Coraline

by Neil Gaiman

Of the doors that she found, thirteen opened and closed. The other—the big, carved, brown wooden door at the far corner of the drawing room—was locked. She said to her mother, “Where does that door go?” “Nowhere, dear.” “It has to go somewhere.” Her mother shook her head. “Look,” she told Coraline. She reached up and took a string of keys from the top of the kitchen doorframe. She sorted through them carefully, and selected the oldest, biggest, blackest, rustiest key. They went into the drawing room. She unlocked the door with the key. The door swung open. Her mother was right. The door didn’t go anywhere. It opened onto a brick wall. “When this place was just one house,” said Coraline’s mother, “that door went somewhere. When they turned the house into flats, they simply bricked it up. The other side is the empty flat on the other side of the house, the one that’s still for sale.” She shut the door and put the string of keys back on top of the kitchen doorframe. “You didn’t lock it,” said Coraline. Her mother shrugged. “Why should I lock it?” she asked. “It doesn’t go anywhere.”