Hellboy blinked, processing the image in front of him. A girl, maybe thirteen years old, stood by a six-foot wide hole in the earth, which appeared to be some sort of old well. Said girl, only minutes before, had had all of her dolls arranged in a tea party formation around the well, with a tablecloth spread over the hole itself.
Then, something else had appeared: what looked like a hand with long, thin fingers, moving like a spider or a crab, straight for the girl. But before Hellboy could give any warning to the child, she had stepped away, the hand had gone for something black on the tablecloth, and suddenly it, the black thing, and the tablecloth were gone, vanished down the deep, dark hole. Which is how everyone had ended up where they were now.
The girl blinked back at Hellboy, somehow not as surprised by his appearance as she ought to be. After a moment she said, "Well, at least your eyes seem normal enough." Hellboy wasn't sure how to take that, but decided it was safe to say something back.
"Agent Hellboy, Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense," he recited, wishing all the while he had some sort of badge or other authoritative-looking item he could show the girl. Then again, he supposed, maybe his appearance alone sufficed as such. Somehow, though, the young girl had a distinctly unfazed look, like someone who had seen too much to be afraid anymore.
"Coraline Jones," she replied.
Hellboy raised an eyebrow. "Don't you mean 'Caroline?'"
"No," she said, in a tone that suggested she had to deal with this sort of thing all the time.
"Sorry," said Hellboy, a little embarrassed.
Coraline nodded, satisfied, and then asked, "So, why are you here?"
"I'm here investigating several missing children stories. Word has it a bunch of them disappeared over the years in a house not far from here. We got readings of supernatural energy coming from there recently, so they sent me to have a look." Hellboy looked back at the well. "Want to tell me what happened here?"
"You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you," said Coraline.
Hellboy sighed. "Kid, try me."
* * *
A few minutes later, Hellboy walked back the way he came, shaking his head as he anticipated the headache he would have after telling Manning and Kate that there was no need to go through with an investigation: he had been beaten to the punch, and by a kid, for crying out loud. He also had a feeling Liz and Abe weren't going to live this down for a while either.
"Well," he muttered, "...crap."
A yowling sound made him look to his right. Sitting nearby was a thin, black cat. It looked at Hellboy, as if it knew just what he was thinking, and found it amusing.
"What are you looking at?" Hellboy growled.
The cat simply walked off, going behind a tree – but it never appeared on the other side. Hellboy blinked. " Damn," he said, and then continued on his way.
Disclaimers & Author's Notes: Hellboy is the creation of Mike Mignola and property of Dark Horse Comics. Coraline belongs to Neil Gaiman. No profit is to be made from this story. Although I tried to keep things open-ended, both characters are based on those found in their original source material (i.e. this is Hellboy from the comics and Coraline from the novella), rather than any of the movie adaptations of these two works. This is not meant to say anything against the films themselves, which I quite enjoy (which reminds me: the movie Coraline is now on DVD; BUY/RENT IT NOW).
Story edited 7/25/09; small grammatical errors have now been corrected. I also included an extra line for Hellboy, which hopefully makes things make a little more sense, or at least answers the question of why the B.P.R.D. didn't investigate the last few times this happened (my theory being the last three abductions were from before the B.P.R.D. was formed, but that would have been giving Hellboy too much to say).