Thanks once again to my reviewers etc. I hope you enjoy the next chapter.

Chapter Three: In Which Coraline Dreams

The police man's hold on Leslie and Wybie went slack after Coraline's outburst. Leslie; who had been struggling against him like an angry wolverine, sprung loose like a jack-in-the box and tumbled down the porch stairs.

She let out a loud wail, and the dead body was temporarily forgotten by the police man as he rushed to her side.

"Are you hurt?" he looked at her worry etched all over his face. She glared up at him.

"No! I'm screaming for the heck of it." She looked down at her leg. "I think I twisted it, or sprained it. Or even broken it." She wailed passionately.

Coraline thought Leslie was being an awful baby. Her ankle didn't look twisted in any way. 'And what about the body?' she thought desperately.

"Maybe I should help you to the car?" The officer was saying but Coraline protested.

"Let Wybie help her, you have to call the police so they can help you." She insisted beckoning for him to go inside. He looked a little torn between the choices. Leslie began to cry with fresh vigor complaining that her ankle was most definitely broken.

"That bodies dead, it's not going anywhere. I need to go to the hospital!"

The officer finally ended up calling in backup on his walky talky, and Wybie was giving the odious task of being Leslie's support system all the way to the police car parked in front of the fence.

"Follow me," Coraline pulled the officer into the house and led him to the room where she had found the body.

"She's in there." Coraline stood a little way from the door; she didn't want to see the dead girl again. "I don't know who she is."

The police man screwed up his face in preparation and went into the room. Coraline thought he must be an amateur police man to be nervous about seeing a dead body. But she couldn't blame him. She didn't want to ever see anything so horrifying again.

But in less than a minute the officer came out of the room and bared down on Coraline with a stern look on hi face.

"Are you playin' some practically joke on me little girl?" he asked gruffly. Coraline's mouth dropped open in surprise and her eyes widened; for one insane moment she thought he was accusing her of killing the girl.

"W-what do you mean?" she stuttered, her panic coming back to her with the force of a hundred pound weight.

"There's no dead body in there, just a kicked in wall."

Coraline couldn't believe her ears, she peeked around the door, but sure enough, the room was empty except from wood debris.

"This is crazy, I saw her there as plain as day, she fell out, she couldn't just walk away she was dead!" Coraline's voice reached the high pitch of a scream.

"Now little lady the charades up. There is no body, so I conclude there never was one, and you and you're friend are getting your thrill out of leadin' me on. But there's a consequence for false alarms sweetheart. You and your buddies are coming down with me to headquarters, and I'm calling your parents."

Coraline cast one defeated and confused glance back at the room. She knew what she had seen. But then what had happened to the girl?

She followed the police man out to the car in a dream like state. It was all too bizarre to wrap her mind around at the moment. Why did these things always happen to her?

When she got to the car Leslie and Wybie began to bombard her with questions. But she silenced them instantly by saying, "She was gone!"

"What!?"

"Yup, gone, all that was left was the broken down door. I don't know what to make of it. He," and she jerked her head in the officers direction, "doesn't believe there was a body, so now he's taking us to the station and calling our parents."

Wybie looked as though Coraline announced that he was about to be fed alive to lions.

"My grandmothers gonna kill me." He muttered despondently, staring into space.

Coraline felt that the same sort of fate would face her when her parents found out. She just wished she could explain it had all been in pursuit of justice for a dead girl. She felt that would have been explanation enough for being out past 7. But now, except for Wybie and Leslie, she was the only one who new there was one less person in Ashland, Oregon.

******************

The next hour and a half that past was pure agony for poor Coraline. Whenever someone asked why there were three kids sitting at the police station, the officer that had found them (who's name they learned was Harold) enjoyed announcing loudly that they were punk kids, with overactive imaginations that he had caught sneaking around in the old Ashland orphanage.

Coraline deeply resented this and sat in complete tempestuous silence boring holes into the wood floor.

Wybie wanted to say something to make her feel better, but he couldn't think of a single thing in this situation. Even Leslie was stewing away, but vocally.

"When is my brother coming!? Did you call him!? I need immediate medical care!"

The police nurse had checked her foot, and had said it was a minor sprain.

"Hardly worth fussing over." The lady had explained to Leslie, but the injured girl wasn't going to have any of that.

There was a loud bang as the stations door was slammed open by a young man 18 years of age. A gust of wind entered with him swirling through the room, making papers take to the air, like overlarge snowflakes. The boy had dark hair that was wet from the rain and hung down over his eyes. He was looking desperately around until he finally noticed Leslie and rushed to her side.

"What happened Lez?" he asked grabbing her gently by the shoulders.

"Nothing, I just nearly broke my ankle."

"How?" he was looking into her eyes as though they would tell him everything.

"They were snooping around the old Ashland orphanage claiming to see dead bodies."

All three children glared at Harold who was watching over them like a hawk. The boy gave Leslie a disapproving look.

"Please tell me you weren't. I told you it's dangerous."

"But I felt a spirit there Jerry." Leslie protested, as though it was a perfectly legitimate reason.

"Leslie don't make a scene. I'm sorry about this officer. She hasn't been feeling well lately. She was supposed to stay home today…" He gave Leslie dark eyes as he said this. She just turned her head away from him and stuck her nose in the air.

"I'm her brother Jerry Doyle. My dad told me to come and get her. Boy you're gonna be in trouble when he finds out." Despite Leslie's surliness, she leaned on Jerry for support to stand up. Then she turned to Coraline and said, "If you need my help call Me." and handed her a little slip of paper.

"Thanks," Coraline muttered at her. But she felt a fake psychic was the last thing she needed at the moment.

Soon after, Mr. and Mrs. Jones came and picked up Coraline and Wybie. The trip home was full of a lecture on how disappointed they were with both of them, and what on earth were they even thinking, making up such cock-eyed stories, and that Coraline was grounded. Wybie was silently hitting his forehead with his hand, and Coraline stared out the window not even protesting against her punishment.

Mr. Jones walked with Coraline up to the pink palace as Mrs. Jones took Wybie home.

"Do you want something to eat Coraline? I made pizza." Mr. Jones said as soon as they made it inside. Coraline shook her head, because she really wasn't hungry, and also because she didn't have the stamina to choke down any of her fathers crazy recipes.

As she flopped down onto the couch in the living room, all the hard pains of exhaustion from the day's excursion engulfed her body. Her tired eyes closed and she drifted off into the darkness of an uneasy sleep.

"Seeing things isn't the same as observing them." A voice said in her mind. "If you look harder, I'm sure you'll find what was always there to begin with."

In her dream Coraline was back at the orphanage, back in the room with the secret panel. It looked exactly the way it had been that evening. She was floating over it, and Cat was on the ground looking up at her. She alighted next to him.

"What is it?" She pleaded. "I know something's wrong, but I can't put my finger on it."

She let out a heavy sigh and looked at the floor. It was dusty, and wood was scattered all over it. But suddenly she noticed how some of the wood that had scattered looked like it had been accidentally dragged back to the opening of the secret room and there were dried up tracks of mud as well. Faint, but still there.

She went up to the gap in the wall and saw that something had snagged on to the splintered wood. It was a dark piece of cloth, but she wasn't sure if it was from the dead girl or someone else.

"The body was moved. Fast, because we weren't outside for long. Someone must have been in the house watching us."

Coraline felt a strong sick revulsion in her stomach. "Someone wanted to hide that fact she was dead. Her murderer?"

She needed to get back to that orphanage, and fast. But she was grounded and she knew there was no way to convince her parents to waiver their decision.

"Cat, what am I going to do? I finally get something, and now I can't do anything about it?"

"Is there really nothing you can do Coraline?" The cat asked her intently, with a twinkle in his eyes. It was a rhetorical question she knew, and suddenly like a light bulb a solution clicked on in her head.

"No, there is something."

With a violent jolt Coraline woke up. She had somehow made it into her room. He father had probably carried her to bed during her deep sleep.

But she wasn't tired any more. She was full of excited anticipation. She looked over at her bedside clock. It was 5:30 in the morning.

She couldn't wait until daybreak. She had a very important favor to ask of Wybie.