Chapter Text
It was a miracle of mercy that Coraline had no dreams that night. She slept through until morning, and as soon as she awoke, she jumped up and rushed out of her room, almost colliding with the wall as she sprinted to her parents’ bedroom. She flung the door open and—
—and there they were, asleep together, safe and sound. Well, they were asleep, but their daughter’s sudden entrance startled them both awake.
“Coraline… what’s going on…?”
Mel groaned and sat up slightly. Charlie rubbed his eyes and reached clumsily for his glasses, sitting on the bedside table. Coraline, eyes wide, approached them and stared at them both, almost at her wit’s end but just barely clinging onto some degree of calm.
“Where were you guys last night?”
The two of them looked at each other confusedly and then back to Coraline.
“Honey, we were here, right here. You’d gone to bed, we didn’t see you all night, until you came barging in just now,”
Charlie answered, sitting up and giving Coraline a slightly incredulous look.
“What the hell is going on?”
It was framed almost like a demand. Mel said nothing, but Coraline could tell that she wanted to know the same thing. The young woman tried to speak, tried to make some sort of excuse to justify her strange behaviour, but she just ended up making a noise of exasperation, sitting on the edge of the bed. How was she to explain what was going on, what had occurred thirteen years ago, why she had left in the way she had, where all her thoughts had led, and what she was really there to do? How was she to explain the unexplainable?
But after almost a minute of sitting in silence, her parents awaiting her answers anxiously, she turned to them and, with a soft sigh, did her best to make it all make sense to them.
“When we first moved in here… something happened to me. Something I don’t know how to explain to you guys, something that doesn’t make any sense even now, but… something that traumatised me. Something no kid should have to go through.”
Her parents’ expressions became utterly horrified and confused, and they both had no idea what to say. They weren’t sure how to respond, what to think, or how to process what their daughter was telling them. But they listened.
“This place is all wrong. It’s, I don’t know, haunted? There’s something in here that leads to another world— a dark place— a bad place. And I was the only one who could see it. But Mrs Lovat knew about it, and so does Wybie now, and I don’t expect either of you to get what I’m saying, but you should know about it too. It’s the reason I left Ashland, why I never called. Why I never went to Mrs Lovat’s funeral… and now I’m back here because I have to finish what I should’ve finished thirteen years ago. I have to put all the old demons to rest— I have to kill them.”
There was a period of deafening, near unbearable silence. Charlie and Mel looked at each other and were confounded. What was Coraline trying to tell them? What had she seen? And why couldn’t they have seen it all those years ago, when it was happening, when it mattered most? Had they failed as parents? Had they been unable to do the one thing they were supposed to do above all else, and keep their daughter safe? They had no idea what to say, still, and so they just looked back at Coraline with desperate, questioning eyes. Coraline sighed and stood up from the bed.
“I’m gonna go find Bobinsky. I’ll be back later.”
And she walked away, out of the room, and went to go get ready. Charlie buried his head in his hands and sniffled quietly, while Mel rubbed his back. She knew there were still secrets Coraline had close to her chest, ones she hadn’t quite figured out yet. But, ultimately, she would reveal them in time, when all was said and done. When her demons had been killed. In a moment of vulnerability, Charlie wrapped his arms around Mel’s waist and began to cry quietly into her side. Mel, in turn, stroked his hair and let her own tears fall freely.
Coraline would explain it all when she was ready.
******
All throughout her morning routine, from breakfast to the shower to getting her things in order, Coraline wondered if she had done the right thing. Should she have just left it be, come up with another excuse? Or should she have laid it all out for her parents? No, not that, they weren’t ready for that. They weren’t ready to hear the gravity of things, and to be honest, neither was she. She was still afraid, deathly afraid, of everything that was going on. She had to make sure everything was properly laid to rest before coming clean.
She had it all planned out in her head – if the old man was still there, she’d ask him about the mice, ask if they knew a way to get to the Other World. She’d ask if he had learned anything in the time between then and now, and if maybe he could give her some insight. If not insight, then perspective. And when she found a way into that place, she would venture forth and track down the Beldam to whatever dark crevice she had crawled into, and she’d pull her out by her stringy hair and she’d tear off her head, rip open her chest, break her into innumerable pieces and burn them, and scatter the ashes into the furthest depths of the ocean.
And if after all that, the Beldam still lived? She’d call an exorcist.
When she was ready, Coraline ventured outside. It was a grey, overcast day, and the air was heavy and moist. Before ascending the stairs to Bobinsky’s flat, she looked up at the hill where the well sat. She hoped she might see some sign of the Cat, or Mrs Lovat, but there was nothing. She would be doing this alone. She clenched her fists and slowly began walking up the stairs, noting how rusted everything was, how strange it all smelled and looked, in such subtle ways that it was nearly imperceptible.
Upon reaching the top, Coraline saw just how long it had been. The door and both the windows were boarded up, and everything smelled of rot and cobwebs. So much for asking those cryptic mice about all their secrets. She sighed again and approached the door, noting that while it was boarded up, it still retained its original shape, and could’ve been opened and closed with a key. So, was it truly condemned? She had no idea, until – impulsively – she tried the door handle. It rattled slightly, clearly unsteady in its screws, before it clicked and the door creaked open.
Coraline jumped back, startled by the ease at which she had entered. Bobinsky really was still there. But was he ever so careless as to leave his door unlocked? She saved those questions for later, slowly pushing the door open before stepping inside the tiny flat. It was pretty sparse before, sure, but now it was a wasteland. No furniture, no clothes hanging out to dry, and that table with the lamp on it was gone too. It was just a void. As she expected, the chicken was also gone, probably along with Bobinsky, back to wherever he had previously lived, or wherever he decided to go.
But as Coraline stepped further inside, she could see that it wasn’t all empty. There was a pile of papers in one corner of the room, as well as a stuffed chicken doll – with buttons for eyes. She ignored it – that tell-tale harbinger – and approached the papers, noting the terrible smell of the place. It stank worse than mould and decay, so much worse than that. She crouched down beside the pile and spread the papers apart. A chill ran down her spine as she saw that they were all individual drawings of mice, scratchy and unnatural, as if whoever drew them was slashing the paper with their pencil.
All of them bore horrible deformities and malevolent, staring eyes, like they were drawn from the distorted memory of what a mouse should be, rather than what it actually is. These looked more like the rats the Beldam employed— no, worse. Much worse. These were more like that dream she had with the ghost children, and the tree of headless birds, and the rider and steed fused together. Something else was happening in this place, something the Beldam was far too weak to conjure up.
And what was it that Mrs Lovat’s sister had said? If you kill the Beldam, something far worse will come to be. Was all this – everything that had occurred since she first saw the Cat back in Pontiac – the work of that thing, that ‘something worse’? All of a sudden, Coraline felt extremely alone in Bobinsky’s flat, like the mere memory of him had been cut out of the real world and taken somewhere else. Dread pervaded through her body and she felt fused to the spot.
But eventually, she became compelled to stand, and turn, and when she did, she saw something ahead of her, in the opposite corner of the room, something that made her heart rise to her throat and her breath die. It was a person, a body, suspended in the air by something, and below it were words, painted there in something like blood. Coraline didn’t want to go to it, didn’t want to accept what she know knew was fact, but all her fears and nausea couldn’t stand against the force that made her walk over and see the horrors.
It was Bobinsky, hanged, his corpse having decayed over a period of years, but his lanky frame and pot belly were still utterly recognisable. His teeth and eyes were missing and most of his skin was gone, but the flies and maggots hadn’t finished with him, oh no, they had years’ worth of meals left to go, the flesh and muscle beneath still being feasted upon and devoured by the scavengers of death. Coraline sobbed, unable to tear her eyes away from the hellish sight, until she noticed what the words below Bobinsky’s body said, written in blood that had dried from crimson to black.
“NOBODY LEAVES THE PINK PALACE.”
Coraline, for the first time in longer than she could remember, let out a piercing scream. She screamed for several seconds, before stumbling out of the flat, tears streaming down her face, and almost fell down the steps in her fit of horror. Her parents had already heard the scream and came to meet her, and she clung to them in desperation. They tried to get her to tell them what was going on, and in her feverish babbling, she managed to point them upwards. Both of them dutifully headed up the stairs and flung open the door to Bobinsky’s flat, expecting nightmares beyond comprehension, but when they investigated inside they found—
—nothing.
Just as Coraline had first seen it, the place was empty, but truly empty. No papers, no chicken doll, and most importantly, no hanged corpse. Coraline managed to follow after them, and begged for them to see what she saw, but they couldn’t. Her parents saw nothing. Mel hugged her daughter and quietly shushed her.
“We tried to tell you before, Bobinsky moved out years ago. He wanted to go back to Russia, take his whole ‘mouse circus’ thing to the stage.”
Charlie explained, but his words did nothing to assuage Coraline’s fears. Instead, they only caused her to sob harder. Two possibilities were occurring to her and neither were good. The first was that the Beldam was playing tricks on her again, and she would have no one to turn to for support. The other was that she really was beginning to lose it, the horrors having broken her mind so much that she was simply hallucinating. Some of it could be real while other parts might not have been.
But something cemented the former possibility in her mind, and her misery was replaced once again by anger. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the distinct sight of a hairy, ugly rat scarpering out of Bobinsky’s flat— and disappearing into some hole in the wall.
******
For the rest of the day, Coraline remained in her bed, resting on her side, staring at the wall. She refused to speak to her parents, and wouldn’t look at her phone either. She had too much on her mind. The Cat was gone and Wybie was still back home and there was no one who understood. Her emotions were a mess, twisting between sorrow, despair, fear and rage. It would’ve been too much for her on the first day, or the one prior to her arrival, but now… now it was all too much to bear.
The sight of Bobinsky’s body, real or not, had indeed been abominable. But what compounded her ire was the unfairness of it all, alongside everything that had already happened. Wybie, Spink, the ghost children, all of them in some way victims of the Beldam. Coraline was afraid of the witch, but she hated her, and her smug smile and her games, and for such wonderful people to be at the mercy of her actions was maddening. If such a creature could feel pain, or misery, Coraline hoped that said creature would go to Hell after she killed her, and be tortured until the end of time. The witch deserved it, and more, and worse, and things would only be right with the universe if she was never allowed to feel relief or freedom from pain ever again, at the very least.
But all these thoughts were tantamount to a madman’s futile scribblings. Nothing could be done until Coraline could get at the Beldam, in her own world, and that scenario was growing less and less likely by the day. Without a key or a portal, what could be done? Maybe she could finally knock those bricks down, discover what was really behind the little door, but it would probably just be an empty apartment space, as rotten and decayed as Bobinsky. No, there had to be something else. There had to be another answer, something hidden, something she hadn’t quite figured out yet.
That night, after dark had fell and it was all quiet in the Pink Palace, Coraline heard a quiet scratching beside her bed. She hadn’t been able to fall asleep, not for hours, and so she turned over with a grunt, hoping to see the Cat waiting for her by the door. But the door was open. And standing there, tiny yet menacing, was that damn rat. Coraline lurched up in bed and watched as the rat stared at her with its beady black eyes, surveying her, before it fled down the hallway— down the stairs.
Coraline hesitated for just a moment before jumping out of bed and following it, just as she had done with the mice thirteen years ago. She knew what she would find in the living room, watching as the rat stood in front of the little door – the little ajar door – and crawled into it when she came close. She froze at the sight of it, and knew that it was time. Slowly, the door began to creak open wider, revealing the dark tunnel within, ragged and uninviting. The rat had disappeared inside.
It was her own fault for praying for a way in. It was here. Coraline knew there was only one way she could end her nightmare, and it was through that tunnel. But she wasn’t stupid enough to go in without a plan, and so she rushed back upstairs as quietly as possible and prepared. She dressed more appropriately for the occasion, with hiking boots and trousers, and a large coat, and grabbed her flashlight, which had already recharged from the previous night. She put on her pilot’s hat and grabbed two more objects – her father’s crowbar, kept safe by her bed in case of an emergency, and her pocket knife. Wybie had gifted it to her when they moved to Pontiac and she had never had to use it before. It felt like a warming star in her pocket, despite its cold blade.
The last thing she did was write the letter. It wasn’t much of anything, but it explained the basic idea of what had happened, and stressed— urged— begged— whoever was reading it to not go through the tunnel, not under any circ*mstances. She didn’t want those she might have been leaving behind to get in more trouble. She didn’t want the witch to find them. She ended it by telling her parents and Wybie that she loved them, and that she was sorry. And then that was that.
As Coraline stood in front of the tunnel, ready as she could have been, she felt something like hatred emanating from its depths. Either the Beldam really did despise Coraline as much as Coraline despised her, which was strangely comforting, or there was another presence in that place that had been so close to scaring its adversary away, but had failed. Either way, and regardless of whose hate was pouring out, nothing could keep the young woman from her goal.
So before she could turn around, and before any spectre or cat could warn her against it, Coraline Jones crouched down to her knees and began to crawl through the tunnel behind the little door. A distant breeze blew through the cramped space, and she was sure she could hear something like breathing. The light ahead of her was hostile and colourless, and the dread invading her body was stronger, deeper, threatening to paralyse her to the spot. But on she crawled, and eventually, she had reached the other side.
The place ahead of her was technically her living room, but it was entirely barren. It was dark and empty, everything the same grey colour, lit by a single bulb from the ceiling which did a poor job of illuminating what was ahead. The whole place felt like it was barely held together, and there was an intense feeling of loneliness just from standing there, being solitary in a place of great and terrible nothingness. Coraline knew that it was just the start, and this hell was only as such because the Beldam had barely survived, her prey denied, her source of energy gone. How she still lived was a mystery.
Clutching the crowbar in her hands, Coraline took a deep breath, looked back at the tunnel, and turned towards the living room door. There was only one last thing to do.
