It was the matter of a few minutes to get to the Merch Mart station, and the matter of only a moment for Maria to relocate the little door.
Looking at it, Coraline saw the similarities between it and the little door in her living room immediately. It was relatively small compared to other doors; tall enough to let a child walk under, but only rose to chest height for an adult. It was painted the same drab white colour as the wall around it, though it wasn't coated over with wallpaper in the way Coraline's door had been. It was set in a wall that led to the station master's office, but she guessed that if ever it was opened, it would just open onto bricks. It was unusual and innocuous both, a triviality for an adult, and a matter of curiosity for a child.
Which was, of course, the entire point.
It was the entrance to a Beldam's lair, Coraline knew, and knew it with a chilling intensity. If they went through here, they would confront her Beldam and the Czarina. There may be no turning back.
She realised that, if this was really built atop the original Wells Street Station, then this even be the original entrance. The one from where the Czarina had started snaring children one hundred and and fifty years ago.
"Is it locked?" said Wybie, stepping past her.
"It wasn't when I went through," said Maria.
Wybie tested the handle, and sure enough, it edged open. The corridor ahead was solid with darkness, and from it there came the faint sound of whispering wind.
"My door had a key. I wonder why this one doesn't?" said Coraline.
"Maybe she just prefers to keep all her doors open. Or maybe she can control all the doors from inside her Other World," said Maria.
"Maybe," said Coraline, and stepped into the corridor and switched on her flashlight. It illuminated the passage wherever she swept the beam, revealing a single stretch of corridor that extended perfectly horizontally for a distance Coraline couldn't discern.
She looked round at the others and waved them through.
"Come on," she said quietly. "And leave the door ajar."
They stepped through. As they did, Coraline saw Maria touch the crucifix around her neck and murmur something fervent under her breath. Wybie kept the door ajar, and didn't meet Coraline's eye.
The corridor ran on as they began their long walk. The walls and ceiling were the same nondescript white as the walls in the railway station without, and at the edges, Coraline saw that the paper was peeling and decaying. The floor they walked upon felt odd to Coraline's feet, and she looked down.
Beneath her feet ran parallel metal rails, between which ran dark wooden ties. The ties were crumbling and broken in places, and the rails were made of some dark metal that it took Coraline a moment to identify. They were bronze. She pointed this out to Wybie and Maria.
"Why are the rails bronze? Aren't they usually made from steel, or some sort of iron?"
"They usually are. That is strange," said Wybie, scratching his head.
"A lot of the metal in the Czarina's world was bronze," said Maria. "Or copper. Or tin. I don't actually think I saw any iron."
"We should make a note of that," said Coraline. "There's probably a reason."
They walked on in silence for another few moments, taking care to avoid catching and twisting their feet between the ties.
Wybie then said, "By the way, I'd just like to say that we're not asking why there are rails or what we're doing going through a door and corridor that by the laws of physics shouldn't exist, but we are questioning why the rails are made of bronze rather than iron. I'd just like to point that out."
"Wybie..."
"Hey, I'm not complaining. I'm just pointing out that it's a great example of something-or-other. Adaptability."
They walked on in silence. The shadows grew oppressive wherever they weren't dispelled by a flashlight.
Gradually, the corridor began to gently slope downwards. They found themselves walking at an incline down into the darkness, falling deeper and deeper beneath the city. The wallpaper had almost entirely rotted away, revealing walls made of red brick. The brick was made harsh and jagged by the irregular sweeps of the flashlights, and crumbled at the touch. The rails underfoot grew taller, more slippery, more awkward to walk upon.
"It was different when I first came down it," whispered Maria, the quiet words echoing ahead of her into the darkness. "The walls were like white marble, and the floor was plush and gold. It had its own soft light in the very walls. You could walk forever and not get tired. What's happened to it?"
"It's gotten tired of pretending," replied Coraline.
Wybie swept his flashlight beam from wall to wall, his eyes following it. The beam suddenly caught a scrap of paper. He reached up and plucked it off the wall. He scanned it, and Coraline and Maria glanced over.
It was a campaign leaflet, written in bold black type, with a Democrat logo in each corner. The front was taken up by a photo of a grey-haired man in a dark blue suit standing in front of a flag, below which was set 'Re-elect Daley for Mayor – Four More Years'. Wybie turned it around.
"2007. Two years ago." He turned back it around and frowned at it, as if willing the man to give him an answer. "How the heck did this get here?"
"There's another piece of paper on the wall there," said Coraline, pointing with her flashlight at another paper affixed to the wall a few feet on.
This paper showed the same man, in a similar pose, with the same slogan, with slightly less grey in his hair.
"I'd make a joke about politicians popping up in the darkest, dingiest places," said Wybie, "Except I can't think of one."
"2003. What gives?" said Coraline, studying the leaflet and dropping it. She pointed the flashlight along the sloping tunnel and said "Wow."
"What?"
"There's more paper. A lot more."
And there was. Papers dotted the walls and ceiling, leaflets flanked by postcards surrounded by tickets next to posters. They stretched on. And they went back in time.
Daley's election material ran through the decades, back all the way to 1989. Rough bands related to each year, newspaper clippings and such giving an indication of time. One year yielded to another, in a constant flow back into Chicago's history as the rails grew more treacherous and the shadows grew darker.
"This … what is this?" said Maria, staring as the leaflets changed their support from Daley to Harold Washington. The few paltry Republican leaflets hardly seemed to qualify for significance. "Why are all these papers here?"
"It must be how long the Czarina's been in Chicago," said Coraline. "She's been with this city since she took its station, she's been a part of its history since day one. Maybe this is just a kind of … reflection of that. Or maybe she put it here to freak us out."
"If that's the case, then it isn't working," said Wybie, his expression bored as he browsed the paper. His expression suddenly lit up and he said "Ooh!" as he saw one poster. "Hey, it's a Blues Brothers poster. And … I think it's mint! Now there's a windfall. Would there be room in the bag for ..."
"No," said Coraline firmly.
"Even if we rolled it..."
"No."
"What if..."
Coraline's look could have stopped a man's heart at fifty paces. Wybie relented, but cast a sorrowful look at the poster as he walked past.
The tunnel sloped constantly downwards, through earth and time. The period of the walls shifted through decades, one after the other. The seventies became, by subtle degrees, the sixties. The sixties fell away to the fifties. They walked on, and the front page of the Chicago Tribune roared about the victory of Dewey over Truman. A few steps on, it poured equal acclaim onto the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Pillars of smoke and fire blotted out the sun on the front page. On they went, through propaganda through renewed offensives, and onto the Depression and mass starvation and unemployment. The hollow faces from the photos of this time haunted the three as they passed, sending out mute appeals for help that couldn't be given.
Onwards, to Prohibition, to covert slips of paper advertising down-at-heel speakeasies and pompous proclamations of sobriety. Al Capone smirked past a cigar, slumped bodies bled out on a warehouse floor, the American Temperance Society trumpeted virtue through an alcohol embargo. Blood and corruption and alcohol flowed in wide rivers around the papers.
And further back they went, along the endless tunnel. Custer died an idiot's death with all his men. The Ghost Dance movement spread through the west, and the Seventh Cavalry slaughtered over a hundred and fifty Native American men, women and children with machine guns by way of a measured response.
A lot of the history around them was of a similarly dark tone. The tunnel's tastes ran towards war and slaughter, towards the darkest points of Chicago's and America's history. Short as it was, there was a lot of material to cover.
"Think you could do essays on this stuff?" asked Wybie, as they neared the Civil War era of Chicago, shortly before wildfire swept through the city. The red brick of the walls was starting to really crumble, and where it fell away altogether, wet earth showed. It was dark and cloying, and still held the pieces of paper, which were currently bearing news of the pitched massacre at Antietam.
"Don't even joke. I probably could." Coraline looked at the faded newspaper prints. "Some of it stays with you. How much more of this is there to go? We must be getting pretty near the beginning, the railways weren't in use all that long before the Civil War."
"I'll take your word for it. But if she's been taking kids for all this time, then..." Wybie shuddered. "God. She's old. And powerful."
"My one was old. She'd been around since Oregon was settled."
"Yes, well, I suppose all this is just giving me a better idea of what two centuries means." Wybie shook his head and kept walking. Around him, Kansas bled and John Brown fought his short, violent and honourable crusade.
Finally, after several minutes more of walking, a large, faded piece of paper proclaimed:
The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad is pleased to announce the Grand Opening of a new Railway Station in the City of Chicago, at the corners of Wells Street and Kinzie Avenue, to aid the Free Flow of Commerce, and the mass transport of such Material Goods and Passengers as shall best service the city. To contact our company offices, please visit our premises on Franklin Street.
"Okay, that has to be it," said Coraline. "There's got to be an exit somewhere in the immediate future."
"Don't look now, but I think there might be more paper in the immediate future," said Maria.
"Oh, what?"
It was true. Papers were still attached to the dark earth walls, although they were a lot sparser. They were faded and ragged, so much so as for the letters to be all but indiscernible.
"How do they exist?"
"Maybe she hasn't been feeding and setting up shop beneath Chicago all her life," suggested Maria. "Maybe she sort of … observed for some time before that. Kept an eye on things. Bided her time."
The tunnel was beginning to flatten as they walked, and at its end, they could make out a pin-prick of light. It had to be the Czarina's lair, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel (or, more appropriately, an oncoming train).
The papers along the walls now were tawdry things, but of no less historical value and meaning. They went back to the first incorporation of the Town of Chicago, the destruction and construction of Fort Dearborn, and, last of all, a scribbled journal entry in French.
The walls after that, for this final stretch far below the city, held flowing Algonquian script and Potawatomi symbols, carved into the very earth. The further back they went, the cruder they became, the evolution of a language through centuries and short millennia. They thinned, became mere scratchings.
And within spitting distance of the exit, they faded away. Black earth marked their passage.
Coraline shifted her feet on the rails and looked at the door in front of them. It was comparatively large, more than six feet tall, and set within an rough arch of mottled stone. It was made of some dark, polished wood, which glistened in the glare of the flashlights. The handle and hinges were blue with copper rust. The rails ran beneath it.
"Okay, whatever happens after this, we stick together," she said. "I'll take the lead with the bat. Maria, if you see anything that looks vaguely soul-like, then take it and put in the bag. And Doofenschmirtz here with the flamethrower will keep a lookout, okay?"
"Aye, aye, cap'n."
Coraline took a grip on the baseball bat, ready to swing it at anything that could spring at them. Then she reached out for the handle, and pushed the door open.
It opened surprisingly easily, and opened outwards. For a moment, they stood and stared at the sight through the door.
Then Wybie said "Avast. This is screwed up."
There hung in white nothingness a great red building.
It was the same nothingness that Coraline had encountered in Ashland, the same white space that extended endlessly in all directions, noiseless, tasteless, textureless. It was the same material in which the Beldam had created her supernatural shadow of the Pink Palace.
However, what hung in the air before them had no root in anything Coraline had experienced, or what any of the three had experienced, or in any form of rational thought for that matter.
The rails beneath their feet ran out through the white void to a massive conglomeration of sheer red brick walls, spiked clock towers, and dark windows. The building, a grotesque parody of what must have been the original Wells Street Station, straddled their field of view from side to side. It was a monstrous size, a titanic vague rectangle from which sharp towers and smoke-spewing chimneys protruded and windows looked out like huge, haunted eyes. It was mirrored on its bottom as on its top, and gables and bronze bars chased along irregular angles, like an Escher drawing that had gone off its medication. The brick from which it was made was a deep, dark carmine, the colour of rust and blood. Dark shadows lurked in every crevice, and pale cement crept in trails between the bricks.
The door from which their rails led was just one of hundreds in the space all around the station. They hung suspended, doors in the middle of nothing, from which rails fell to the station below. They curved and looped in the air, merging paths, becoming thicker as they neared the building. They all met at the front of it, in a final section of rail more than ten feet across, that glided underneath massive front doors. It was the centre of a vast metal web that cut across worlds.
It hung in mid-air, still but for the smoke drifting from its chimneys, silent but for a faint chiming that could have come from the clock towers.
"We must have taken a wrong turn. We seem to have walked into one of Tim Burton's nightmares," said Wybie, in an attempt at levity.
"It was like a Disney castle the last time," said Maria. "I don't think we're in Disneyland anymore."
As if to underscore her point, there came a distant shrill wail from the station, the strident scream of a steam-whistle. It sounded tortured and ancient. Another one followed on its heels a few seconds later.
"Wybie? I'm sorry, but old-fashioned chivalry dictates that you take the lead. Don't worry, we'll be right behind you," said Coraline, joking to hide her apprehension.
"Hey, we got rid of old-fashioned chivalry for a reason. Besides, if I was being chivalrous, wouldn't that mean I let ladies go first?"
"Oh no, after you..."
They bickered and joked all the way to the station's front door, matching each other's pace, keeping an even eye on the station and each other.
The huge front door seemed to have no handle or smaller aperture, they noticed as they drew nearer.
"Are we meant to knock?" said Wybie.
"I don't think we should actually announce our presence to the Czarina. She might not know we're coming yet," said Maria.
"So how do we get in?"
"Maybe there's another way in further up," said Coraline.
"You get right on that. My Spiderman impression's nothing to envy."
"Are we sure there isn't a -"
The door swung ponderously open inwards.
"Oh," said Wybie.
"I suppose that settles the question of whether or not she knows we're here," said Maria.
Coraline stepped through, her bat at the ready in one hand and her flashlight angled in the other. The flashlight proved unnecessary; there was a subtle ambient light that was dingy and polluted, but provided just enough to see by.
The entry hall of the station was vast and sprawling, a colossal brick chamber that carried the echoes of their steps to the furthest ends of the room. The flagstone floor was covered in a fine layer of dirt and grime, and the bricks in the walls were in the same sorry condition as the ones in the tunnel from the Merch Mart. Far above, the ceiling rose to a point completely obscured by a cloud of soot particles and dust. Chains dangled down from it and swung gently, their faint rattling adding to the eerie feel of the chamber.
The walls were lined with countless haphazard crates and barrels and boxes of various goods, bound behind wood and metal. Coal spilled onto the floor from one split barrel, copper nails from a rotted crate, and something that might have once been fruit from a split sack. They were stacked in pyramids and chaotic piles. The only thing that split the lined goods were the two doors set in the middle of the left and right sides of the chamber.
In the centre of the room, a great brick pillar rose, easily six feet across on each side. There rose before it a small pyramid of wooden, brass-bound barrels, marked with labels denoting 'Seneca Oil Company Brand Petroleum – Genuine Titusville Product'.
The three cautiously ventured forward into the room. There was not a response, not a single sound but their own footsteps and beating hearts.
"That's-" began Maria, and then stifled a scream as the entry door behind them suddenly slammed shut. Bolts set into it slammed and locked together. The light that had streamed in from the outside was cut off, and all three instantly switched their flashlights back on.
And then there was another sound from the other side of the chamber, from behind the brick pillar, the sound of a metallic scratching and shuffling.
A figure rose into view from behind the pillar, and three flashlight beams locked onto it immediately. It stood still in the glare of light.
It was the Beldam.
She was diminished from Coraline's memories of her, more feeble, more given to twitching, and haggard and gaunt with hunger. Her right hand was still missing, and the arm ended at the glistening tin-and-silver stump of a wrist. Her black button eyes were newly sewn in and still loose, her face still bore the scratches of the cat's attack. Her four metal legs left trailing spirals in the dirt as she walked.
She looked at the three with a terrible and pathetic malice, born of hunger and resentment. But as Coraline looked at her, she thought there was something else behind her gaze. A touch of …
...Fear?
Of Coraline, or of something else?
She stood still in the gaze of the flashlights, her dress ragged where it covered her abdomen. She licked her thin lips, and glanced quickly behind her.
"She said you'd come," she hissed quietly, in so low a tone that Coraline was hard-pressed to hear her. "Down here, where dust gathers and people forget and children die. I didn't believe her."
She took a trembling step forward, and the three took an equal step back, Coraline's gaze the most intense of them all. Wybie judged unhappily that she was out range of his flamethrower. The Beldam whispered "I didn't want to believe her."
"What didn't you want to believe?" asked Coraline, appalled by the naked fear in the Beldam's voice. This creature had been the architect of her nightmares for every night for the past few weeks. If something could scare her...
"Run!" hissed the Beldam frantically. "Run while you still can!"
"I don't..."
Then there was the soft sound of shifting air, and a gentle contralto said "Guests, sister?", and Coraline saw the face of the monster that preyed upon Chicago.
The Czarina stepped out of seemingly nowhere, her legs slipping out of a fold in space, the currents of her voice making the dust particles in the air dance. The tips of four metal legs tapped against the floor, coming to points like needles. They gleamed in the darkness, brass and shining copper against the gloom.
"It has been so, so long since young feet walked in my station," the Czarina crooned, her voice as tranquil as a mother's bedtime lullaby, "So long by my reckoning since youth and precious life danced through my halls."
The abdomen from which her legs extended was a gleaming, multifaceted thing, the same brown and orange colours as were evident on her metal limbs, but faded, made organic and rolling drunkenly as she walked.
"And the last child who left my home left so cruelly, so quickly, like a thief in the night who spurned my care and love." Her voice sharpened even as it maintained the disturbingly serene sing-song manner.
A short thorax jutted from the front of her abdomen, and became her upright torso as it rose. Her body was covered by a ragged red shift that could have once been a scarlet evening gown. The rags and tatters that were left revealed her shrunken, emaciated frame. Her skin was as pale and textured as wax, and gleamed as white as bone. From the top of her torso, two metal arms hung nearly all the way to the ground, the hands huge and delicate, with fingers that came to wickedly sharp points. The same waxy substance that was her skin ran partway down these arms, but melted away like running wax down a candle, exposing metal all the way down from her elbow. The arms hung still against her sides.
Halfway between those arms and her thorax, another set of arms came out. They were thicker and shorter, and folded before her and rubbed together before her chest. These arm's hands, which were more like claws than hands, simpered and rubbed and twitched against each other in unsettling motions that looked almost uncontrolled.
Limp, long, stringy red hair fell from her scalp and shrouded her head on all sides. What could be seen of her face would, Coraline knew, give her nightmares. The skin of her face was as desiccated and pulled tight as an Incan mummy, the lips pulled away from the teeth in a horrendous rictus-grin, revealing teeth as long and sharp as blackened knives. White buttons glinted beneath her hair, red trimmed, red threaded, full of evil intent.
"But she has returned, and I forgive her," breathed the Czarina, stopping beside the Beldam. "And she has brought friends."
Beside the Beldam, it was obvious who power lay with here under the city, and not just from their demeanour and behaviour. The Beldam was about as tall as Coraline's father, who had topped out at six feet, give or take an inch.
The Czarina was easily fifteen feet tall at the shoulders.
The three didn't trust themselves to speak. The Czarina brushed past the Beldam and stalked closer to them.
"Come to me, my darlings," she crooned, her teeth flashing. "Come to me, and I shall give you whatever you desire. I shall make a home for you, a bed for you, a place of refuge for you from that awful and uncaring world."
Coraline found her voice.
"We want nothing from you," she said, her voice trembling, holding the baseball bat before her with one hand, pointed at the Czarina's face. "We're here for the souls of the children you've taken. All of them. I'll challenge you to a game for them."
The Czarina tilted her head, as if Coraline had started speaking in Martian.
"The souls?" she said. "But whyever would you want to take them back up to that horrendous world, where they were lost and ignored, because nobody loved them or cared? Here, I can give them the refuge they've always wanted -" Her smile widened and sharpened. "- And they can provide just a little repayment in kind."
"You're feeding off them," Coraline snarled, righteous anger temporarily overcoming her fear. "We're taking them, whether you let us or not."
The Czarina threw back her head and laughed. The sound pealed in the room, and echoed off rafters and the far-distant roof.
"Don't accept," hissed the Beldam from behind the Czarina. "She's a cunning, wicked child, she won't play fair..."
"You were not given leave to speak," said the Czarina mildly. What threat there was in her tone was enough to immediately silence the Beldam. The Czarina turned back to the three.
"Oh, I have wondered when you would come to my home. I waited so long, so long – but rightly. I can taste your desire, children. It flows off you like bright fountains. But I should not have had to wait longer for this. I was most displeased with my servants when they let you escape." One of her great hands stirred and twitched over the ground. "I had to chastise them."
Above where her hand had twitched, there now lay on the flagstones what looked like a thin pile of black rags. The hand passed over them again and twitched and flexed, as though operating a marionette. The hand rose – and the rags rose in mid-air and took form with it.
It was Mr Bodkin whose body rose up within the remains of his suit. Rents and torture-marks ran all over his exposed skin, and ran down through his tattered clothing. Tarry sawdust oozed out from his open scars. His hair was mussed, he hung limply in the Czarina's grasp, and though his mouth had been sewn into a threatening snarl, anguish showed past his button eyes. Around his neck, what seemed to be a golden mane had been sewn into his skin.
"Mr Bodkin here was an exceedingly careless boy, and he failed in his only function – retrieving my runaways," said the Czarina. "His associate opted to come to me and receive the lion's share of the punishment – but, of course, Mr Bodkin still had to be taught a sharp lesson." One metal finger reached down and gently stroked the top of Mr Bodkin's head. "Although his associate did still receive the lion's share of the punishment."
Mr Bodkin slowly reached up and brushed his hand against the mane of golden hair around his neck.
"Yes, I think we shall have a game," said the Czarina sharply, looking abruptly up from the ravaged Mr Bodkin. "The most ancient kind. A death-game." She jabbed a finger on one of her smaller hands at the Beldam. "You want Coraline, dearest sister? Then there she is. Go and get her."
The Beldam twitched and ventured closer to Coraline, slowly at first, but gathered speed. Coraline grasped the bat with both hands and stood her ground, her eyes wide.
The Beldam drove down at the trio, and Coraline dodged way from her to the left while Wybie and Maria sprang to the right. The Beldam ducked the careless swing from the baseball bat and advanced on Coraline, her face stark with feral hunger. Coraline backed away, glancing behind her for the door on her side of the room.
"And you, slave." The Czarina jerked her large hand and Mr Bodkin jerked like a puppet. "You want the hurting to stop? You want your precious associate back?" She pointed him at Wybie and Maria in turn. "Them. Get them, worm-meal. Take them to me and don't fail this time. Or I'll keep you alive like this forever."
She freed him from her hand and he lurched forward, catching himself before he could fall. He shook and steadied himself, and looked drunkenly around for Wybie and Maria. Catching sight of them, he snarled in the back of his throat and charged. They ran back, and he kept on running straight at them, his stance low and primal, his arms flailing and scratching at the ground.
"This way!" yelled Maria, tugging hard on Wybie's arm. "I know where we can outrun him! Come on, quickly!"
He ran after her, while Mr Bodkin sluggishly changed direction and kept coming after them, as relentless as a locomotive. As she brought them to the door on the right, Wybie turned to Coraline, who was backing away from the Beldam into the rightwards door.
"Be careful! We'll meet up with you!" he yelled.
She nodded, her eyes as wide and terrified as Wybie's own. Then she turned and ran through the door, and the Beldam pursued her. At the same time, Maria pulled Wybie through their own door. Mr Bodkin came after them, the stitches around his mouth splitting and a low and terrible scream bubbling up from the depths of his throat.
The Czarina laughed again, her harsh cackles of laughter splitting and trembling through the air. Around her, Wells Street Station came alive with clamour and shouting and running feet.
Foe the first time in countless years, the station reawoke.
"What the hell?" enquired an office manager some ten stories above the ground floor of the Merch Mart, looking at his department's photocopier.
The machine seemed to be twitching on its desk, emitting confused puffs of smoke. And when he looked around him, the air seemed to be buzzing with some sort of charge.
And the damn building seemed to be trembling, right down to its foundation.