Coraline

The other mother had followed her in. Now she stood in the centre of the room, between Coraline and the mantelpiece, and looked down at Coraline with black-button eyes. It was funny, Coraline thought. The other mother did not look anything at all like her own mother. She wondered how she had ever been deceived into imagining a resemblance. The other mother was huge – her head almost brushed the ceiling of the room – and very pale, the colour of a spider’s belly. Her hair writhed and twined about her head, and her teeth were sharp as knives . . .

‘Well?’ said the other mother, sharply. ‘Where are they?’

Coraline leaned against an armchair, adjusted the cat with her left hand, put her right hand into her pocket, and pulled out the three glass marbles. They were a frosted grey, and they clinked together in the palm of her hand. The other mother reached her white fingers out for them, but Coraline slipped them back into her pocket. She knew it was true, then. The other mother had no intention of letting her go, or of keeping her word. It had been an entertainment, and nothing more. ‘Hold on,’ she said. ‘We aren’t finished yet, are we?’

The other mother looked daggers, but she smiled sweetly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I suppose not. After all, you still need to find your parents, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Coraline. I must not look at the mantelpiece, she thought. I must not even think about it.

‘Well?’ said the other mother. ‘Produce them. Would you like to look in the cellar again? I have some other interesting things hidden down there, you know.’

‘No,’ said Coraline. ‘I know where my parents are.’ The cat was heavy in her arms. She moved it forward, unhooking its claws from her shoulder as she did so.

‘Where?’

‘It stands to reason,’ said Coraline. ‘I’ve looked everywhere you’d hide them. They aren’t in the house.’

The other mother stood very still, giving nothing away, lips tightly closed. She might have been a wax statue. Even her hair had stopped moving.

‘So,’ Coraline continued, both hands wrapped firmly around the black cat, ‘I know where they have to be. You’ve hidden them in the passageway between the houses, haven’t you? They are behind that door.’ She nodded her head towards the door in the corner.

The other mother remained statue-still, but a hint of a smile crept back on to her face. ‘Oh, they are, are they?’

‘Why don’t you open it?’ said Coraline. ‘They’ll be there, all right.’

It was her only way home, she knew. But it all depended on the other mother needing to gloat, needing not only to win but to show that she had won.

The other mother reached her hand slowly into her apron pocket and produced the black iron key. The cat stirred uncomfortably in Coraline’s arms, as if it wanted to get down. Just stay there for a few moments longer, she thought at it, wondering if it could hear her. I’ll get us both home. I said I would. I promise. She felt the cat relax ever-so-slightly in her arms.

The other mother walked over to the door and pushed the key into the lock.

She turned the key.

Coraline heard the mechanism clunk heavily. She was already starting, as quietly as she could, step by step, to back away towards the mantelpiece.

The other mother pushed down on the door handle and pulled open the door, revealing a corridor behind it, dark and empty. ‘There,’ she said, waving her hands at the corridor. The expression of delight on her face was a very bad thing to see. ‘You’re wrong! You don’t know where your parents are, do you? They aren’t there.’ She turned and looked at Coraline. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘you’re going to stay here for ever and always.’

‘No,’ said Coraline. ‘I’m not.’ And, hard as she could, she threw the black cat towards the other mother. It yowled and landed on the other mother’s head, claws flailing, teeth bared, fierce and angry. Fur on end, it looked half again as big as it was in real life.

Without waiting to see what would happen, Coraline reached up to the mantelpiece, closed her hand around the snow-globe, then pushed it deep into the pocket of her dressing gown.

The cat made a deep, ululating yowl and sank its teeth into the other mother’s cheek. She was flailing at it. Blood ran from the cuts on her white face – not red blood, but a deep, tarry black stuff. Coraline ran for the door.

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 one wild rake which left black ooze trickling from several gashes on her nose. Then it sprang down towards Coraline. ‘Quickly!’ she said. The cat ran towards her, and they both stepped into the dark corridor.

It was colder in the corridor, like stepping down into a cellar on a warm day. The cat hesitated for a moment, then, seeing the other mother was coming towards them, it ran to Coraline and stopped by her legs.

Coraline began to pull the door closed.