She went back into her bedroom, and rummaged in the pocket of her jeans. She found the stone with the hole in it, and put it into her dressing-gown pocket.
She lit the candlewick with a match and watched it sputter and light, then she picked up the black key. It was cold in her hand. She put it into the keyhole in the door, but did not turn the key.
“When I was a little girl,” said Coraline to the cat, “when we lived in our old house, a long, long time ago, my dad took me for a walk on the wasteland between our house and the shops.
“It wasn’t the best place to go for a walk, really. There were all these things that people had thrown away back there—old cookers and broken dishes and dolls with no arms and no legs and empty cans and broken bottles. Mum and Dad made me promise not to go exploring back there, because there were too many sharp things, and tetanus and such.
“But I kept telling them I wanted to explore it. So one day my dad put on his big brown boots and his gloves and put my boots on me and my jeans and sweater, and we went for a walk.
“We must have walked for about twenty minutes. We went down this hill, to the bottom of a gully where a stream was, when my dad suddenly said to me, “Coraline—run away. Up the hill. Now!” He said it in a tight sort of way, urgently, so I did. I ran away up the hill. Something hurt me on the back of my arm as I ran, but I kept running.
“As I got to the top of the hill I heard somebody thundering up the hill behind me. It was my dad, charging like a rhino. When he reached me he picked me up in his arms and swept me over the edge of the hill.
“And then we stopped and we puffed and we panted, and we looked back down the gully.
“The air was alive with yellow wasps. We must have stepped on a wasps’ nest in a rotten branch as we walked. And while I was running up the hill, my dad stayed and got stung, to give me time to run away. His glasses had fallen off when he ran.
“I only had the one sting on the back of my arm. He had thirty-nine stings, all over him. We counted later, in the bath.”
The black cat began to wash its face and whiskers in a manner that indicated increasing impatience. Coraline reached down and stroked the back of its head and neck. The cat stood up, walked several paces until it was out of her reach, then it sat down and looked up at her again.
“So,” said Coraline, “later that afternoon my dad went back again to the wasteland, to get his glasses back. He said if he left it another day he wouldn’t be able to remember where they’d fallen.
“And soon he got home, wearing his glasses. He said that he wasn’t scared when he was standing there and the wasps were stinging him and hurting him and he was watching me run away. Because he knew he had to give me enough time to run, or the wasps would have come after both of us.”
Coraline turned the key in the door. It turned with a loud clunk.
The door swung open.
There was no brick wall on the other side of the door: only darkness. A cold wind blew through the passageway.
Coraline made no move to walk through the door.
“And he said that wasn’t brave of him, doing that, just standing there and being stung,” said Coraline to the cat. “It wasn’t brave because he wasn’t scared: it was the only thing he could do. But going back again to get his glasses, when he knew the wasps were there, when he was really scared. That was brave.”
She took her first step down the dark corridor.
She could smell dust and damp and mustiness.
The cat padded along beside her.
“And why was that?” asked the cat, although 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 heard something moving in the darkness—beside her or to one side of her, she could not tell. It seemed as if it was keeping pace with her, whatever it was.
“And that’s why you’re going back to her world, then?” said the cat. “Because your father once saved you from wasps?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Coraline. “I’m going back for them because they are my parents. And if they noticed I was gone I’m sure they would do the same for me. You know you’re talking again?”
“How fortunate I am,” said the cat, “in having a traveling companion of such wisdom and intelligence.” Its tone remained sarcastic, but its fur was bristling, and its brush of a tail stuck up in the air.
Coraline was going to say something, like sorry or wasn’t it a lot shorter walk last time? when the candle went out as suddenly as if it had been snuffed by someone’s hand.
There was a scrabbling and a pattering, and Coraline could feel her heart pounding against her ribs. She put out one hand…and felt something wispy, like a spider’s web, brush her hands and her face.
At the end of the corridor the electric light went on, blinding after the darkness. A woman stood, silhouetted by the light, a little ahead of Coraline.
“Coraline? Darling?” she called.