Author's notes: I am so sorry for being late in getting the next Coraline chapter up. There is computer stuff if had to fix first hence the delay. I hope you enjoy it and please review me and let me know what you think. It's good to be back guys.

Now back to our regular schedule program . . .

CORALINE'S REAL BEDROOM - MORNING

Coraline finally awakens. She looks around expecting bright colors, a magic dragonflies. But it's just her normal grey room: moving boxes; cracks in the ceiling - nothing's changed. She notices the button-eyed doll on the chair where she left it, where the Other Mother was sitting. She picks it up, absentmindedly goes to scratch her wrist. She stops, noticing that the rash on her wrist is gone.

"It's gone, my poison oak, it's gone! ..."

Coraline gets up and heads down to the living room and goes to the little door, which is still ajar. She peeks behind and finds the wall of solid bricks. Yes, it was only a dream. She shakes her head and pushes the door shut. The kettle blows from the kitchen. With nothing better to do she heads in to the kitchen to find her Mother and Father Mel and Charlie finish their "Go Lean Breakfast Twigs" and mugs of instant coffee, preoccupied with their work, they half-listen as Coraline recounts her dream, her breakfast untouched. Dante stands at the kitchen sink drink the instant coffee while watching the Fog that lies outside the windows.

"It was incredibly real, Mom! Only you weren't really you; you were my other mother."

"Buttons for eyes, huh?"

Mel comments disapprovingly and indicates to her daughter's untouched food. "Coraline, you only dreamed you ate all that chicken. Take your multi-vitamin, at least."

"Was I in the dream, Coraline?" Dante asked curiously.

Coraline turned to look at Dante. "Umm … I didn't see you anywhere."

Dante shrugged and took a gulp. "I figured not. I was busy have my own dream about … tigers and a hot tub. Then it got weird."

"How weird?" Coraline asked.

"Well … it was of black shapes that slid from place to place, avoiding the light, until they were all gathered together under the moon. Little black shapes with little red eyes and sharp yellow teeth. They started to sing: We are small but we are many. We are many, we are small. We were here before you rose. We will be here when you fall. Their voices were high and whispery and slightly whiny. They made me feel uncomfortable. Then I dreamed a few commercials, and after that I dreamed of nothing at all." Dante concluded his tale with a smile and wide eyes.

Coraline raised a brow to what she hears before turning back around in her seat. and Dante resumed drinking his coffee.

"You were in the dream too, Dad. You had wild-looking pajamas and orange monkey slippers." Coraline said to her father.

Charlie pretended to be offended. "Orange? My monkey slippers are blue."

He stands, put his dishes in the sink. As he passes by he stops and whispers over his shoulder. "Pssst. Can you get me some of that magic mud you were talking about?"

She points to her rash-free wrists which he nods.

Because I have a terrible case of writer's rash. On my-.

Mel suddenly clears her throat, interrupting.

"If the real Charlie Jones wants his pages edited, he'd better wrap them up ASAP." Mel reminded him.

Charlie crisply salutes her, turns on his heel, and marches out the door. Mel gets up to clear the table with Coraline.

"Coraline, why don't you go visit downstairs? I bet those "actresses" would love to hear your dream." Mel suggested.

"Miss Spink and Forcible? But you said they're dingbats." Coraline thinking it was a bad idea.

"Uh huh." Mel thinking it was a splendid idea.

Dante chuckles silently as Coraline sighs and gets up to leave.

Outside its drizzling and a white fog has lowered over the house and grounds. Coraline yellow rain poncho, garden shears in hand opens the front door. Stepping out onto the porch, she trips on a big bundle of mail. Annoyed, she picks it up, starts leafing through the envelopes.

"Bo-bin-sky...Bo-bin-sky...Bo-bin-sky..." she mutters in rein his name.

Smells something bad, sniffs the envelopes.

"Ohh, Poo-eeeee!"

"Three guesses on whom I belong to."

Coraline jumps a little and turns to see Dante standing behind her. He walks off out into fog heavy landscape.

What follows is Coraline encounters and first impressions of the other tenets in the Pink Palace.

Bobinsky. tall blue/grey tall acrobat that is currently using new cheese to make his mice better at their performance, or so he says. The man is Russian, like old school soviet Russian, that has no love for Putin, even before his attack on Ukraine. But before Coraline could disappear Bobinsky drops down to deliver a message to her from his "meeshkas".

"The mice...asked me to give you message."

"The...jumping mice?"

Mr. B nods gravely. He leans down, so close his moustache

touches her ear, and whispers, his voice DEAD-SERIOUS.

"They are saying: do not go through leetle door. Do you know such a thing?" he asked.

Coraline is startled. "The one behind the wallpaper? But ... it's all bricked up."

Mr. Bobinsky shrugs and straightens up. "Bah. So sorry, is nothing. Sometimes the mice are leetle..." He points to his head and rotates his finger. "...mixed up, hmmm? They even get your name wrong, you know. They call you Coraline instead of Caroline, not Caroline at all." He starts back up the stairs. "Maybe I work them too hard..."

Coraline stares after him and with a thought-provoking *snip* of her shears

Coraline approaches the family VW, where one pink suitcase remains tied to the roof. She snips it free and takes out her special HAT, a black Japanese schoolboy's cap that goes with her Japanese/Anime section of her stuff.

Next was Miss Spink and Forcible apartment at the door, she tries the comedy/tragedy door knocker and waits. Nothing. She glances down at the doormat – it reads "No whistling in the house."

She peers through the door glass. Suddenly a yapping dog suddenly leaps up inside, startling her, and a moment after, Miss Spink wearing some sort of house robe opens the door and three Scottie Dogs Hamish, Jock, And Angus shoot out and surround Coraline. Spink tries to quiet them down.

Miss Spink quiets the dogs down and invites Coraline in for a cup of tea. Miss Spink said what Coraline what like but Miss Forcible didn't care. Miss Spink and Forcible were dingbats but lovable dingbats. Their relationship is hard to pin down. At first they appeared as old lesbians of a bygone era of stage acting. but further inspection shows there are non-sexual lesbians that behave more like bickers sister to each others who have a taste in men that is decades overdue. Regardless of what is truth, on the one hand there are once sensual acrobat performers that did a lot of shows that excites the mind and body. And on the other their keep the dead Scottie Dogs as taxidermy dressed in angel costumes.

Creepy. Coraline thought to herself.

With a fortune telling that warn Coraline of an ominous hand or handsome giraffe, Coraline left the basement flat and headed above ground.

Danger? What could that mean?

Just as Coraline turned to corner she spotted something in the distance. There stand near the edge of the forest at the wolf Dante pointed out to her. She stood and clasped her hands behind her back and after a few moments of watching each other the wolf turned and ran away back into the shadows and mists of the forest.

Coraline shrugged and continued on until a familiar sound caused her to stop in her tracks. Behind her, a periscope rises from the waist-deep fog. Coraline just catches it in her peripheral view. She frowns for a moment before smiling slyly but doesn't let on she's aware of it. She walks turn all the way around ahead nonchalantly down the steps into the fog sea of, the periscope begins to follow her, then suddenly she turns and grabs it, pulling up Wybie. No surprise there.

"Great, the village stalker." She then punches him in the arm.

"Owwwwwwww! I - I wasn't stalking you. We're hunting banana slugs." Wybie grins.

"What d'ya mean, "we?"." asked she.

"Well it can't be me. . ." a voice said which startles Wybie and Coraline for a bit, who turn to see Dante emerging from the fog. ". . . Because I just got here."

"Hey Dante." Wybie greeted happily.

"Hi Dante." Coraline waved.

"Coraline, Wybie and … where the cat?" Dante asked.

There's a soft meowing from under Wybie coat. He opens it up and the black cat emerges and climbs onto his shoulders.

"Ha! Your cat's not wild; he's a wuss-puss!" Coraline stated with amusement.

Cat glares at her angrily and hisses.

"What? He hates to get his feet wet. Geez." Wybie said.

"Wuss-puss..." Coraline continues to mock the cat.

Wybie takes some salad tongs from a tool belt, snaps them at the ready and begins to search under the fog for banana slugs while the cat tired of her company, the jumps off Wybie, onto a parked car when he came near it. Dante walked over and petted the black cat.

Coraline softens and decided to ask about the doll Wybie gave her.

"So ... that doll. Did you make it look like me?" she asked.

Wybie, scanning under the ground fog for slugs, sticks his head up for a moment.

"Oh no; I found it that way. It's older than Gramma - old as this house prob'ly."

Coraline is highly skeptical while Wybie returns to his hunt.

Coraline points to self. "C'mom - blue hair, my swampers and raincoat?"

"Is your hair naturally blue or is it … dye?" Dante asked a very interesting question.

Coraline hesitated for a moment. "Well-"

"Dang, check out Slugzilla!" Wybie stands excitedly and presents a huge yellow-green slug to Coraline.

She's not impressed and becomes frustrated. "You're just like them."

He looks from the slug to himself. "Huh?" Wybie asked.

"I meant my parents; they don't listen to me either." Coraline admitted.

Dante turned around to stare at her, sympathizing with her. He knows what it's like when nobody listens to you.

Wybie nods, not listening again, takes his camera and walks over to her. "Uh huh... You mind?" He hands it to her the camera. She acts put-out, but frames a shot. Dante walked over to stand beside her while she task pictures.

He signals he's ready and she fires off one auto-flash shot after another as he strikes silly poses making sound effects: horrified of the slug one moment; ready to eat it the next; pretending it's something from his nose in another. She can't help but giggle.

"Ew! Haha!"

"Eh, gross! It's all long and gooey, look at it." Dante laughed.

Finished, Wybie tosses the slug back into the fog, and takes the camera back. He lowers his head, thoughtful, then glances up past Coraline at the house. He sighs and speaks in a sad tone.

"You know, I've never been inside the Pink Palace."

"Really?" Dante said doubtfully

Coraline is skeptical, "You're kidding."

Wybie threw up his hands. "Hey, don't blame me. Grandma would kill me. Thinks it's dangerous or something."

"Dangerous?" Coraline looks back at the house.

Dante noticed her reaction and figured not the first time she was told something like that. Regardless the Black cat walked up the branch of fallen tree and up onto the roof of the house. Dante followed after the cat and the two sat on the roof.

"Well ... she had a twin sister." Wybie explained.

"So?" Coraline asked.

"When they were kids, Grandma's sister disappeared. She says she was stolen."

"Stolen?" Coraline asked skeptical.

Cat senses something and turns Dante look behind them and the chills return - it's Coraline's DOLL at the window, looking like it's spying on things. Dante furrows at it before getting an idea that made him smile like a lunatic. Dante got up and walked over to window and unbuckled his pants dropped them in front of the doll …

"Well, what do you think?"Coraline asked Wybie.

Wybie just shakes his head. "Uhhh, I-I don't know. Maybe she just ran away?"

Wybie, astride his electric bike now, whistles and the black cat jumps down from the roof, onto his shoulders. Dante zips up his pants before leaps down onto the ground.

Once again Wybie's agitated grandmother calls out in the distance.

"Wyborne!"

Wybie turns away: he's said too much.

He starts to pull away. "Look, I gotta go."

"Wait a minute!" Coraline called out to him.

Wybie ignores her and with the cat vanishes into the mist. Coraline attitude is pensive at the moment; twice she has told that this house has danger attracted to it. But she wonders if it actually is so. she notices the Dante was head back into the house.

"What do you think?" she asked him.

Dante looks over her shoulder at her. "Aboooouuuuuut?"

"Some people say this house is dangerous. What do you think?" Coraline asked.

Dante thought for a moment as he knew a deeper meaning to the question. But as far as she was aware, concerning the otherworld, she is in danger when she goes over there an yet oblivious of the truth that offers her free food and talking toys. Dante instead decided to place the neutral side of things until it the danger reared its ugly head. If he just told her the truth now she won't believe. How many times do people ever believe true when they are told it the first time. Never, that how many times!

"I never really think about it. A house is usually the safe place one can find. But like any safe place that doesn't mean danger won't find its way to you."

"Like … what?" she asked.

"Well I don't want to alarm you but, I found a snake under my bed on morning."

Coraline became shocked. "What?"

"Yeah I found a snake under my bed. Must have crawled in through my window." Dante said.

"Why was your window open?" She asked.

"It was lightly raining, I like the coolness in the night. But it reminded me that sometimes despite what we want in the moment things need to stay shut." He said.

"Hmmm …" Coraline nodded. Then she gets an idea. "… Hey, you think if it's okay if I see your place."

Dante gives her a questioning look. "You still want to go into a place, knowing it could be dangerous?" he asked a question with a double meaning.

Coraline tilted her head to the side. "What do you mean by that? Is your room dangerous?"

Dante smiled and shocked his head. "No … it's no more dangerous than trying to tell the difference between a Coral Snake and a King Snake."

"Hmm." Coraline hummed.

The two entered inside with Dante leading the way to his room.

"If red is near black, it's a friend of Jack." Coraline said remembering the old rhyme.

Dante nodded in agreement. "But if red is near yellow, it's a dangerous fellow."

…

Dante opened the door to his room and allowed Coraline to step inside. Dante then noticed something out of the corner of his eye - A shadow in the hallway - when he turns to look it had disappeared. He walked into his room and cautiously closed the door behind him. Stupid Shadow People always standing around, doing … stuff.

"Wow!" Coraline exclaimed. "Your room is so cool."

"Eh." Dante shrugged.

Indeed it was. Like Dante said before it had be a library because there a shelves that would hold a lot of books. Now that Dante is here there are books, action figure models and props from movies and shows. Dante's room had a king-size bed, and large flat screen and big L shaped couch and recliner in front of it. And a widescreen computer that is from Alienware. Basically Dante's room look like the kinda room a YouTuber would have when they record themselves for a video.

"Where did you get all this stuff?" Coraline asked.

"Internet." Dante replied simply.

"Some of this doesn't look like they came from the internet." Coraline commented.

"Some it did. But, you're right, some of this you will not find on the internet. Some of this I found by being out and about."

Coraline notices a white sheet covering a panting that sits on an easel. Curiously she walks over to it and reached see what is underneath. Suddenly, Dante hand reached out and grabbed her gently.

"Don't touch that. It's … not ready." he said.

"Um, okay." Coraline said a bit startled by action.

Dante released her hand and she walks on wondering what could be under there that he won't show. However the sheet that covered the painting began to move and hand started to move forward out of the painting and under the sheet. Dante notice this and slapped the hand which retreated back into the painting.

"Hey, behave you two. Don't make me come in there and put you both in time out again." Dante whispered to the painting, or rather who was in the painting.

Coraline jumped onto a sumo bean bag chair and got comfortable she noticed something blue on the floor beside her she picked it and was surprised to find it was blue pair of undergarments – LADIES UNDERGARMENTS! Coraline held them up and looked at Dante. She got an idea on how these got here.

"Hey!"

"What?"

"I found your underwear."

"My under-"

Dante saw what she was holding and scratched them out of her hands and tossed them in a hamper across the room.

"Didn't know you wear those."

"I don't! There belong to a friend."

"A girlfriend or a one-night friend?"

"You want me to throw you out?"

"Fine! Okay! I was kidding, I'll drop it. Doesn't matter to me who you bring in your room for playtime."

"That's it out the window you go."

"NO-no-no-no-no-no! I'll be good." Coraline covered her mouth to contain a laugh.

"Right." Dante walks over to his computer. "Judging by your response, you know about … that stuff."

Coraline shifts in the beanbag chair a little. "Yeah, my parents taught me the birds, bees and wobbly knees."

"Well here another thing for you to know, which you can apply to anything in life; when you see signs of something that may tell you one thing, that doesn't mean you should pry into things that are none of you business. Like peoples personal lives, their jobs or … strange doors that lead to nowhere."

When Coraline heard Dante say 'strange doors' she immediately became interested. Doors? What does he know about the little door downstairs? Coraline pondered this but decided to leave it alone. She noticed looked and saw a picture in a frame on a table where the computer is. she walked over It was a picture of Dante posing in a picture with two other people.

"Hey, who is this with you in this picture?" Coraline asked.

Dante looked to his left and saw the picture on the desk beside the computer. "Oh … That's me with my brothers."

"Brothers?" Coraline asked.

"The one to my left is Vergil, and the one of the other side of him is Valen or V as his nickname goes. We were triplets, you see. I came out first, Vergil second and Valen third." Dante explained.

"Oh … Must be nice to have siblings." Coraline said with a faint hint of sadness.

"It has it's pros and cons, but when it comes to family you remember the pro more."

Coraline nods. "What is this place you are all at?"

"Disneyland." Dante said.

"Really? Oh wait I see Donald and Goofy far in the back ground. "

"Yeah, it was a fun time there."

"You said one of them lives her with you."

"That would be Valen. He … went on a trip and won't be around for a while. But since your living here now you may get to see him when he comes back, whenever that is."

"Sounds great. Can't wait to meet him!" Coraline said happily.

I can't wait to find him. Dante thought as he continued what he was doing

Later on Coraline was bored again. She had watched all the videos. She was bored with her toys, and she'd read all her books. She turned on the television. She went from channel to channel to channel, but there was nothing on but men in suits talking about the stock market, and schools programs. Eventually, she found something to watch: it was the last half of a natural history program about something called protective coloration. She watched animals, birds and insects which disguised themselves as leaves or twigs or other animals to escape from things that could hurt them. She enjoyed it, but it ended too soon, and was followed by a program about a cake factory.

When it was nighttime and she was ready for bed she decided to see if that place was real and not just a dream. back in the chair by the bed. Coraline takes some yellow cheese from her pocket and puts it by the door: mice bait. She lies down and her breathing slows, the doll watching her with a nearly IMPERCEPTIBLE SMILE on its face.

In Dante's room he was busy staying up playing the game Age of Mythology: The Titans on his computer. Suddenly he stopped when the hairs on his arm began to stand and turned around to darkness of his room. Reality was shifting again.

"Oh great here we go again." Dante said as he turned off his computer and got dressed for go back over to the other world.

Coraline is sleeping, as the lighting of another dream. Then something's goes t-t-t-t-t-t. She sat up in bed.

Something went kreeee …

… aaaak.

Coraline sits up, looks to her door, and spots a couple of Kangaroo mice stealing the last bit of cheese. She jumps out of bed gives chase after the mice who hopping down the stairs with the cheese into the hall wear it seemingly vanished.

Coraline wondered if she'd dreamed it, whatever it was.

Something moved.

It was little more than a shadow, and it scuttled down the darkened hall fast, like a little patch of night. She hoped it wasn't a spider. Spiders made Coraline intensely uncomfortable.

The black shape went into the drawing room and Coraline followed it in, a little nervously.

The room was dark. The only light came from the hall, and Coraline, who was standing in the doorway, cast a huge and distorted shadow on to the drawing-room carpet: she looked like a thin giant woman. Coraline was just wondering whether or not she ought to turn on the light when she saw the black shape edge slowly out from beneath the sofa. It paused, and then dashed silently across the carpet towards the farthest corner of the room. There was no furniture in that corner of the room. Then there was the squeaking and Coraline saw it was the kangaroo she chased followed it directly to the little door, which it slipped through the opened crack, where they disappear. She pulls it open. Bricks are gone; tunnel revealed. She doesn't hesitate this time to crawl through the door.

Dante walked into the drawing room and walked over to the little door and peaked into the colorful tunnel of otherworldly weirdness.

"Well not turning back now ... Let's go Brandon, Lets go." He then claps his hands for effect as he crawls in after Coraline.