Neil Gaiman Young Readers' Collection

by Neil Gaiman

  “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.

  “Mum!” said Coraline, and she ran forward, 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 the other mother held her tightly.

  “Where are my parents?” Coraline asked.

  “We’re here,” said her other mother, in a voice so close to her real mother’s that Coraline could scarcely tell them apart. “We’re here. We’re ready to love you and play with you and feed you and make your life interesting.”

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

  The other father, who had been sitting on a chair in the hallway, stood up and smiled. “Come on into the kitchen,” he said. “I’ll make us a midnight snack. And you’ll want something to drink—hot chocolate perhaps?”

  Coraline walked down the hallway until she reached the mirror at the end. There was nothing reflected in it but a young girl in her dressing gown and slippers, who looked like she had recently been crying but whose eyes were real eyes, not black buttons, and who was holding tightly to a burned-out candle in a candlestick.

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

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

  She put down the candlestick on the floor, then turned around. The other mother and the other father were looking at her hungrily.

  “I don’t need a snack,” she said. “I have an apple. See?” And she took an apple from her dressing-gown pocket, then bit into it with relish and an enthusiasm that she did not really feel.

  The other father looked disappointed. The other mother smiled, showing a full set of teeth, and each of the teeth was a tiny bit too long. The lights in the hallway made her black button eyes glitter and gleam.

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

  The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.

  “Whatever would I have done with your old parents? If they have left you, Coraline, it must be because they became bored with you, or tired. Now, I will never be come bored with you, and I will never abandon you. You will always be safe here with me.” The other mother’s wet-looking black hair drifted around her head, like the tentacles of a creature in the deep ocean.

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

  “Silly, silly Coraline. They are fine wherever they are.”

  Coraline simply glared at the other mother.

  “I’ll prove it,” said the other mother, and brushed the surface of the mirror with her long white fingers. It clouded over, as if a dragon had breathed on it, and then it cleared.

  In the mirror it was daytime already. Coraline was looking at the hallway, all the way down to her front door. The door opened from the outside and Coraline’s mother and father walked inside. They carried suitcases.

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

  “How nice it is, not to have Coraline any more,” said her mother with a happy smile. “Now we can do all the things we always wanted to do, like go abroad, but were prevented from doing by having a little daughter.”

  “And,” said her father, “I take great comfort in knowing that her other mother will take better care of her than we ever could.”

  The mirror fogged and faded and reflected 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 as she sounded. There was a tiny doubt inside her, like
a maggot in an apple core. Then she looked up and saw the expression on her other mother’s face: a flash of real anger, which crossed her face like summer lightning, and Coraline was sure in her heart that what she had seen in the mirror was no more than an illusion.

  Coraline sat down on the sofa and ate her apple.

  “Please,” said her other mother. “Don’t be difficult.” She walked into the drawing room and clapped her hands twice. There was a rustling noise and a black rat appeared. It stared up at her. “Bring me the key,” she said.

  The rat chittered, then it ran through the open door that led back to Coraline’s own flat.

  The rat returned, dragging the key behind it.

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

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

  “Hush,” said the other mother. “You must not bother our darling Coraline’s head with such trivialities.” She put the key in the keyhole and twisted. The lock was stiff, but it clunked closed.

  She dropped the key into her apron pocket.

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

  “If we aren’t going to have a midnight snack,” said the other mother, “we still need our beauty sleep. I am going back to bed, Coraline. I would strongly suggest that you do the same.”

  She placed her long white fingers on the shoulders of the other father, and she walked him out of the room.

  Coraline walked over to the door at the far corner of the drawing room. She tugged on it, but it was tightly locked. The door of her other parents’ bedroom was now closed.

  She was indeed tired, but she did not want to sleep in the bedroom. She did not want to sleep under the same roof as her other mother.

  The front door was not locked. Coraline walked out into the dawn and down the stone stairs. She sat down on the bottom step. It was cold.

  Something furry pushed itself against her side in one smooth, insinuating motion. Coraline jumped, then breathed a sigh of relief 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 recognizing 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 confided, “tends to be a rather overrated activity. Might as well call a whirlwind.”

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

  “Of course,” said the cat. “But a simple cry of ‘dinner!’ would do nicely. See? No need for names.”

  “Why does she want me?” Coraline asked the cat. “Why does she want me to stay here with her?”

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

  “Do you have any advice?” asked Coraline.

  The cat looked as if it were about to say something else sarcastic. Then it flicked its whiskers and said, “Challenge her. There’s no guarantee she’ll play fair, but her kind of thing loves games and challenges.”

  “What kind of thing is that?” asked Coraline.

  But the cat made no answer, simply stretched luxuriantly and walked away. Then it stopped, and turned, and said, “I’d go inside if I were you. Get some sleep. You have a long day ahead of you.”

  And then the cat was gone. Still, Coraline realized, it had a point. She crept back into the silent house, past the closed bedroom door inside which the other mother and the other father…what? she wondered. Slept? Waited? And then it came to her that, should she open the bedroom door she would find it empty, or more precisely, that it was an empty room and it would remain empty until the exact moment that she opened the door.

  Somehow, that made it easier. Coraline walked into the green-and-pink parody of her own bedroom. She closed the door and hauled the toy box in front of it—it would not keep anyone out, but the noise somebody would make trying to dislodge it would wake her, she hoped.

  The toys in the toy box were still mostly asleep, and they stirred and muttered as she moved their box, and then they went back to sleep. Coraline checked under her bed, looking for rats, but there was nothing there. She took off her dressing gown and slippers and climbed into bed and fell asleep with barely enough time to reflect, as she did so, on what the cat could have meant by a challenge.

  VI.

  CORALINE WAS WOKEN BY the midmorning sun, full on her face.

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

  Sometimes Coraline would forget who she was while she was daydreaming that she was exploring the Arctic, or the Amazon rain forest, or Darkest Africa, and it was not until someone tapped her on the shoulder or said her name that Coraline would come back from a million miles away with a start, and all in a fraction of a second have to remember who she was, and what her name was, and that she was even there at all.

  Now there was sun on her face, and she was Coraline Jones. Yes. And then the green and pinkness of the room she was in, and the rustling of a large painted paper butterfly as it fluttered and beat its way about the ceiling, told her where she had woken up.

  She climbed out of the bed. She could not wear her pajamas, dressing gown, and slippers during the day, she decided, even if it meant wearing the other Coraline’s clothes. (Was there an other Coraline? No, she realized, there wasn’t. There was just her.) There were no regular clothes in the cupboard, though. They were more like dressing-up clothes or (she thought) the kind of clothes she would love to have hanging in her own wardrobe at home: there was a raggedy witch costume; a patched scarecrow costume; a future-warrior costume with little digital lights in it that glittered and blinked; a slinky evening dress all covered in feathers and mirrors. Finally, in a drawer, she found a pair of black jeans that seemed to be made of velvet night, and a gray sweater the color of thick smoke with faint and tiny stars in the fabric which twinkled.

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

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

  She put the stone into the pocket of her jeans, and it was as if her head had cleared a little. As if she had come out of some sort of a fog.

  She went into the kitchen, but it was deserted.

  Still, she was sure that there was someone in the flat. She walked down the hall until she reached her father’s study, and discovered that it was occupied.

  “Where’s the other mother?” she asked the 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, not even reading gardening catalogs as her own father did when he was only pretending to be working.

  “Out,” he told her. “Fixing the doors. There are some vermin problems.” He seemed 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 tail high.”

  “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 about his face—like bread dough that had begun to rise, smoothing out the bumps and cracks and depressions.

  “Really, I mustn’t talk to you when she’s not here,” he said. “But don’t you worry. She won’t be gone often. I shall demonstrate our tender hospitality to you, such that you will not even think about ever going back.” He closed his mouth and folded his hands in his lap.

  “So what
am I to do now?” asked Coraline.

  The other father pointed to his lips. Silence.

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

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

  Coraline walked out of his study. She went into the drawing room, over to the old door, and she pulled it, rattled and shook it. No, it was locked fast, and the other mother had the key.

  She looked around the room. It was so familiar—that was what made it feel so truly strange. Everything was exactly the same as she remembered: there was all her grandmother’s strange-smelling furniture, there was the painting of the bowl of fruit (a bunch of grapes, two plums, a peach and an apple) hanging on the wall, there was the low wooden table with the lion’s feet, and the empty fireplace which seemed to suck heat from the room.

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

  She went over to the fireplace, went up on tiptoes, and lifted it down. It was a snow globe, with two little people in it. Coraline shook it and set the snow flying, white snow that glittered as it tumbled through the water.

  Then she put the snow globe back on the mantelpiece, and carried on looking for her true parents and for a way out.

  She went out of the flat. Past the flashing-lights door, behind which the other Misses Spink and Forcible performed their show forever, and she set off into the woods.

  Where Coraline came from, once you were through the patch of trees, you saw nothing but the meadow and the old tennis court. In this place, the woods went on farther, the trees becoming cruder and less treelike the farther you went.

  Pretty soon they seemed very approximate, like the idea of trees: a grayish-brown trunk below, a greenish splodge of something that might have been leaves above.

  Coraline wondered if the other mother wasn’t interested in trees, or if she just hadn’t bothered with this bit properly because nobody was expected to come out this far.