Coraline by Neil Gaiman Page A

how hard its heart was beating. It was trembling, like a dead leaf in a storm.
    ‘You’ll be fine,’ said Coraline. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. I’ll take you home.’
    The cat said nothing.
    ‘Come on, cat,’ said Coraline. She took a step back towards the steps, but the cat stayed where it was, looking miserable and, oddly, much smaller.
    ‘If the only way out is past her,’ said Coraline, ‘then that’s the way we’re going to go.’ She went back to the cat, bent down and picked it up. The cat did not resist. It simply trembled. She supported its bottom with one hand and rested its front legs on her shoulder. The cat was heavy, but not too heavy to carry. It licked at the palm of her hand, where the blood from the scrape was welling up.
    Coraline walked up the steps one at a time, heading back to her own flat. She was aware of the marbles clicking in her pocket, aware of the stone with the hole in it, aware of the cat pressing itself against her.
    She got to her front door – now just a small-child’s scrawl of a door – and she pushed her hand against it, half expecting that her hand would rip through it, revealing nothing behind it but blackness and a scattering of stars.
    But the door swung open, and Coraline went through.

 
    Her hair writhed and twined about her head, and her teeth were sharp as knives . . .

Chapter 11
    Once inside, in her flat, or rather, in the flat that was not hers, Coraline was pleased to see that it had not transformed into the empty drawing that the rest of the house seemed to have become. It had depth and shadows, and someone who stood in the shadows waiting for Coraline to return.
    ‘So you’re back,’ said the other mother. She did not sound pleased. ‘And you brought vermin with you.’
    ‘No,’ said Coraline. ‘I brought a friend.’ She could feel the cat stiffening under her hands, as if it were anxious to be away. Coraline wanted to hold on to it like a teddy bear, for reassurance, but she knew that cats hate to be squeezed, and she suspected that frightened cats were liable to bite and scratch if provoked in any way, even if they were on your side.
    ‘You know I love you,’ said the other mother, flatly.
    ‘You have a very funny way of showing it,’ said Coraline. She walked down the hallway, then turned into the drawing room, steady step by steady step, pretending that she could not feel the other mother’s blank black eyes on her back. Her grandmother’s formal furniture was still there, and the painting on the wall of the strange fruit (but now the fruit in the painting had been eaten, and all that remained in the bowl was the browning core of an apple, several plum and peach stones, and the stem of what had formerly been a bunch of grapes). The lion-pawed table raked the carpet with its clawed wooden feet, as if it were impatient for something. At the end of the room, in the corner, stood the wooden door, which had once, in another place, opened on to a plain brick wall. Coraline tried not to stare at it. The window showed nothing but mist.
    This was it, Coraline knew. The moment of truth. The unravelling time.
    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