Her bedroom wasn't quite identical. Sam was sure she'd never had a copy of the Bela Lugosi's Dead single on glow-in-the-dark vinyl, or a coffin-shaped bookcase, or a lamp that looked like a dragon's head mounted on the wall that glowed from the eyes and mouth and had Opinions on goth poetry (all of which were wrong, and Sam spent a happy forty-five minutes arguing with it until it gave in and saw the error of its ways).
She wasn't really sure how she'd ended up in this alternate world where everyone wore all black all the time, but she wasn't really complaining. (Although seeing Paulina in a corset, platform boots, and sugar-skull makeup had made her question her sanity for a minute or two. Weird, she could deal with, but that was just too weird.) Actually, it was getting a little grating. Sure, feeling like she'd just walked into a Tim Burton movie was nice at first, but that wore off quickly, replaced by a nagging feeling that something wasn't right.
Once she'd talked the lamp around, there was no one else who would argue with her, or even disagree with her. They just ate up everything she said like it was the gospel truth. It had been kind of fun having a captive audience for a little bit, small as it was, but then it started to get boring and a little creepy. It was like they were all still just blindly conforming, only to her version of cool. And here, being goth or ultra-recyclo-vegetarian wasn't a statement. It wasn't a way to set herself apart from the crowd, it was the same thing the crowd was doing. Here, she wasn't unique, she was ordinary. She hated to admit it, but she was even kind of starting to miss battling her mother over clothes.
No, Sam decided, watching the doorknob rattle against the chair (carved to look like a skeleton) that she'd shoved underneath it to keep the other parents out. There was no way she was staying here. Even if button eyes did look pretty cool.
Now, if only she could figure out how to get home again.
Luckily, this room had an escape ladder under the window too.
…
Two minutes and forty-three seconds later, Coraline was staring past a windshield at a vast, seemingly endless view of…green swirls. It was a little like when the Other Mother's world had started to collapse; it didn't make much sense to look at, being nothing more than featureless space. The occasional chunk of floating rock (or, at least, Coraline thought it was rock, although she was fairly sure that rocks weren't supposed to be purple) were the only things that broke up the monotony.
"Are you sure this thing is safe?" Tucker asked, for the third time, and Danny rolled his eyes.
"No, I'm not. My parents built it, after all, and it's not even finished. But how else were we going to get around the Ghost Zone?" He yanked hard on the controls, and the ship veered to the right with a very dangerous-sounding creak. Coraline gripped her seat and hoped the oddly-named "Spectre Speeder" wouldn't fall apart before they got to…wherever they were going. For all any of them knew, they were being led directly into a trap. "So, what's the plan?"
It took Coraline a moment to realise that Danny was talking to her. "What?"
"The plan. For when we finally get to this Other Mother." He glanced over at her, before turning back to watch where they were going. Coraline didn't envy him the view; their guide's behind was a less than inspiring sight. She thought momentarily of the fit her parents were going to have when the Box Ghost showed up to collect his fee, but quickly shrugged it off. Her parents never noticed anything. "You do have a plan, don't you?"
Coraline blinked. "I thought you were the big damn hero. Why am I supposed to have the plan?"
"You're the only one who knows what to expect when we get there."
Coraline had to admit that this was true. Then again, she didn't really know much more than the other two did. "Well, you're the one who knows Sam. What would her ideal world be like?"
"Black," Danny and Tucker chorused.
"Right. I knew that." Coraline crossed her legs, tapping one foot in the air as she tried to remember every detail that might help them out. "The Other Mother can create little worlds, and she's really good at detail, but she doesn't have much range. She mostly just focused on the apartment building when she went after me, and left the rest of the world blank. So, it'll probably just be Sam's house and maybe a couple other familiar places. And they'll all be the same. Only different."
"Okay, you lost me," Tucker admitted.
Coraline wracked her brains for something to compare it to. "You know how in nightmares, when you can recognise a place but it all looks different. But good different. Kind of creepy, maybe, and since it's Sam probably more creepy, but in an interesting way?" She could tell from the looks on their faces that she'd lost them. "Nevermind. It'll be like walking into Halloweentown. And the people -"
"Whoa, wait. People?"
"People. Not really people. She kind of makes them out of whatever she has lying around." Coraline tried to stop the memory before it could weasel its way out of her subconscious, but she was too late. The Other Father's dying scream was already echoing around her skull. "They can be not so bad, but mostly they're under her control and do what she says. And they'll all have buttons for eyes."
"You know, if I didn't know better, I would think you were making this all up as you went along," Danny remarked. And then, "What the..."
"I think we're getting close," Tucker commented, as a flurry of purple doors flew past the windshield. Coraline leaned forward, mentally comparing each door to the one she remembered. There was an amazing variety, but no small, square ones came into view. It was getting harder and harder to keep track, though, as the number of doors only increased. Coraline saw one that looked like nothing so much as a drawbridge, a narrow door that could only have opened onto a broom closet, and even a refrigerator door. As they flew, the doors grew closer together and greater in number until she could barely see the green of the Ghost Zone between them. The Specter Speeder slowed almost to a crawl, bumping doors gently out of the way as it floated forward. Coraline leaned around and saw them drifting back into place behind the ship, like iron filings being pulled into place by a magnet.
And then, with a lurch, they came to a halt.
"Why'd we stop?" Coraline demanded. Both Tucker and Danny shrugged. Coraline stared out the windshield, looking for their blue-glowing guide. She found him quickly, hovering in place a little to the left of the Specter Speeder.
"I hate to be that guy, but…are we there yet?" Tucker asked, and Coraline shook her head slowly.
"I don't recognise any of these doors."
"This is as far as I can take you," the Box Ghost called out, shouting to be heard through the thick glass windshield of the speeder.
"What? But we're not even close!" Coraline jumped to her feet, not noticing the way the speeder rocked.
"Close enough," the Box Ghost said in a voice that was practically a whisper by Box Ghost standards. "The Box Ghost will not go any farther!" He made a slashing motion with both arms.
"Oh, you won't." Danny rolled his eyes. "What, scared you're gonna get turned into a door sandwich?"
The Box Ghost bristled. "The Box Ghost is not scared," he sneered.
"Right. Which is why you're running away," Tucker agreed.
"The Box Ghost does not run away!" The little man glanced nervously over his shoulder. "Except when being chased," he added, a little less emphatically, before returning to his usual tone of boisterous, irrepressible dramatics. "No ghost dares to trespass on her lair."
"Lucky we're not ghosts, then." Coraline crossed her arms and fixed on her best determined face. "Just point us in the right direction."
The Box Ghost flung out an arm, one finger pointing straight forward towards a solid wall of doors. "There." Then, without warning, he turned and flew off in the opposite direction. A faint wail of "Beware!" floated after him.
"Thanks!" Coraline called. "So now how do we get through that?"
Danny shrugged. "I can't phase through anything here. Tried it, didn't work."
"So we have to break through it?"
Danny grinned. "Let's find out how fast this thing can go."
Tucker, who seemed to be used to this kind of thing, checked his seatbelt and grabbed onto his seat. Coraline was a little slower to catch on. "Wait, what are you -" The rest of the sentence dissolved into a scream as Danny pulled back on the steering and the Specter Speeder shot forward. Coraline flung up her arms in front of her face as the wall of doors sped towards her, and braced for the crash –
Which didn't come. Without warning, they were through the wall, floating inside a perfect sphere of purple doors.
"Did you do that?" Tucker asked Danny, who looked as baffled as Coraline felt.
"I don't think so…"
Coraline, who had only been half listening, stopped altogether. "Look!"
There, in the very centre of the sphere, floated a single, small, square door.