Coraline stepped through the door and fell.
There was no floor on the other side, something she hadn't been expecting. She simply stepped through the door and into empty space, her heart leaping into her throat even as her body dropped like a stone. Her strangled half-scream was cut off when she smacked into something hard and sharp that gave under her like a trampoline and twanged metallically before flinging her forwards. In the half a second before she smacked into the other side, she saw black lines striping the white blankness of the world she'd fallen into. They were familiar, but she couldn't quite place them.
And it wasn't until she'd bounced all the way to the bottom of the web and crash-landed heavily on Danny that she remembered.
"Oh no," Coraline said softly, once she'd got her breath back. "This is not good."
"Yeah," Danny agreed, muffledly. "Could you maybe, I don't know, get off me?"
"Oh, sorry!" She scrambled a little way up the web, trying not to be shaken off when the thin strips of metal shook and quivered under her hands and feet.
Of course, that was when Tucker fell into her and knocked her back onto Danny.
"Ouch! Man, that is sharp," Tucker complained.
"What, not even a 'thanks for breaking my fall'?" Coraline elbowed him in the small of the back.
It took them all a few seconds to get untangled and off of each other, and the jangling on the web as they climbed up it, fell off, bounced off, and rattled around was almost deafening. And yet, there was still no sign of the Beldam. Something, Coraline thought, was very, very rotten.
"So where are we now?" Tucker asked, trying to check his pocket for his PDA without falling off of the web.
"Yeah. I thought this was supposed to be a replica of Amity Park or something." Danny looked up at Coraline, who was trying to see if there was anything else out there, beyond the web. The answer seemed to be no.
"I did too." Coraline bit her bottom lip, thinking hard. "This is the trap that the other mother set off when I won her game. It looks exactly the same as it did when I left."
"So we walked into a trap." Tucker's face split into a grin as his PDA started up with a beep. "Hands up if you didn't see that one coming."
"But if she's kidnapped Sam, she would have remade the world for her. That's what she did every other time. It doesn't make any sense!" Coraline thumped the web with one hand, and it shivered and shook, letting off a rattly screech. The noise quickly died down, and that was when she heard it.
A faint, slightly hollow metallic sound.
Like a pin dropping.
Coraline couldn't control the shiver that slithered up her spine.
It was followed by another soft, skittery click, and then another, and then a flurry, the sound of hundreds of needles clattering one against the other.
"What is that?" Tucker asked.
"Whatever it is, it can't be good," Danny said darkly, and Coraline nodded in agreement.
The web they were dangling from shook, once, nearly knocking Coraline off. And then it shook again, and Coraline, looking up, saw the reason why.
One long, spindly silver leg hooked itself over the top of the doorframe, leaving a long, deep scratch in the wood. It was quickly followed by another, and a third, and then something that looked like nothing so much as a gigantic spider made of needles and sewing scissors hauled its angular body up and over the doorframe. A skeletal neck extended, bringing a face that only retained a few shards of cracked porcelain over its sleek silver bones forward to peer at the three kids trapped in its web. Coraline was pleased to notice that only one silver-needle hand clicked and clattered greedily against itself; the other was missing.
The monstrous spider-thing that had been the other mother scuttled up over the door and down the web, her fractured face somehow managing to look both wickedly triumphant and hungry. She had replaced her black-button eyes, and something in the way they gleamed put Coraline in mind of a shark that had just scented blood. Their owner turned to survey Coraline, and she tried very hard not to think about what spiders did to bugs caught in their webs.
"Would you look at that," the Beldam said, and her voice was like the rattle of an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine (Wybie's grandmother had one, and had spent one rainy afternoon trying to teach Coraline to use it) that was badly in need of oiling. "The ungrateful brat comes crawling -" she skittered down the web at Coraline, stopping an inch from her face – "back to her mother."
Coraline leaned away from the needle-sharp finger that prodded her under her chin, raising her head. A growing green glow from her left made the Beldam whirl, only to be slapped in the face with a blast of green light, knocking her into her own web with a shriek of metal on metal.
Coraline turned, to see Danny staring at his hands, which were smoking faintly in that same shade of toxic, glowing green. "Okay, that's new."
"That is seriously cool," Tucker said approvingly, glancing from the heap of tangled metal that was the Beldam to his friend and back again. "Hey, do you think you can fire lasers out of your eyes? 'Cause -"
There was a screeching hiss from the Beldam, and the needles and scissors suddenly untangled themselves into a long, clattering streak of silver which flew across the web and pinned Danny against it. It was hard to tell through her furious shrieking, but Coraline thought she caught the words 'wretched ghost' and 'lair' in amongst the rusty-metal noises. Whatever Danny had done to zap her, he didn't seem to know how to do it again. "Tucker! Thermos!"
"Way ahead of you!" Tucker brandished the silver cylinder like a broadsword, before aiming it at the Beldam and pressing a button. The beam of blue light shot out of it, and the Beldam recoiled with a hiss. Tucker looked down at the device and thumped it. "It's not working. Why isn't it -"
"Because she's not a ghost!" Coraline cast around wildly, looking for something to fight the Beldam off with. The web yielded nothing, and she resorted to shouting. "Hey, you witch! Leave him alone! I'm the one you want."
The scissors stopped clacking open and closed, the needles stopped scrabbling, and the legs froze, one only inches away from Danny's face. The Beldam's head whipped around, those gleaming button eyes fixing themselves on Coraline, and her long neck snaked forward, bringing them face to face.
"What makes you think I want such an ungrateful, selfish, spoiled little girl as you?" the Beldam asked, and her voice was low and sweet and dangerous.
Coraline swallowed hard. "You d-don't?" Damn, she thought she'd gotten rid of that stutter years ago! It only came out when she was feeling particularly afraid or off-balance, which was of course just when she needed her voice to be steady.
"Why would I?" the Beldam repeated. "Of course, now that you're here…"
"Then you didn't set this up to lure me back? You didn't want a rematch?"
Coraline hadn't thought it was possible for a face made entirely of angles and blades and buttons to change expressions, but she could swear that the Beldam looked confused. It passed in a flicker, but Coraline knew that the Beldam had no idea what she was talking about.
"Where's Sam?" Danny demanded, and apparently that was enough motivation to master his newfound power of glowing laser blasts. The white world around them lit up with a faint green glow, and the Beldam laughed.
"Is that what this is all about? A missing friend?" She backed away from Coraline a little, smiling a smile that was nothing more than a needle-lined gash in her razorblade face. "I don't have anyone, darling. Ever since someone stole all of my power sources, I've been too weak to build a snare. It's so kind of you to come to me of your own accord."
"So it was a trap." Coraline breathed out a sigh of what was probably premature relief. "You just put the doll in Sam's attic so I'd come looking for you, didn't you?"
It only lasted for a fraction of a second, but once again, the Beldam looked confused. Coraline tried to swallow down the rising dread. "You…did put the doll there, didn't you."
One gleaming silver hand was raised and pressed dramatically to the place where the Beldam's heart should have been. "You took my power source. I can't build anything in this world; what makes you think I can touch yours?" There was a sawtoothed growl under her words.
"But -" Coraline felt like her heart was sinking through the soles of her shoes. "But it had to be you! The doll was your spy, and – and you're a sore loser -"
The Beldam straightened up, impossibly tall and imposingly bright. "Who says only two can play a game?"
"But there wasn't anybody else but -" Coraline paused. "Oh."
"I do not like the sound of that 'oh'," Tucker said, warily.
"We've gotta go." Coraline started to scramble up the web, only to feel her pant leg catch on something. She looked down, tugging at it, and saw that a sharp silver leg had pinned it against the web.
The Beldam grinned. "I think not."
The needles of her left hand flashed in the light as she raised it to Coraline's eye.