Thread & Needle

It had been four years since Coraline's run-in with the Beldam. Four years, and she was still haunted come nightfall in her dreams, plagued by foggy, dark images of a flag made from a faded friend's clothes, children trying to tear out charcoal button eyes, and spiders with cracks like broken porcelain everywhere, crawling towards her. She was unable to move in these nightmares, frozen painfully as she was forced to watch them creep over to her. With every passing day they crept closer and closer to her, hairy legs becoming sharper with every inch they gained, before she would wake up in cold sweat.

It was always with a heavy sigh of relief that she woke up, reminding herself that they were just dreams. Until one day, whispers begin to circle the house in the shadows of midnight when she awoke.