Coraline

The house had flattened out even more. It no longer looked like a photograph – more like a drawing, a crude, charcoal scribble of a house drawn on grey paper.

The light that came through the picture window was daylight, real golden late-afternoon daylight,

the stone with the hole in it.

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.

She walked into the drawing room and looked at the door. She had the feeling that the door was looking back at her, which she knew was silly, and knew on a deeper level was somehow true.

Just stay there for a few moments longer, she thought at it, wondering if it could hear her. I’ll get us both home. I said I would. I promise. She felt the cat relax ever-so-slightly in her arms.

‘There is nothing down here,’ said the pale thing, indistinctly. ‘Nothing but dust and damp and forgetting.’

I’m not frightened, she told herself, and as she thought it she knew that it was true.

She hugged herself, and told herself that she was brave, and she almost believed herself,