Nightmares have a way or effecting the area they haunt. Strange things; like seeing a spider before an attack, or power outages... or fog. The same things that disappear when those nightmares are trapped, and can't get out.

You would think that Cat wouldn't be able to sneak around anymore, now that he didn't have any cover. Coraline couldn't be any more wrong as he jumped up behind her and onto her back, curling himself around her skinny neck. One moment she's walking around the outskirts of the forest along a highway and the next a blur of black fur jumps out at her left eye. You would also think that she would be used to it and wouldn't jump ten feet anymore when he did it. Wrong again. Coraline reached down and picked her book up from the sidewalk, which had landed spine up when Cat attacked her. Coraline lifted the little leather book to her eye level and blew the dirt out from in between the pages before resuming walking down the side of the road and finding her sentence again. As she rounded a bend in the road the trees started thinning out and being replaced by buildings; a toy store with spinning playthings in it's window, a bakery that filled the air around it with the smell of burnt sugar and bread, a book store, an incense shop with its door wide open and the wind chimes hanging from its ceiling tinkling in the cool, October wind. Coraline barely noticed any of it. She was too caught up in the adventures and uncanny occurrences of her book. She took an involuntary turn left at the next corner and began crossing the street, never taking her eyes from her page and managing not to get hit by a car only by sound. Soon enough she was at the foot of a dirt driveway leading up a hill into the woods, it's end hidden by trees. Coraline put her book back into her coat pocket and stepped off the sidewalk and onto the driveway. But the moment her foot touched the dried, weed pocketed path, Cat lept from her shoulders and hit the pavement hissing and spitting before rocketing down the sidewalk away from her and almost running headlong into a couple holding hands.

"Umm.... Okay?", he had been acting psycho for the past two months. Not going anywhere near the Lovat grounds and acting like Wybie didn't exist every time the three of them were together- which was almost never lately because, once again, Cat wouldn't go near anything "Lovat related".

"Dumb Cat".

The climb up the hill wasn't as bad as it had been when she first arrived in town, her legs were older and longer and she no longer had the heart pounding need to run up it so fast that she tripped over herself. Back then you never knew what was watching you from the woods, but now she could enjoy the sunlight filtering through what was left of the rustling orange and brown leaves. Lovat manor came into view as she reached the top and Coraline took a moment to catch her breath. The house was as big as the Pink Palace, with ivy covering a good part of the west side and creeping slowly onto the red oak wrap around porch, complete with an antique white rocking chair. Most of the yard was shaded by a large, bare oak tree with a tire swing hanging from its strongest branch. The driveway led off to the right and ended under a small car port and the front door, which was technically on the side of the house, not the front, was large and old and flanked on both sides by stained glass. Coraline walked across the unraked lawn and stomped up the steps. The brass knocker was heavy and tarnished and made a loud noise that cracked off the bark of the nearby trees.

"Come in!"

Coraline did as she was told and went inside, straight into the living room. She had expected to find him huddled behind a pile of old books, which were in stacks along the walls of the room, or on the old pink couch reading. But he wasn't doing either and it didn't look like he was anywhere else in the antique and dust covered living area.

"Wybie?"

"I'm in here!"

Coraline found Wybie in the kitchen sitting in a chair like a frog and making funny faces at something on the table.

"If you stare at it long enough, it might just move."

"You're a real comedian. Trying to figure something out. Be there in just a minute. "

Fifteen minutes later Coraline was still leaning against the doorway, feeling like an idiot. Curiosity getting the best of her, she took her shoes off, as quietly as possible, and tip toed across the room in her socks up behind him. What she saw made her explode in a fit of giggles so bad that she had to either grip the counter or fall backwards.

"Cookies? You can't figure out cookies??"

"I'm a guy. I'm well within my species not to know how to bake."

"But it's COOKIES!"

"Water witch."

"Do you want my help or not?"

"Yes ma'am." She could have sworn that she heard him mutter something under his breath the moment she reached for the recipe.

"What was that?"

"You're awesome?"

"Yea, that's totally, what you said."

They decided to use the modern day stove, as opposed to the cast iron one, on the pretenses that Wybie did want her help and Coraline refused to use it. Theres only so many times a girl can burn herself on something before she knows to stay away from it. An hour and three batches of batter later, because the others were either eaten or thrown across the room World War Two style before they got to the tray, the house was covered in the heavy smell of melting chocolate and deliciousness. Coraline was sitting on the couch in the living room, with her bare feet on the coffee table, and Wybie's head in her lap. She was curling her finger around his dark, amber curls and watching all the different colors it created when the light hit it while he had his eyes almost completely shut and appeared to be half asleep. After the cookies were in and the timer had been set Wybie had dug through a large polished box in the living room, throwing old, sequined cloth and a tambourine over his shoulder, before declaring that he had found it yesterday and wanted her to listen to it. The it turned out to be one of Grandad Lovat's old records and now the sound of Tony Bennet singing Come Rain or Come Shine was leaking out of the old, brass gramophone that was half hidden behind a barrage of potted fern plants. The room was sunny, almost no shadows could be seen in the light and the scene outside was of the large, gnarled tree and it's tire swing, as Wybie lightly lip sung to to old song. And everything in Coraline's world was just right all of a sudden. But nothing in life stays perfect for long.