fortelling me too much.”

The thing hesitated, then it nodded.Coraline wondered how she could ever haveimagined that this grublike thing resembledher father.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

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“She’s not best pleased,” said the thingthat was once the other father. “Not bestpleased at all. You’ve put her quite out ofsorts. And when she gets out of sorts, shetakes it out on everybody else. It’s her way.”

Coraline patted its hairless head. Its skinwas tacky, like warm bread dough. “Poorthing,” she said. “You’re just a thing shemade and then threw away.”

The thing nodded vigorously; as it nod-ded, the left button eye fell off and clatteredonto the concrete floor. The thing lookedaround vacantly with its one eye, as if it hadlost her. Finally it saw her, and, as if makinga great effort, it opened its mouth once moreand said in a wet, urgent voice, “Run, child.Leave this place. She wants me to hurt you,to keep you here forever, so that you cannever finish the game and she will win. She ispushing me so hard to hurt you. I cannotfight her.”

“You can,” said Coraline. “Be brave.”

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She looked around: the thing that hadonce been the other father was between herand the steps up and out of the cellar. Shestarted edging along the wall, heading to-ward the steps. The thing twisted bonelesslyuntil its one eye was again facing her. Itseemed to be getting bigger, now, and moreawake. “Alas,” it said, “I cannot.”

And it lunged across the cellar towardher then, its toothless mouth opened wide.

Coraline had a single heartbeat in whichto react. She could only think of two things todo. Either she could scream and try to runaway, and be chased around a badly lit cellarby the huge grub thing, be chased until itcaught her. Or she could do something else.

So she did something else.As the thing reached her, Coraline put

out her hand and closed it around the thing’sremaining button eye, and she tugged ashard as she knew how.

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For a moment nothing happened. Thenthe button came away and flew from herhand, clicking against the walls before it fellto the cellar floor.

The thing froze in place. It threw its palehead back blindly, and opened its mouthhorribly wide, and it roared its anger andfrustration. Then, all in a rush, the thingswept toward the place where Coraline hadbeen standing.

But Coraline was not standing there anylonger. She was already tiptoeing, as quietlyas she could, up the steps that would takeher away from the dim cellar with the crudepaintings on the walls. She could not takeher eyes from the floor beneath her, though,across which the pale thing flopped andwrithed, hunting for her. Then, as if it wasbeing told what to do, the creature stoppedmoving, and its blind head tipped to oneside.

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It’s listening for me, thought Coraline. Imust be extra quiet. She took another stepup, and her foot slipped on the step, and thething heard her.

Its head tipped toward her. For a mo-ment it swayed and seemed to be gatheringits wits. Then, fast as a serpent, it slitheredfor the steps and began to flow up them, to-ward her. Coraline turned and ran, wildly, upthe last half dozen steps, and she pushedherself up and onto the floor of the dustybedroom. Without pausing, she pulled theheavy trapdoor toward her, and let go of it. Itcrashed down with a thump just assomething large banged against it. The trap-door shook and rattled in the floor, but itstayed where it was.

Coraline took a deep breath. If there hadbeen any furniture in that flat, even a chair,she would have pulled it onto the trapdoor,but there was nothing.

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She walked out of that flat as fast as shecould, without actually ever running, and shelocked the front door behind her. She left thedoor key under the mat. Then she walkeddown onto the drive.

She had half expected that the othermother would be standing there waiting forCoraline to come out, but the world was si-lent and empty.

Coraline wanted to go home.She hugged herself, and told herself that

she was brave, and she almost believed her-self, and then she walked around to the sideof the house, in the gray mist that wasn’t amist, and she made for the stairs, to go up.

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X.CORALINE WALKED UP THE stairs outside thebuilding to the topmost flat, where, in herworld, the crazy old man upstairs lived. Shehad gone up there once with her real mother,when her mother was collecting for charity.They had stood in the open doorway, waitingfor the crazy old man with the big mustacheto find the envelope that Coraline’s motherhad left, and the flat had smelled of strangefoods and pipe tobacco and odd, sharp,cheesy-smelling things Coraline could notname. She had not wanted to go any fartherinside than that.

“I’m an explorer,” said Coraline outloud, but her words sounded muffled anddead on the misty air. She had made it out ofthe cellar, hadn’t she?

And she had. But if there was one thingthat Coraline was certain of, it was that thisflat would be worse.

She reached the top of the house. Thetopmost flat had once been the attic of thehouse, but that was long ago.

She knocked on the green-painted door.It swung open, and she walked in.

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We have eyes and we havenerveses

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We have tails we have teethYou’ll all get what you deservesesWhen we rise from underneath.

whispered a dozen or more tiny voices, inthat dark flat with the roof so low where itmet the walls that Coraline could almostreach up and touch it.

Red eyes stared at her. Little pink feetscurried away as she came close. Darkershadows slipped through the shadows at theedges of things.

It smelled much worse in here than inthe real crazy old man upstairs’s flat. Thatsmelled of food (unpleasant food, to Cor-aline’s mind, but she knew that was a matterof taste: she did not like spices, herbs, orexotic things). This place smelled as if all theexotic foods in the world had been left out togo rotten.

“Little girl,” said a rustling voice in a farroom.

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“Yes,” said Coraline. I’m not frightened,she told herself, and as she thought it sheknew that it was true. There was nothinghere that frightened her. These things—eventhe thing in the cellar—were illusions, thingsmade by the other mother in a ghastly par-ody of the real people and real things on theother end of the corridor. She could not trulymake anything, decided Coraline. She couldonly twist and copy and distort things thatalready existed.

And then Coraline found herself won-dering why the other mother would haveplaced a snowglobe on the drawing-roommantelpiece; for the mantelpiece, in Cor-aline’s world, was quite bare.

As soon as she had asked herself thequestion, she realized that there was actuallyan answer.

Then the voice came again, and her trainof thought was interrupted.

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“Come here, little girl. I know what youwant, little girl.” It was a rustling voice,scratchy and dry. It made Coraline think ofsome kind of enormous dead insect. Whichwas silly, she knew. How could a dead thing,especially a dead insect, have a voice?

She walked through several rooms withlow, slanting ceilings until she came to the fi-nal room. It was a bedroom, and the othercrazy old man upstairs sat at the far end ofthe room, in the near darkness, bundled upin his coat and hat. As Coraline entered hebegan to talk. “Nothing’s changed, little girl,”he said, his voice sounding like the noise dryleaves make as they rustle across a pave-ment. “And what if you do everything youswore you would? What then? Nothing’schanged. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored.You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you,not really listen to you. You’re too clever andtoo quiet for them to understand. They don’teven get your name right.

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“Stay here with us,” said the voice fromthe figure at the end of the room. “We willlisten to you and play with you and laughwith you. Your other mother will build wholeworlds for you to explore, and tear themdown every night when you are done. Everyday will be better and brighter than the onethat went before. Remember the toy box?How much better would a world be built justlike that, and all for you?”

“And will there be gray, wet days whereI just don’t know what to do and there’snothing to read or to watch and nowhere togo and the day drags on forever?” askedCoraline.

From the shadows, the man said,“Never.”

“And will there be awful meals, withfood made from recipes, with garlic and tar-ragon and broad beans in?” asked Coraline.

“Every meal will be a thing of joy,”whispered the voice from under the old

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man’s hat. “Nothing will pass your lips thatdoes not entirely delight you.”

“And could I have Day-Glo green glovesto wear, and yellow Wellington boots in theshape of frogs?” asked Coraline.

“Frogs, ducks, rhinos, oc-topuses—whatever you desire. The world willbe built new for you every morning. If youstay here, you can have whatever you want.”

Coraline sighed. “You really don’t un-derstand, do you?” she said. “I don’t wantwhatever I want. Nobody does. Not really.What kind of fun would it be if I just goteverything I ever wanted? Just like that, andit didn’t mean anything. What then?”

“I don’t understand,” said the whisperyvoice.

“Of course you don’t understand,” shesaid, raising the stone with the hole in it toher eye. “You’re just a bad copy she made ofthe crazy old man upstairs.”

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“Not even that anymore,” said the dead,whispery voice. There was a glow comingfrom the raincoat of the man, at about chestheight. Through the hole in the stone theglow twinkled and shone blue-white as anystar. She wished she had a stick or somethingto poke him with: she had no wish to get anycloser to the shadowy man at the end of theroom.

Coraline took a step closer to the man,and he fell apart. Black rats leapt from thesleeves and from under the coat and hat, ascore or more of them, red eyes shining inthe dark. They chittered and they fled. Thecoat fluttered and fell heavily to the floor.The hat rolled into one corner of the room.

Coraline reached out one hand andpulled the coat open. It was empty, althoughit was greasy to the touch. There was no signof the final glass marble in it. She scannedthe room, squinting through the hole in thestone, and caught sight of something that

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twinkled and burned like a star at floor levelby the doorway. It was being carried in theforepaws of the largest black rat. As shelooked, it slipped away.

The other rats watched her from thecorners of the rooms as she ran after it.

Now, rats can run faster than people, es-pecially over short distances. But a largeblack rat holding a marble in its two frontpaws is no match for a determined girl (evenif she is small for her age) moving at a run.Smaller black rats ran back and forth acrossher path, trying to distract her, but she ig-nored them all, keeping her eyes fixed on theone with the marble, who was headingstraight out of the flat, toward the front door.

They reached the steps on the outside ofthe building.

Coraline had time to observe that thehouse itself was continuing to change, be-coming less distinct and flattening out, evenas she raced down the stairs. It reminded her

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of a photograph of a house, now, not thething itself. Then she was simply racing pell-mell down the steps in pursuit of the rat,with no room in her mind for anything else,certain she was gaining on it. She was run-ning fast—too fast, she discovered, as shecame to the bottom of one flight of stairs,and her foot skidded and twisted and shewent crashing onto the concrete landing.

Her left knee was scraped and skinned,and the palm of one hand she had thrownout to stop herself was a mess of scraped skinand grit. It hurt a little, and it would, sheknew, soon hurt much more. She picked thegrit out of her palm and climbed to her feetand, as fast as she could, knowing that shehad lost and it was already too late, she wentdown to the final landing at the ground level.

She looked around for the rat, but it wasgone, and the marble with it.

Her hand stung where the skin had beenscraped, and there was blood trickling down

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her ripped pajama leg from her knee. It wasas bad as the summer that her mother hadtaken the training wheels off Coraline’s bi-cycle; but then, back then, in with all the cutsand scrapes (her knees had had scabs on topof scabs) she had had a feeling of achieve-ment. She was learning something, doingsomething she had not known how to do.Now she felt nothing but cold loss. She hadfailed the ghost children. She had failed herparents. She had failed herself, failedeverything.

She closed her eyes and wished that theearth would swallow her up.

There was a cough.She opened her eyes and saw the rat. It

was lying on the brick path at the bottom ofthe stairs with a surprised look on itsface—which was now several inches awayfrom the rest of it. Its whiskers were stiff, itseyes were wide open, its teeth visible and

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yellow and sharp. A collar of wet bloodglistened at its neck.

Beside the decapitated rat, a smug ex-pression on its face, was the black cat. It res-ted one paw on the gray glass marble.

“I think I once mentioned,” said the cat,“that I don’t like rats at the best of times. Itlooked like you needed this one, however. Ihope you don’t mind my getting involved.”

“I think,” said Coraline, trying to catchher breath, “I think you may—havesaid—something of the sort.”

The cat lifted its paw from the marble,which rolled toward Coraline. She picked itup. In her mind a final voice whispered toher, urgently.

“She has lied to you. She will never giveyou up, now she has you. She will no moregive any of us up than change her nature.”The hairs on the back of Coraline’s neckprickled, and Coraline knew that the girl’s

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voice told the truth. She put the marble inher dressing-gown pocket with the others.

She had all three marbles, now.All she needed to do was to find her

parents.And, Coraline realized with surprise,

that bit was easy. She knew exactly whereher parents were. If she had stopped tothink, she might have known where theywere all along. The other mother could notcreate. She could only transform, and twist,and change.

The mantelpiece in the drawing roomback home was quite empty. But knowingthat, she knew something else as well.

“The other mother. She plans to breakher promise. She won’t let us go,” saidCoraline.

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” admitted thecat. “Like I said, there’s no guarantee she’llplay fair.” And then he raised his head.“Hullo…did you see that?”

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“What?”“Look behind you,” said the cat.The house had flattened out even more.

It no longer looked like a photograph—morelike a drawing, a crude, charcoal scribble of ahouse drawn on gray paper.

“Whatever’s happening,” said Coraline,“thank you for helping with the rat. I sup-pose I’m almost there, aren’t I? So you go offinto the mist or wherever you go, and I’ll,well, I hope I get to see you at home. If shelets me go home.”

The cat’s fur was on end, and its tail wasbristling like a chimney sweep’s brush.

“What’s wrong?” asked Coraline.“They’ve gone,” said the cat. “They

aren’t there anymore. The ways in and out ofthis place. They just went flat.”

“Is that bad?”The cat lowered its tail, swishing it from

side to side angrily. It made a low growlingnoise in the back of its throat. It walked in a

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circle, until it was facing away from Coraline,and then it began to walk backwards, stiffly,one step at a time, until it was pushing upagainst Coraline’s leg. She put down a handto stroke it, and could feel how hard its heartwas beating. It was trembling like a dead leafin a storm.

“You’ll be fine,” said Coraline.“Everything’s going to be fine. I’ll take youhome.”

The cat said nothing.“Come on, cat,” said Coraline. She took a

step back toward the steps, but the cat stayedwhere it was, looking miserable and, oddly,much smaller.

“If the only way out is past her,” saidCoraline, “then that’s the way we’re going togo.” She went back to the cat, bent down,and picked it up. The cat did not resist. Itsimply trembled. She supported its bottomwith one hand, rested its front legs on hershoulders. The cat was heavy but not too

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heavy to carry. It licked at the palm of herhand, where the blood from the scrape waswelling up.

Coraline walked up the stairs one step ata time, heading back to her own flat. She wasaware of the marbles clicking in her pocket,aware of the stone with a hole in it, aware ofthe cat pressing itself against her.

She got to her front door—now just asmall child’s scrawl of a door—and shepushed her hand against it, half expectingthat her hand would rip through it, revealingnothing behind it but blackness and a scat-tering of stars.

But the door swung open, and Coralinewent through.

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XI.ONCE INSIDE, IN HER FLAT, or rather, in theflat that was not hers, Coraline was pleasedto see that it had not transformed into theempty drawing that the rest of the houseseemed to have become. It had depth, andshadows, and someone who stood in theshadows waiting for Coraline to return.

“So you’re back,” said the other mother.She did not sound pleased. “And you broughtvermin with you.”

“No,” said Coraline. “I brought a friend,”She could feel the cat stiffening under herhands, as if it were anxious to be away. Cor-aline wanted to hold on to it like a teddybear, for reassurance, but she knew that catshate to be squeezed, and she suspected thatfrightened cats were liable to bite andscratch if provoked in any way, even if theywere on your side.

“You know I love you,” said the othermother flatly.

“You have a very funny way of showingit,” said Coraline. She walked down the hall-way, then turned into the drawing room,steady step by steady step, pretending thatshe could not feel the other mother’s blankblack eyes on her back. Her grandmother’sformal furniture was still there, and thepainting on the wall of the strange fruit (butnow the fruit in the painting had been eaten,and all that remained in the bowl was thebrowning core of an apple, several plum andpeach stones, and the stem of what hadformerly been a bunch of grapes). The lion-pawed table raked the carpet with its clawedwooden feet, as if it were impatient forsomething. At the end of the room, in thecorner, stood the wooden door, which hadonce, in another place, opened onto a plainbrick wall. Coraline tried not to stare at it.The window showed nothing but mist.

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This was it, Coraline knew. The momentof truth. The unraveling time.

The other mother had followed her in.Now she stood in the center of the room,between Coraline and the mantelpiece, andlooked down at Coraline with black buttoneyes. It was funny, Coraline thought. Theother mother did not look anything at all likeher own mother. She wondered how she hadever been deceived into imagining a resemb-lance. The other mother was huge—her headalmost brushed the ceiling—and very pale,the color of a spider’s belly. Her hair writhedand twined about her head, and her teethwere sharp as knives… .

“Well?” said the other mother sharply.“Where are they?”

Coraline leaned against an armchair, ad-justed the cat with her left hand, put herright hand into her pocket, and pulled outthe three glass marbles. They were a frostedgray, and they clinked together in the palm

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of her hand. The other mother reached herwhite fingers for them, but Coraline slippedthem back into her pocket. She knew it wastrue, then. The other mother had no inten-tion of letting her go or of keeping her word.It had been an entertainment, and nothingmore. “Hold on,” she said. “We aren’t fin-ished yet, are we?”

The other mother looked daggers, butshe smiled sweetly. “No,” she said. “I sup-pose not. After all, you still need to find yourparents, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Coraline. I must not look atthe mantelpiece, she thought. I must noteven think about it.

“Well?” said the other mother. “Producethem. Would you like to look in the cellaragain? I have some other interesting thingshidden down there, you know.”

“No,” said Coraline. “I know where myparents are.” The cat was heavy in her arms.

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She moved it forward, unhooking its clawsfrom her shoulder as she did so.

“Where?”“It stands to reason,” said Coraline. “I’ve

looked everywhere you’d hide them. Theyaren’t in the house.”

The other mother stood very still, givingnothing away, lips tightly closed. She mighthave been a wax statue. Even her hair hadstopped moving.

“So,” Coraline continued, both handswrapped firmly around the black cat. “I knowwhere they have to be. You’ve hidden themin the passageway between the houses,haven’t you? They are behind that door.” Shenodded her head toward the door in thecorner.

The other mother remained statue still,but a hint of a smile crept back onto her face.“Oh, they are, are they?”

“Why don’t you open it?” said Coraline.“They’ll be there, all right.”

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It was her only way home, she knew. Butit all depended on the other mother’s need-ing to gloat, needing not only to win but toshow that she had won.

The other mother reached her handslowly into her apron pocket and producedthe black iron key. The cat stirred uncom-fortably in Coraline’s arms, as if it wanted toget down. Just stay there for a few momentslonger, she thought at it, wondering if itcould hear her. I’ll get us both home. I said Iwould. I promise. She felt the cat relax everso slightly in her arms.

The other mother walked over to thedoor and pushed the key into the lock.

She turned the key.Coraline heard the mechanism clunk

heavily. She was already starting, as quietlyas she could, step by step, to back away to-ward the mantelpiece.

The other mother pushed down on thedoor handle and pulled open the door,

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revealing a corridor behind it, dark andempty. “There,” she said, waving her handsat the corridor. The expression of delight onher face was a very bad thing to see. “You’rewrong! You don’t know where your parentsare, do you? They aren’t there.” She turnedand looked at Coraline. “Now,” she said,“you’re going to stay here for ever andalways.”

“No,” said Coraline. “I’m not.” And, hardas she could, she threw the black cat towardthe other mother. It yowled and landed onthe other mother’s head, claws flailing, teethbared, fierce and angry. Fur on end, it lookedhalf again as big as it was in real life.

Without waiting to see what would hap-pen, Coraline reached up to the mantlepieceand closed her hand around the snow globe,pushing it deep into the pocket of her dress-ing gown.

The cat made a deep, ululating yowl andsank its teeth into the other mother’s cheek.

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She was flailing at it. Blood ran from the cutson her white face—not red blood but a deep,tarry black stuff. Coraline ran for the door.

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She pulled the key out of the lock.“Leave her! Come on!” she shouted to

the cat. It hissed, and swiped its scalpel-sharp claws at the other mother’s face in onewild rake which left black ooze trickling fromseveral gashes on the other mother’s nose.Then it sprang down toward Coraline.“Quickly!” she said. The cat ran toward her,and they both stepped into the dark corridor.

It was colder in the corridor, like step-ping down into a cellar on a warm day. Thecat hesitated for a moment; then, seeing theother mother was coming toward them, itran to Coraline and stopped by her legs.

Coraline began to pull the door closed.It was heavier than she imagined a door

could be, and pulling it closed was like tryingto close a door against a high wind. And thenshe felt something from the other side start-ing to pull against her.

Shut! she thought. Then she said, outloud, “Come on, please.” And she felt the

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door begin to move, to pull closed, to giveagainst the phantom wind.

Suddenly she was aware of other peoplein the corridor with her. She could not turnher head to look at them, but she knew themwithout having to look. “Help me, please,”she said. “All of you.”

The other people in the corridor—threechildren, two adults—were somehow too in-substantial to touch the door. But theirhands closed about hers, as she pulled on thebig iron door handle, and suddenly she feltstrong.

“Never let up, Miss! Hold strong! Holdstrong!” whispered a voice in her mind.

“Pull, girl, pull!” whispered another.And then a voice that sounded like her

mother’s—her own mother, her real, wonder-ful, maddening, infuriating, glorious moth-er—just said, “Well done, Coraline,” and thatwas enough.

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The door started to slip closed, easily asanything.

“No!” screamed a voice from beyond thedoor, and it no longer sounded even faintlyhuman.

Something snatched at Coraline, reach-ing through the closing gap between the doorand the doorpost. Coraline jerked her headout of the way, but the door began to openonce more.

“We’re going to go home,” said Coraline.“We are. Help me.” She ducked the snatch-ing fingers.

They moved through her, then: ghosthands lent her strength that she no longerpossessed. There was a final moment of res-istance, as if something were caught in thedoor, and then, with a crash, the woodendoor banged closed.

Something dropped from Coraline’shead height to the floor. It landed with a sortof a scuttling thump.

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“Come on!” said the cat. “This is not agood place to be in. Quickly.”

Coraline turned her back on the doorand began to run, as fast as was practical,through the dark corridor, running her handalong the wall to make sure she didn’t bumpinto anything or get turned around in thedarkness.

It was an uphill run, and it seemed toher that it went on for a longer distance thananything could possibly go. The wall she wastouching felt warm and yielding now, and,she realized, it felt as it were covered in a finedowny fur. It moved, as if it were taking abreath. She snatched her hand away from it.

Winds howled in the dark.She was scared she would bump into

something, and she put out her hand for thewall once more. This time what she touchedfelt hot and wet, as if she had put her hand insomebody’s mouth, and she pulled it backwith a small wail.

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Her eyes had adjusted to the dark. Shecould half see, as faintly glowing patchesahead of her, two adults, three children. Shecould hear the cat, too, padding in the darkin front of her.

And there was something else, whichsuddenly scuttled between her feet, nearlysending Coraline flying. She caught herselfbefore she went down, using her own mo-mentum to keep moving. She knew that ifshe fell in that corridor she might never getup again. Whatever that corridor was wasolder by far than the other mother. It wasdeep, and slow, and it knew that she wasthere… .

Then daylight appeared, and she ran to-ward it, puffing and wheezing. “Almostthere,” she called encouragingly, but in thelight she discovered that the wraiths hadgone, and she was alone. She did not havetime to wonder what had happened to them.Panting for breath, she staggered through

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the door, and slammed it behind her with theloudest, most satisfying bang you canimagine.

Coraline locked the door with the key,and put the key back into her pocket.

The black cat was huddled in thefarthest corner of the room, the pink tip of itstongue showing, its eyes wide. Coraline wentover to it and crouched down beside it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I threwyou at her. But it was the only way to distracther enough to get us all out. She would neverhave kept her word, would she?”

The cat looked up at her, then rested itshead on her hand, licking her fingers with itssandpapery tongue. It began to purr.

“Then we’re friends?” said Coraline.She sat down on one of her grandmoth-

er’s uncomfortable armchairs, and the catsprang up into her lap and made itself com-fortable. The light that came through the pic-ture window was daylight, real golden late-

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afternoon daylight, not a white mist light.The sky was a robin’s-egg blue, and Coralinecould see trees and, beyond the trees, greenhills, which faded on the horizon intopurples and grays. The sky had never seemedso sky, the world had never seemed soworld.

Coraline stared at the leaves on the treesand at the patterns of light and shadow onthe cracked bark of the trunk of the beechtree outside the window. Then she lookeddown at her lap, at the way that the rich sun-light brushed every hair on the cat’s head,turning each white whisker to gold.

Nothing, she thought, had ever been sointeresting.

And, caught up in the interestingness ofthe world, Coraline barely noticed that shehad wriggled down and curled catlike on hergrandmother’s uncomfortable armchair, nordid she notice when she fell into a deep anddreamless sleep.

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XII.HER MOTHER SHOOK HER gently awake.

“Coraline?” she said. “Darling, what afunny place to fall asleep. And really, thisroom is only for best. We looked all over thehouse for you.”

Coraline stretched and blinked. “I’msorry,” she said. “I fell asleep.”

“I can see that,” said her mother. “Andwherever did the cat come from? He waswaiting by the front door when I came in.Shot out like a bullet as I opened it.”

“Probably had things to do,” said Cor-aline. Then she hugged her mother so tightlythat her arms began to ache. Her motherhugged Coraline back.

“Dinner in fifteen minutes,” said hermother. “Don’t forget to wash your hands.And just look at those pajama bottoms. Whatdid you do to your poor knee?”

“I tripped,” said Coraline. She went intothe bathroom, and she washed her handsand cleaned her bloody knee. She put oint-ment on her cuts and scrapes.

She went into her bedroom—her realbedroom, her true bedroom. She pushed herhands into the pockets of her dressing gown,and she pulled out three marbles, a stonewith a hole in it, the black key, and an emptysnow globe.

She shook the snow globe and watchedthe glittery snow swirl through the water tofill the empty world. She put it down andwatched the snow fall, covering the placewhere the little couple had once stood.

Coraline took a piece of string from hertoy box, and she strung the black key on thestring. Then she knotted the string and hungit around her neck.

“There,” she said. She put on someclothes and hid the key under her T-shirt. It

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was cold against her skin. The stone went in-to her pocket.

Coraline walked down the hallway to herfather’s study. He had his back to her, butshe knew, just on seeing him, that his eyes,when he turned around, would be her fath-er’s kind gray eyes, and she crept over andkissed him on the back of his balding head.

“Hullo, Coraline,” he said. Then helooked around and smiled at her. “What wasthat for?”

“Nothing,” said Coraline. “I just missyou sometimes. That’s all.”

“Oh good,” he said. He put the computerto sleep, stood up, and then, for no reason atall, he picked Coraline up, which he had notdone for such a long time, not since he hadstarted pointing out to her she was much tooold to be carried, and he carried her into thekitchen.

Dinner that night was pizza, and eventhough it was homemade by her father (so

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the crust was alternately thick and doughyand raw, or too thin and burnt), and eventhough he had put slices of green pepper onit, along with little meatballs and, of allthings, pineapple chunks, Coraline ate theentire slice she had been given.

Well, she ate everything except for thepineapple chunks.

And soon enough it was bedtime.Coraline kept the key around her neck,

but she put the gray marbles beneath her pil-low; and in bed that night, Coraline dreameda dream.

She was at a picnic, under an old oaktree, in a green meadow. The sun was high inthe sky and while there were distant, fluffywhite clouds on the horizon, the sky aboveher head was a deep, untroubled blue.

There was a white linen cloth laid on thegrass, with bowls piled high with food—shecould see salads and sandwiches, nuts andfruit, jugs of lemonade and water and thick

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chocolate milk. Coraline sat on one side ofthe tablecloth while three other children tooka side each. They were dressed in the oddestclothes.

The smallest of them, sitting on Cor-aline’s left, was a boy with red velvet kneebritches and a frilly white shirt. His face wasdirty, and he was piling his plate high withboiled new potatoes and with what lookedlike cold, whole, cooked, trout. “This is thefinest of pic-nics, lady,” he said to her.

“Yes,” said Coraline. “I think it is. I won-der who organized it.”

“Why, I rather think you did, Miss,” saida tall girl, sitting opposite Coraline. She worea brown, rather shapeless dress, and had abrown bonnet on her head which tied be-neath her chin. “And we are more gratefulfor it and for all than ever words can say.”She was eating slices of bread and jam, deftlycutting the bread from a large golden-brownloaf with a huge knife, then spooning on the

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purple jam with a wooden spoon. She hadjam all around her mouth.

“Aye. This is the finest food I have eatenin centuries,” said the girl on Coraline’sright. She was a very pale child, dressed inwhat seemed to be spider’s webs, with acircle of glittering silver set in her blondehair. Coraline could have sworn that the girlhad two wings—like dusty silver butterflywings, not bird wings—coming out of herback. The girl’s plate was piled high withpretty flowers. She smiled at Coraline, as if ithad been a very long time since she hadsmiled and she had almost, but not quite,forgotten how. Coraline found herself likingthis girl immensely.

And then, in the way of dreams, the pic-nic was done and they were playing in themeadow, running and shouting and tossing aglittering ball from one to another. Coralineknew it was a dream then, because none ofthem ever got tired or winded or out of

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breath. She wasn’t even sweating. They justlaughed and ran in a game that was partlytag, partly piggy-in-the-middle, and partlyjust a magnificent romp.

Three of them ran along the ground,while the pale girl fluttered a little over theirheads, swooping down on butterfly wings tograb the ball and swing up again into the skybefore she tossed the ball to one of the otherchildren.

And then, without a word about it beingspoken, the game was done, and the four ofthem went back to the picnic cloth, wherethe lunch dishes had been cleared away, andthere were four bowls waiting for them, threeof ice cream, one of honeysuckle flowerspiled high.

They ate with relish.“Thank you for coming to my party,”

said Coraline. “If it is mine.”“The pleasure is ours, Coraline Jones,”

said the winged girl, nibbling another

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honeysuckle blossom. “If there were butsomething we could do for you, to thank youand to reward you.”

“Aye,” said the boy with the red velvetbritches and the dirty face. He put out hishand and held Coraline’s hand with his own.It was warm now.

“It’s a very fine thing you did for us,Miss,” said the tall girl. She now had a smearof chocolate ice cream all around her lips.

“I’m just pleased it’s all over,” saidCoraline.

Was it her imagination, or did a shadowcross the faces of the other children at thepicnic?

The winged girl, the circlet in her hairglittering like a star, rested her fingers for amoment on the back of Coraline’s hand. “It isover and done with for us,” she said. “This isour staging post. From here, we three will setout for uncharted lands, and what comes

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after no one alive can say… .” She stoppedtalking.

“There’s a but, isn’t there?” said Cor-aline. “I can feel it. Like a rain cloud.”

The boy on her left tried to smilebravely, but his lower lip began to trembleand he bit it with his upper teeth and saidnothing. The girl in the brown bonnet shifteduncomfortably and said, “Yes, Miss.”

“But I got you three back,” said Coraline.“I got Mum and Dad back. I shut the door. Ilocked it. What more was I meant to do?”

The boy squeezed Coraline’s hand withhis. She found herself remembering when ithad been she, trying to reassure him, whenhe was little more than a cold memory in thedarkness.

“Well, can’t you give me a clue?” askedCoraline. “Isn’t there something you can tellme?”

“The beldam swore by her good righthand,” said the tall girl, “but she lied.”

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“M-my governess,” said the boy, “usedto say that nobody is ever given more toshoulder than he or she can bear.” Heshrugged as he said this, as if he had not yetmade his own mind up whether or not it wastrue.

“We wish you luck,” said the winged girl.“Good fortune and wisdom and courage—al-though you have already shown that youhave all three of these blessings, and inabundance.”

“She hates you,” blurted out the boy.“She hasn’t lost anything for so long. Be wise.Be brave. Be tricky.”

“But it’s not fair,” said Coraline, in herdream, angrily. “It’s just not fair. It shouldbe over.”

The boy with the dirty face stood up andhugged Coraline tightly. “Take comfort inthis,” he whispered. “Th’art alive. Thoulivest.”

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And in her dream Coraline saw that thesun had set and the stars were twinkling inthe darkening sky.

Coraline stood in the meadow, and shewatched as the three children (two of themwalking, one flying) went away from heracross the grass, silver in the light of thehuge moon.

The three of them came to a smallwooden bridge over a stream. They stoppedthere and turned and waved, and Coralinewaved back.

And what came after was darkness.Coraline woke in the early hours of the

morning, convinced she had heardsomething moving, but unsure what it was.

She waited.Something made a rustling noise out-

side her bedroom door. She wondered if itwas a rat. The door rattled. Coralineclambered out of bed.

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“Go away,” said Coraline sharply. “Goaway or you’ll be sorry.”

There was a pause, then the whatever itwas scuttled away down the hall. There wassomething odd and irregular about its foot-steps, if they were footsteps. Coraline foundherself wondering if it was perhaps a rat withan extra leg… .

“It isn’t over, is it?” she said to herself.Then she opened the bedroom door. The

gray, predawn light showed her the whole ofthe corridor, completely deserted.

She went toward the front door, sparinga hasty glance back at the wardrobe-doormirror hanging on the wall at the other endof the hallway, seeing nothing but her ownpale face staring back at her, looking sleepyand serious. Gentle, reassuring snores camefrom her parents’ room, but the door wasclosed. All the doors off the corridor wereclosed. Whatever the scuttling thing was, ithad to be here somewhere.

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Coraline opened the front door andlooked at the gray sky. She wondered howlong it would be until the sun came up,wondered whether her dream had been atrue thing while knowing in her heart that ithad been. Something she had taken to bepart of the shadows under the hall couch de-tached itself from beneath the couch andmade a mad, scrabbling rush on its longwhite legs, heading for the front door.

Coraline’s mouth dropped open in hor-ror and she stepped out of the way as thething clicked and scuttled past her and out ofthe house, running crablike on its too-manytapping, clicking, scurrying feet.

She knew what it was, and she knewwhat it was after. She had seen it too manytimes in the last few days, reaching andclutching and snatching and popping black-beetles obediently into the other mother’smouth. Five-footed, crimson-nailed, the col-or of bone.

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It was the other mother’s right hand.It wanted the black key.

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XIII.CORALINE’S PARENTS NEVER SEEMED to remem-ber anything about their time in the snowglobe. At least, they never said anythingabout it, and Coraline never mentioned it tothem.

Sometimes she wondered whether theyhad ever noticed that they had lost two daysin the real world, and came to the eventualconclusion that they had not. Then again,there are some people who keep track ofevery day and every hour, and there arepeople who don’t, and Coraline’s parentswere solidly in the second camp.

Coraline had placed the marbles be-neath her pillow before she went to sleepthat first night home in her own room oncemore. She went back to bed after she saw theother mother’s hand, although there was notmuch time left for sleeping, and she restedher head back on that pillow.

Something scrunched gently as she did.She sat up, and lifted the pillow. The

fragments of the glass marbles that she sawlooked like the remains of eggshells one findsbeneath trees in springtime: like empty,broken robin’s eggs, or even more delic-ate—wren’s eggs, perhaps.

Whatever had been inside the glassspheres had gone. Coraline thought of thethree children waving good-bye to her in themoonlight, waving before they crossed thatsilver stream.

She gathered up the eggshell-thin frag-ments with care and placed them in a smallblue box which had once held a bracelet thather grandmother had given her when shewas a little girl. The bracelet was long lost,but the box remained.

Miss Spink and Miss Forcible came backfrom visiting Miss Spink’s niece, and Cor-aline went down to their flat for tea. It was aMonday. On Wednesday Coraline would go

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back to school: a whole new school yearwould begin.

Miss Forcible insisted on reading Cor-aline’s tea leaves.

“Well, looks like everything’s mostlyshipshape and Bristol fashion, luvvy,” saidMiss Forcible.

“Sorry?” said Coraline.“Everything is coming up roses,” said

Miss Forcible. “Well, almost everything. I’mnot sure what that is.” She pointed to aclump of tea leaves sticking to the side of thecup.

Miss Spink tutted and reached for thecup. “Honestly, Miriam. Give it over here.Let me see… .”

She blinked through her thick spec-tacles. “Oh dear. No, I have no idea what thatsignifies. It looks almost like a hand.”

Coraline looked. The clump of leaves didlook a little like a hand, reaching forsomething.

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Hamish the Scottie dog was hiding un-der Miss Forcible’s chair, and he wouldn’tcome out.

“I think he was in some sort of fight,”said Miss Spink. “He has a deep gash in hisside, poor dear. We’ll take him to the vetlater this afternoon. I wish I knew whatcould have done it.”

Something, Coraline knew, would haveto be done.

That final week of the holidays, theweather was magnificent, as if the summeritself were trying to make up for the miser-able weather they had been having by givingthem some bright and glorious days before itended.

The crazy old man upstairs called downto Coraline when he saw her coming out ofMiss Spink and Miss Forcible’s flat.

“Hey! Hi! You! Caroline!” he shoutedover the railing.

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“It’s Coraline,” she said. “How are themice?”

“Something has frightened them,” saidthe old man, scratching his mustache. “Ithink maybe there is a weasel in the house.Something is about. I heard it in the night. Inmy country we would have put down a trapfor it, maybe put down a little meat or ham-burger, and when the creature comes tofeast, then—bam!—it would be caught andnever bother us more. The mice are so scaredthey will not even pick up their little musicalinstruments.”

“I don’t think it wants meat,” said Cor-aline. She put her hand up and touched theblack key that hung about her neck. Then shewent inside.

She bathed herself, and kept the keyaround her neck the whole time she was inthe bath. She never took it off anymore.

Something scratched at her bedroomwindow after she went to bed. Coraline was

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almost asleep, but she slipped out of her bedand pulled open the curtains. A white handwith crimson fingernails leapt from the win-dow ledge onto a drainpipe and was immedi-ately out of sight. There were deep gouges inthe glass on the other side of the window.

Coraline slept uneasily that night, wak-ing from time to time to plot and plan andponder, then falling back into sleep, neverquite certain where her pondering ended andthe dream began, one ear always open for thesound of something scratching at her win-dowpane or at her bedroom door.

In the morning Coraline said to hermother, “I’m going to have a picnic with mydolls today. Can I borrow a sheet—an oldone, one you don’t need any longer—as atablecloth?”

“I don’t think we have one of those,”said her mother. She opened the kitchendrawer that held the napkins and the

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tablecloths, and she prodded about in it.“Hold on. Will this do?”

It was a folded-up disposable papertablecloth covered with red flowers, left overfrom some picnic they had been on severalyears before.

“That’s perfect,” said Coraline.“I didn’t think you played with your

dolls anymore,” said Mrs. Jones.“I don’t,” admitted Coraline. “They’re

protective color-ation.”“Well, be back in time for lunch,” said

her mother. “Have a good time.”Coraline filled a cardboard box with

dolls and with several plastic doll’s teacups.She filled a jug with water.

Then she went outside. She walkeddown to the road, just as if she were going tothe shops. Before she reached the supermar-ket she cut across a fence into some waste-land and along an old drive, then crawledunder a hedge. She had to go under the

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hedge in two journeys in order not to spillthe water from the jug.

It was a long, roundabout looping jour-ney, but at the end of it Coraline was satis-fied that she had not been followed.

She came out behind the dilapidated oldtennis court. She crossed over it, to themeadow where the long grass swayed. Shefound the planks on the edge of the meadow.They were astonishingly heavy—almost tooheavy for a girl to lift, even using all herstrength, but she managed. She didn’t haveany choice. She pulled the planks out of theway, one by one, grunting and sweating withthe effort, revealing a deep, round, brick-lined hole in the ground. It smelled of dampand the dark. The bricks were greenish, andslippery.

She spread out the tablecloth and laid it,carefully, over the top of the well. She put aplastic doll’s cup every foot or so, at the edge

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of the well, and she weighed each cup downwith water from the jug.

She put a doll in the grass beside eachcup, making it look as much like a doll’s teaparty as she could. Then she retraced hersteps, back under the hedge, along the dustyyellow drive, around the back of the shops,back to her house.

She reached up and took the key fromaround her neck. She dangled it from thestring, as if the key were just something sheliked to play with. Then she knocked on thedoor of Miss Spink and Miss Forcible’s flat.

Miss Spink opened the door.“Hello dear,” she said.“I don’t want to come in,” said Coraline.

“I just wanted to find out how Hamish wasdoing.”

Miss Spink sighed. “The vet says thatHamish is a brave little soldier,” she said.“Luckily, the cut doesn’t seem to be infected.We cannot imagine what could have done it.

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The vet says some animal, he thinks, but hasno idea what. Mister Bobo says he thinks itmight have been a weasel.”

“Mister Bobo?”“The man in the top flat. Mister Bobo.

Fine old circus family, I believe. Romanianor Slovenian or Livonian, or one of thosecountries. Bless me, I can never rememberthem anymore.”

It had never occurred to Coraline thatthe crazy old man upstairs actually had aname, she realized. If she’d known his namewas Mr. Bobo she would have said it everychance she got. How often do you get to say aname like “Mr. Bobo” aloud?

“Oh,” said Coraline to Miss Spink.“Mister Bobo. Right. Well,” she said, a littlelouder, “I’m going to go and play with mydolls now, over by the old tennis court,round the back.”

“That’s nice, dear,” said Miss Spink.Then she added confidentially, “Make sure

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you keep an eye out for the old well. MisterLovat, who was here before your time, saidthat he thought it might go down for half amile or more.”

Coraline hoped that the hand had notheard this last, and she changed the subject.“This key?” said Coraline loudly. “Oh, it’s justsome old key from our house. It’s part of mygame. That’s why I’m carrying it around withme on this piece of string. Well, good-byenow.”

“What an extraordinary child,” said MissSpink to herself as she closed the door.

Coraline ambled across the meadow to-ward the old tennis court, dangling andswinging the black key on its piece of stringas she walked.

Several times she thought she sawsomething the color of bone in the under-growth. It was keeping pace with her, aboutthirty feet away.

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She tried to whistle, but nothinghappened, so she sang out loud instead, asong her father had made up for her whenshe was a little baby and which had alwaysmade her laugh. It went,

Oh—my twitchy witchy girlI think you are so nice,I give you bowls of porridgeAnd I give you bowls of iceCream.I give you lots of kisses,And I give you lots of hugs,But I never give you sandwichesWith bugsIn.

That was what she sang as she saunteredthrough the woods, and her voice hardlytrembled at all.

The dolls’ tea party was where she hadleft it. She was relieved that it was not awindy day, for everything was still in itsplace, every water-filled plastic cup weighed

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down the paper tablecloth as it was meant to.She breathed a sigh of relief.

Now was the hardest part.“Hello dolls,” she said brightly. “It’s

teatime!”She walked close to the paper tablecloth.

“I brought the lucky key,” she told the dolls,“to make sure we have a good picnic.”

And then, as carefully as she could, sheleaned over and, gently, placed the key onthe tablecloth. She was still holding on to thestring. She held her breath, hoping that thecups of water at the edges of the well wouldweigh the cloth down, letting it take theweight of the key without collapsing into thewell.

The key sat in the middle of the paperpicnic cloth. Coraline let go of the string, andtook a step back. Now it was all up to thehand.

She turned to her dolls.

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“Who would like a piece of cherry cake?”she asked. “Jemima? Pinky? Primrose?” andshe served each doll a slice of invisible cakeon an invisible plate, chattering happily asshe did so.

From the corner of her eye she sawsomething bone white scamper from one treetrunk to another, closer and closer. Sheforced herself not to look at it.

“Jemima!” said Coraline. “What a badgirl you are! You’ve dropped your cake! NowI’ll have to go over and get you a whole newslice!” And she walked around the tea partyuntil she was on the other side of it to thehand. She pretended to clean up spilled cake,and to get Jemima another piece.

And then, in a skittering, chitteringrush, it came. The hand, running high on itsfingertips, scrabbled through the tall grassand up onto a tree stump. It stood there for amoment, like a crab tasting the air, and then

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it made one triumphant, nail-clacking leaponto the center of the paper tablecloth.

Time slowed for Coraline. The white fin-gers closed around the black key… .

And then the weight and the momentumof the hand sent the plastic dolls’ cups flying,and the paper tablecloth, the key, and theother mother’s right hand went tumblingdown into the darkness of the well.

Coraline counted slowly under herbreath. She got up to forty before she heard amuffled splash coming from a long waybelow.

Someone had once told her that if youlook up at the sky from the bottom of a mineshaft, even in the brightest daylight, you seea night sky and stars. Coraline wondered ifthe hand could see stars from where it was.

She hauled the heavy planks back ontothe well, covering it as carefully as she could.She didn’t want anything to fall in. She didn’twant anything ever to get out.

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Then she put her dolls and the cups backin the cardboard box she had carried themout in. Something caught her eye while shewas doing this, and she straightened up intime to see the black cat stalking toward her,its tail held high and curling at the tip like aquestion mark. It was the first time she hadseen the cat in several days, since they hadreturned together from the other mother’splace.

The cat walked over to her and jumpedup onto the planks that covered the well.Then, slowly, it winked one eye at her.

It sprang down into the long grass infront of her, and rolled over onto its back,wiggling about ecstatically.

Coraline scratched and tickled the softfur on its belly, and the cat purred conten-tedly. When it had had enough it rolled overonto its front once more and walked back to-ward the tennis court, like a tiny patch ofmidnight in the midday sun.

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Coraline went back to the house.Mr. Bobo was waiting for her in the

driveway. He clapped her on the shoulder.“The mice tell me that all is good,” he

said. “They say that you are our savior,Caroline.”

“It’s Coraline, Mister Bobo,” said Cor-aline. “Not Caroline. Coraline.”

“Coraline,” said Mr. Bobo, repeating hername to himself with wonderment and re-spect. “Very good, Coraline. The mice saythat I must tell you that as soon as they areready to perform in public, you will come upand watch them as the first audience of all.They will play tumpty umpty and toodleoodle, and they will dance, and do a thou-sand tricks. That is what is they say.”

“I would like that very much,” said Cor-aline. “When they’re ready.”

She knocked at Miss Spink and MissForcible’s door. Miss Spink let her in andCoraline went into their parlor. She put her

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box of dolls down on the floor. Then she puther hand into her pocket and pulled out thestone with the hole in it.

“Here you go,” she said. “I don’t need itanymore. I’m very grateful. I think it mayhave saved my life, and saved some otherpeople’s death.”

She gave them both tight hugs, althoughher arms barely stretched around MissSpink, and Miss Forcible smelled like theraw garlic she had been cutting. Then Cor-aline picked up her box of dolls and wentout.

“What an extraordinary child,” said MissSpink. No one had hugged her like that sinceshe had retired from the theater.

That night Coraline lay in bed, allbathed, teeth cleaned, with her eyes open,staring up at the ceiling.

It was warm enough that, now that thehand was gone, she had opened her bedroom

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window wide. She had in-sisted to her fatherthat the curtains not be entirely closed.

Her new school clothes were laid outcarefully on her chair for her to put on whenshe woke.

Normally, on the night before the firstday of term, Coraline was apprehensive andnervous. But, she realized, there was nothingleft about school that could scare heranymore.

She fancied she could hear sweet musicon the night air: the kind of music that canonly be played on the tiniest silver trom-bones and trumpets and bassoons, on picco-los and tubas so delicate and small that theirkeys could only be pressed by the tiny pinkfingers of white mice.

Coraline imagined that she was backagain in her dream, with the two girls andthe boy under the oak tree in the meadow,and she smiled.

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As the first stars came out Coraline fi-nally allowed herself to drift into sleep, whilethe gentle upstairs music of the mouse circusspilled out onto the warm evening air, tellingthe world that the summer was almost done.

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Special MaterialExclusive to

THE LIMITED EDITION OF

INCLUDING:

Introduction by Neil GaimanAdditional Illustrations by Dave McKean

Why I Wrote Coraline by Neil GaimanQuestions and Answers about Coraline by

Neil GaimanFacsimile Pages of Neil Gaiman’s NotebookA Note on Working with Dave McKean by

Neil GaimanThese materials were commissioned by andpublished exclusively in print by DiamondComic Distributors, Inc., in a limited hard-

cover edition of Coraline. Visit DiamondComic Distributors, Inc. online at www.dia-

mondcomics.com.

INTRODUCTION

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN easy to put together an“unseen material” section on AmericanGods, my last novel. Once the book wasdone, there were about ten thousand wordsready to be cut. There was a whole shortstory that didn’t seem to belong in the book,so I wound up sending it out as a very wordyChristmas card. That wasn’t going to happenwith Coraline. I wrote it very slowly, a wordat a time, making, unintentionally,something that left no room for cuts andelisions.

I only removed one bit from the wholething; many years ago I showed it to a veryeminent and brilliant author, who wanted topublish it in her line of books, but who feltthat it needed something at the beginning totell you what sort of a book it was.

This is the story of Coraline, Iwrote, who was small for her age,

and found herself in darkestdanger.

Before it was all over Coralinehad seen what lay behind mirrors,and had a close call with a badhand, and had come face to facewith her other mother; she had res-cued her true parents from a fateworse than death and triumphedagainst overwhelming odds.

This is the story of Coraline, wholost her parents, and found themagain, and (more or less) escaped(more or less) unscathed.

But the author’s career as a publisherwas pretty much over, and when, some yearsafter that, I sat down to write the last two-thirds of the book (in August 1992 I’d got upto “Hullo,” said Coraline. “How did you getin?” The cat didn’t say anything. Coralinegot out of bed and then stopped, without

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ending the sentence, for six years), the firstthing I did was to remove that opening.

I think I just wanted the book to creepup on you slowly.

While we don’t have any cut sections inthis part of the book (except for that one), wedo have a few interesting things in here foryou to look at. Dave McKean is a prolific andbrilliant illustrator: we’ve included versionsof the illustrations he did for the book thathave never seen print. I went and dug out thebattered black notebook I wrote Coraline in,by hand, with occasional notes to myself onwhat was going to happen later in the book,which tended to be right in spirit but wrongin the details. You’ll find some reproductionsof notebook pages, in my handwriting, whichI can actually read, although some peopledoubt this. The ink color, which ranged froma dried-blood brown to a new-wine purple, isunfortunately not reproduced, although allmy crossings-out are.

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There are also some questions, with an-swers that may or may not be very helpfulbut are at least true (or do I mean that theother way around?).

NEIL GAIMAN

April 1, 2002

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WHY I WROTE CORALINE

MORE THAN TEN YEARS ago I started to writea children’s book. It was for my daughter,Holly, who was five years old. I wanted it tohave a girl as a heroine, and I wanted it to berefreshingly creepy.

When I was a boy I lived in a house thathad been made when a larger house hadbeen divided up. The irregular shape of thehouse meant that one door of the houseopened onto a stark brick wall. I would openit from time to time, always suspicious thatone day the brick wall would be gone, and acorridor would be there instead.

I started to write a story about a girlnamed Coraline. I thought that the storywould be five or ten pages long. The story it-self had other plans.

We moved to America. The story, whichI had been writing in my own time, between

things that people were waiting for, groundto a halt.

Years passed. One day I looked up andnoticed that Holly was now in her teens, andher younger sister, Maddy, was the same ageHolly had been when I had started it for her.I sent the story so far to Jennifer Hershey,my editor at HarperCollins. She read it. “Ilove it,” she said. “What happens next?”

I suggested she give me a contract, andwe would both find out. She agreedenthusiastically.

I bought a notebook, and started towrite in it. It sat on my bedside table, and forthe next couple of years I would scrawl fiftywords, sometimes a hundred words, everynight, before I went to sleep. A three-daytrain journey across America was an oppor-tunity to work, uninterrupted, on Coraline.Getting stuck on American Gods, a long nov-el I was working on, gave me the opportunityI needed to finish Coraline’s story. A year

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later I wrote a chapter I had meant to writebut had never got around to, and Coralinewas finished.

Where it all came from—the other moth-er with her button eyes, the rats, the hand,the sad voices of the ghost-children—I haveno real idea. It built itself and told itself, aword at a time.

A decade before, I had begun to writethe story of Coraline, who was small for herage, and would find herself in darkestdanger. By the time I finished writing, Cor-aline had seen what lay behind mirrors, andhad a close call with a bad hand, and hadcome face-to-face with her other mother; shehad rescued her true parents from a fateworse than death and triumphed againstoverwhelming odds.

It was a story, I learned when peoplebegan to read it, that children experienced asan adventure, but which gave adults night-mares. It’s the strangest book I’ve written, it

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took the longest time to write, and it’s thebook I’m proudest of.

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QUESTIONS & ANSWERSABOUT CORALINE

How did you think up the name “Coraline”?It was from typing “Caroline” and it wascoming out wrong. Larry Niven, the sciencefiction author, said in an essay that writersshould treasure their typing mistakes. Once Ityped it, I knew it was somebody’s name, andI wanted to know what happened to her.

I recently discovered it was actually areal name, although it’s not been used muchin English-speaking countries for a longtime. And, at the turn of the last century, itwas a name for a brand of corset.Coraline is called a fairy tale. Do you reallybelieve in fairies?Well, the only fairy in Coraline has beendead for hundreds of years, and some peopleread the book and never notice her at all.Coraline’s a fairy tale in the same way that“Hansel and Gretel” is a fairy tale.

As for believing in fairies…many yearsago I wrote the copyright notice for a comiccalled The Books of Magic, in which I saidwords to the effect of “All the characters, hu-man or otherwise, are imaginary, exceptingonly certain of the faerie folk, whom itmight be unwise to offend by casting doubtson their existence. Or lack thereof.” A posi-tion I still wholeheartedly support anddefend.Did your parents insist on cooking “recipes”rather than regular food?Actually, it was me who did that, and I stolethat aspect of Coraline from my son, Mike,when he was young, and still called Mikey. Ifever I made anything adventurous he’dshake his head and say, “Dad, you’ve made arecipe, haven’t you?” and he’d head off to thefreezer compartment to find a box of mi-crowaveable french fries.

Whenever we’d go out to eat he’d orderpeanut butter and jelly sandwiches, until one

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day a waiter persuaded him to explore therest of the menu, and he’s never looked back.How did you deal with long, boring, rainydays during the school holidays?Well, on the good ones I’d get someone todrop me off at the local library, and I’d read.On the bad ones I’d stare out of the windowand wonder what to do, and eventually windup rereading the Narnia books.What was the door that you were mostscared to go through?Well, Coraline’s door really was in the “draw-ing room” of our house. The house, longsince knocked down, had been divided intotwo, and behind the door at the far end of theroom was a red-brick wall. I was never cer-tain there would always be a brick wall there,though.Are things really magical, or do you makethem magical by believing in them?

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I think most things are pretty magical, andthat it’s less a matter of belief than it is oneof just stopping to notice.What is the biggest key you have on yourkey ring and what does it open?When I was a boy I collected keys, for no realreason I could explain, and somewhere inthe attic I still have a box filled with them,keys of all sizes and shapes and designs.

There aren’t any fun ones on the every-day key ring, though: the biggest opens thecabin, overlooking a lake, where I go andwrite each day. The cabin doesn’t have aphone, which helps.What chocolate do you eat first if you’re giv-en a whole box?In a perfect world, I would first identify thechocolates from the Identify Your Chocolateguide and eat something with a name like“Caramel Surprise.” In the real world, I tendnormally to accidentally pull out the

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chocolate truffles. By the way, I cannot seethe point of “tangerine cremes.”Why do the batteries in things always runout just when you really need them?It’s one of the rules. I don’t try to explainthem. I just live here.Did you let your children read Coraline be-fore anyone else?Well, I read it to Maddy, who was six when Ifinished it; and I forgot to give it to Holly(who is sixteen), so she just read it. “I hopeyou weren’t too old for it,” I told her, whenshe was done. “I don’t think you can be tooold for Coraline,” she said, which made mevery happy.What is your favorite time of day?Really, really early in the morning, just asthe sun is coming up. I don’t see it too often,but I love it when I do.Have you ever had your fortune told?Once, while waiting for a theater to open inNew York, by an old woman. She told me I

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would die on an island. It hasn’t happenedyet.Will there be a film of Coraline?Quite possibly. The film rights have beenbought, and Henry Selick, who is most fam-ous for directing The Nightmare BeforeChristmas and James and the Giant Peach,has written the script and plans to direct it.

So many of my stories have been boughtby Hollywood that I’ve long since stoppedexpecting any of them actually to happen,and will simply be pleasantly surprised if anyof them actually do.Will you write another children’s book?Yes. The next one I want to write has a work-ing title of The Graveyard Book.

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A NOTE ON WORKING WITHDAVE McKEAN

I’VE KNOWN DAVE MCKEAN for hundreds ofyears now. Almost twenty, anyway. When wemet I was a young journalist, and he was aneven younger art student.

We’ve made comics together (BlackOrchid, Mr. Punch, Violent Cases, Signal toNoise). He did the covers for the Sandmancomics and books (collected in a book calledDustcovers). We’ve done a children’s picturebook (The Day I Swapped My Dad for 2Goldfish), which proved so popular in certainquarters that Dave redid the book cover as aCD cover, and it was on the side of buses allover the world. We have another picturebook, called The Wolves in the Walls, whichwill come out when Dave finishes thedrawings.

This is why Dave McKean has illustratedCoraline.

When I finished Coraline I needed someguinea pigs to read it. Dave has a daughternamed Yolanda. (He also has a son namedLiam and a wife named Clare, but they don’tcome into this explanation, except in thissentence, where they don’t do very much,even though in real life Clare plays the violinand Liam runs in and out of rooms wearingdifferent hats to surprise you.) Dave readCoraline to Yolanda, who decided that it washer favorite book, and that she wanted it tobe the theme of her birthday party.

So the invitation to Yolanda’s birthdayparty was the picture of the Mouse Circusthat finishes this book.

When Dave e-mailed that drawing tome, I knew that I wanted him to do the restof the pictures.

Which, to my great delight, he did. Andthe pictures are very creepy, and very oddand very true. He even went to the house I

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used to live in, in Nutley, Sussex, and drewit.

I like working with Dave, and hope hekeeps drawing things I write forever.

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About the Author

NEIL GAIMAN is the critically acclaimedand award-winning author of the novelsAMERICAN GODS, NEVERWHERE, STARDUST (win-ner of the American Library Association’sAlex Award as one of 2000’s top ten adultnovels for young adults), the short fictioncollection SMOKE AND MIRRORS, and the chil-dren’s book THE DAY I SWAPPED MY DAD FOR 2

GOLDFISH (illustrated by Dave McKean). He isalso the author of the Sandman series ofgraphic novels. Among his many awards arethe World Fantasy Award and the BramStoker Award. Originally from England, Gai-man now lives in the United States.Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusiveinformation on your favorite HarperCollinsauthor.

Credits

Jacket art © 2002 by Dave McKeanJacket design by Hilary Zarycky

CopyrightThis book is a work of fiction. The charac-ters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn fromthe author’s imagination and are not to beconstrued as real. Any resemblance to actualevents or persons, living or dead, is entirelycoincidental.CORALINE. Text copyright © 2002 by NeilGaiman. Illustrations copyright © 2002 byDave McKean. All rights reserved under In-ternational and Pan-American CopyrightConventions. By payment of the requiredfees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to accessand read the text of this e-book on-screen.No part of this text may be reproduced,transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, re-verse engineered, or stored in or introducedinto any information storage and retrievalsystem, in any form or by any means, wheth-er electronic or mechanical, now known or

hereinafter invented, without the expresswritten permission of HarperCollins e-books.Mobipocket Reader November 2007 ISBN978-0-06-077365-610 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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About the PublisherAustraliaHarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty.Ltd.25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)Pymble, NSW 2073, Australiahttp://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.auCanadaHarperCollins Publishers Ltd.55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canadahttp://www.harpercollinsebooks.caNew ZealandHarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand)LimitedP.O. Box 1Auckland, New Zealandhttp://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nzUnited KingdomHarperCollins Publishers Ltd.77-85 Fulham Palace Road

London, W6 8JB, UKhttp://www.uk.harpercollinsebooks.comUnited StatesHarperCollins Publishers Inc.10 East 53rd StreetNew York, NY 10022http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com

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Table of ContentsE-book extras by Neil Gaiman and Dave

McKeanE PIGRAPHI.II.III.IV.V.VI.VII.VIII.IX.X.XI.XII.XIII.A BOUT THE A UTHORC REDITSC OPYRIGHT

A BOUT THE P UBLISHER280/281

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