Coraline Page 0,25

said nothing.

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

The expression on the other mother’s face did not change. She might not have heard what Coraline said.

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

“Thank you, Coraline,” said the other mother coldly, and her voice did not just come from her mouth. It came from the mist, and the fog, and the house, and the sky. She said, “You know that I love you.”

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

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

“Not even a helping hand?” asked the other mother. “You have been doing so well, after all. I thought you might want a little hint, to help you with the rest of your treasure hunt.”

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

“Yes,” said the other mother. “But if you wanted to get into the flat in the front—the empty one—to look around, you would find the door locked, and then where would you be?”

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

The other mother stood there in the paper-gray fog of the flattening world. Her black hair drifted about her head, as if it had a mind and a purpose all of its own. She coughed suddenly in the back of her throat, and then she opened her mouth.

The other mother reached up her hand and removed a small, brass front-door key from her tongue.

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

She tossed the key, casually, toward Coraline, who caught it, one-handed, before she could think about whether she wanted it or not. The key was still slightly damp.

A chill wind blew about them, and Coraline shivered and looked away. When she looked back she was alone.

Uncertainly, she walked around to the front of the house and stood in front of the door to the empty flat. Like all the doors, it was painted bright green.

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

Coraline said, “Yes, you’re right, I expect.” Then she put the key in the lock and turned it.

Silently, the door swung open, and silently Coraline walked inside.

The flat had walls the color of old milk. The wooden boards of the floor were uncarpeted and dusty with the marks and patterns of old carpets and rugs on them.

There was no furniture in there, only places where furniture had once been. Nothing decorated the walls; there were discolored rectangles on the walls to show where paintings or photographs had once hung. It was so silent that Coraline imagined that she could hear the motes of dust drifting through the air.

She found herself to be quite worried that something would jump out at her, so she began to whistle. She thought it might make it harder for things to jump out at her if she was whistling.

First she walked through the empty kitchen. Then she walked through an empty bathroom, containing only a cast-iron bath, and, in the bath, a dead spider the size of a small cat. The last room she looked at had, she supposed, once been a bedroom; she could imagine that the rectangular dust shadow on the floorboards had once been a bed. Then she saw something, and smiled, grimly. Set into the floorboards was a large metal ring. Coraline knelt and took the cold ring in her hands, and she tugged upward as hard as she could.

Terribly slowly, stiffly, heavily, a hinged square of floor lifted: it was a trapdoor. It lifted, and through the opening Coraline could see only darkness. She reached down, and her hand found a cold switch. She flicked it without much hope that it would work, but somewhere below her a bulb lit, and a thin yellow light came up from the hole in the floor. She could see steps, heading down, but nothing else.

Coraline put her hand into her pocket and took out the stone with the hole in it. She looked through it at the cellar but saw nothing. She put the stone back into her pocket.

Up through the hole came the smell of damp clay,