The Beldam is Back

Prologue

A metallic hand rose from under the lid of the witch's well. It had lost the key but had found something new. It was going to return to the master. The only thing it needed was a prisoner to bring back. The Beldam hadn't eaten for a long time. She was hungry. She needed to feast - maybe the boy that had destroyed it. That would be sweet revenge.

Those wretched children were too stupid to realise the hand was going to fix itself. It might not have the key, but it now knew a way to get home. All it needed to do was fall inside the well and it would reappear at the top of the Beldam's fake well. It needed bait for the nuisance girl to come back, and the hand had an idea on what to use.

It squeezed its way out of the small hole in the wooden planking that covered the well. It started to crawl back to the house. It had a long way to go.

A large cracking noise interrupted its thoughts. The hand dived under a bush, just in time to watch as the girl strolled up the pathway.

Blue hair, with the same dragonfly clip as always, the same old clothes it remembered. The girl that the hand was looking for. The hand hated the girl with a hate that cannot be explained in words. The girl that had doomed it - but all that was going to change. The hand knew that it would lure the girl back to the Beldam.

The girl: Coraline.