The Passageway
It wasn't over. She knew that, but she couldn't quite bring herself to admit it. Tossing the key down the well, locking the door. It was a good idea. It would work. It would keep others from the Beldam's needle-like clutches. But it was too late for her. She had changed and she couldn't forget what had happened.
She knew what was there behind the door, behind the wallpaper, behind her world. Her eyes were drawn to it, she could hear it. Thrumming, beating, the telltale sound of movement behind the door. She dared not open it, the key was down the well, but she knew that there were other ways to open doors than keys. She could pick the lock, maybe remove the hinges. She could open the door, and that thought frightened her. Not just because she could, but a part of her wanted to. A small kernel of her heart longed to know just what happened. Just what exactly was the Beldam, what was the other world?
She knew what lurked just behind that door. The passage between worlds called to her, she could hear it sometimes, whispering with no discernable voice "Coraline... Coraline..." Always the same. She tried not to hear the words, she blocked her ears, covered them with her hands, but the words didn't rely on her hearing them. She could feel them in her head, and she knew with certainty that it was calling her, "The gate, open the gate. Find the key." She ignored it.
She didn't go into the living room anymore. It puzzled her parents, but they didn't say anything. 'It's because we moved' they told each other. The timing fit, the explanation made sense. So they deluded themselves into believing it. Coraline wished she could do the same. She had changed. Even without the seeing stone that the old ladies downstairs had given her she could see things now. The world was subtly off. It was different. Everything was brighter, less sure, more hazy. Sometimes she could see flickers of movement at the edges of her vision, twitches of movement, strange things. She knew they were real, but when she turned her attention to them they vanished like a dream after waking. The other children could sense it, she was weird, different, terrifying. She knew it too. She no longer dyed her hair blue, but her roots never changed, another symptom of her ordeal.
The mangy black cat followed her in her waking hours and she found herself conversing with him. She could hear him answer back in an odd complex language of his own, almost dreamlike and forever on the cusp of understanding. With time she feared that she would understand it, the possibility frightened her. She knew that the knowledge would change her even more, it would change the world for her, fill it like a waking dream.
Her own skin felt odd to her now, uncomfortable, it tingled with strange sensations, it quivered and shuddered when she was near the well, or the door in the living room. It all came back to the door. It was the door that started it all, the door in the living room. Still locked tight but she could open it, she knew how. The thought terrified her. Everything had changed, she had won the game, she had defeated the beldam. She was free, but her freedom was a horrifying parody of what came before. She knew too much, she jumped at shadows, she heard things that weren't there.
She heard her parents talking, worrying about her. "She doesn't have any friends at school, she talks to that cat all day. It's not healthy." she knew what they were thinking, taking her to a doctor, someone to fix her broken mind, but it was useless, they didn't understand, she tried telling them once but she couldn't do it. It was better this way, the door was locked, what they didn't know couldn't hurt them. The Beldam was defeated, she had won. But, the Beldam had lied once, the Beldam cheated, she played by her own rules.
Coraline now knew what she had done: three times past the door, three times did she eat the food, three seperate wonders, three children, three souls. She was bound now, and she couldn't escape it. She had escaped the Beldam, but there was no escape from the knowledge.
The passage behind the door called to her, "Coraline, Coraline..." The words tugged at her, she longed for them, for answers. What really happened to her? What was she turning into now? "Coraline, Coraline..." She got up and headed to the kitchen, her feet taking her of their own accord. The drawer was open before she knew it, the screwdriver and hammer in her hand before she could realize it. And then, the next thing she knew she was in the living room, kneeling next to the door. It would be so easy to just stick the screwdriver under the bolts holding the hinges together and just pry it up, letting the door fall off the hinges. So simple. So easy.
The answers would be hers. She would travel the passageway again. She had won hadn't she? what did she have to fear from the Beldam? But it was't the Beldam she feared. The door itself frightened her, the passage behind it, the gate to another world, the possibilities, the knowledge that lay beyond. She knew that if she drank too deeply it would destroy her but she wasn't sure she cared. Already she had changed, she wasn't the same girl that had arrived in this cursed place. Three times through the gate of her own accord, seeking something different, something grander than herself. She had found it hadn't she? A whole other world.
Her hands worked without her purpose, the hinges were slowly pried apart, the door pulled out its frame. There beyond lay what she sought, the passageway between worlds, the gate itself, she knew its name now, whispered in the dark reaches of her mind, "Yog-Sothoth the Key, Yog-Sothoth the gate. Yog-Sothoth the Passage. The Lurker that Lies Between." The sight of it called to her, drew her onwards.
With an unsteady hand, Coraline crawled forward into the endless abyss.