Read Coraline for Free Online

She became certain that there was something in the dark behind her: something very old and very slow. Her heart beat so hard and so loudly she was scared it would burst out of her chest. She closed her eyes against the dark.
    Eventually she bumped into something, and opened her eyes, startled. She had bumped into an armchair, in her drawing room.
    The open doorway behind her was blocked by rough red bricks.
    She was home.

 
    ‘You will always be safe here with me.’

Chapter 5
    Coraline locked the door of the drawing room with the cold black key.
    She went back into the kitchen, and climbed on to a chair. She tried to put the bunch of keys back on top of the door again. She tried four or five times before she was forced to accept that she just wasn’t big enough, and she put them down on the counter next to the door.
    Her mother still hadn’t returned from her shopping expedition.
    Coraline went to the freezer and took out the spare loaf of frozen bread in the bottom compartment. She made herself some toast, with jam and peanut butter. She drank a glass of water.
    She waited for her parents to come back.
    When it began to get dark, Coraline microwaved herself a frozen pizza.
    Then Coraline watched television. She wondered why grown-ups gave themselves all the good programmes, with all the shouting and running around in.
    After a while she started yawning. Then she undressed, brushed her teeth and put herself to bed.
    In the morning she went into her parents’ room, but their bed hadn’t been slept in, and they weren’t around. She ate tinned spaghetti for breakfast.
    For lunch she had a block of cooking chocolate and an apple. The apple was yellow and slightly shrivelled, but it tasted sweet and good.
    For tea she went down to see Misses Spink and Forcible. She had three digestive biscuits, a glass of limeade, and a cup of weak tea. The limeade was very interesting. It didn’t taste anything like limes. It tasted bright green and vaguely chemical. Coraline liked it enormously. She wished they had it at home.
    ‘How are your dear mother and father?’ asked Miss Spink.
    ‘Missing,’ said Coraline. ‘I haven’t seen either of them since yesterday. I’m on my own. I think I’ve probably become a single child family.’
    ‘Tell your mother that we found the Glasgow Empire press clippings we were telling her about. She seemed very interested when Miriam mentioned them to her.’
    ‘She’s vanished under mysterious circumstances,’ said Coraline, ‘and I believe my father has as well.’
    ‘I’m afraid we’ll be out all day tomorrow, Caroline lovey,’ said Miss Forcible. ‘We’ll be staying with April’s niece in Royal Tunbridge Wells.’
    They showed Coraline a photographic album, with photographs of Miss Spink’s niece in it, and then Coraline went home.
    She opened her money box and walked down to the supermarket. She bought two large bottles of limeade, a chocolate cake, and a new bag of apples, and went back home and ate them for dinner.
    She cleaned her teeth, and went into her father’s office. She woke up his computer and wrote a story.
     
    CORALINE’S STORY
     
    THERE WAS A GIRL HER NAME WAS APPLE.
    SHE USED TO DANCE A LOT. SHE DANCED
    AND DANCED UNTIL HER FEET TURND INTO SOSSAJES. THE END.
     
    She printed out the story and turned off the computer. Then she drew a picture of the little girl dancing underneath the words on the paper.
    She ran herself a bath with too much bubble bath in it, and the bubbles ran over the side and went all over the floor. She dried herself, and the floor as best she could, and went to bed.
    Coraline woke up in the night. She went into her parents’ bedroom, but the bed was made and empty. The glowing green numbers on the digital clock glowed 3:12 a.m.
    All alone, in the middle of the night, Coraline began to cry. There was no other sound in the empty flat.
    She climbed into her parents’ bed, and, after a while, she went back to sleep.
    Coraline was woken by