At least it wasn't raining.

Coraline Jones pressed her forehead against the car window, staring up at the few fluffy white clouds scudding like lost sheep across a perfectly blue sky. The glass felt cool and smooth, like ice or, more specifically, like glass. Outside, rows of buildings flashed by, big-box stores and gas stations and fast-food restaurants and mechanics and the kinds of things that stand along the highway on the outskirts of every small city. Coraline's eyes glazed over and it all blended into one long, colourful streak, with occasional moments of coherency jumping out at her as she focused on something particularly interesting. The cheery sign welcoming her and her parents to Amity Park barely even warranted a glance.

From the front seat, Coraline's mother asked, "What was the address again?"

Coraline's father answered, "I thought I gave you the piece of paper I wrote it down on."

"No, you didn't."

"I didn't?"

"Well, I don't have it." Coraline's mother made a noise that was halfway between a snort and a sigh. "How are we going to find the house now?"

Coraline sighed and slouched down into her seat, so that she could just see the skyline over the car door. They'd be having this same argument until they actually found the house, going round in circles, both getting defensive and blaming the other until neither could bring themselves to speak to the other, filling the car up with hot stuffy angry silence that drowned out even thoughts. She turned her glare onto the totally innocent horizon.

And sat up bolt upright when something flashed across it.

"Did you see that?" she demanded of her father, who turned to look at her, pushing his glasses up his long nose, and her mother, who glanced at her in the rearview mirror before turning her attention back to the road.

"See what?" her mother asked.

Coraline opened and shut her mouth, realizing she had no idea how to describe whatever it was. "It was…big," she settled for. "Big and – and pink. And it was shooting straight up into the sky." It sounded rather weak and pathetic, and she stopped before trying to describe to her obviously disbelieving parents the way…whatever it was had zipped across her field of vision, moving far too fast and lightly for something so massive, and just as quickly disappeared.

"Nevermind," she mumbled to her mother's incredulous stare and her father's mildly bemused gaze. "It was just a thing."

"Probably an airplane," her father volunteered. "I'm sure there's an airport around here somewhere."

"If there was, we wouldn't have had to drive all the way from Oregon," Coraline's mother grouched. Coraline, recognizing the argument starting up again, sank back into her seat, staring accusingly out the window as if daring her new hometown to give up its secrets.

It obliged.

"There!" Coraline shouted, pointing out the window. "Did you see that?"

"No, Coraline," her mother snapped. "I did not see your mysterious pink thing. I was busy driving, and looking for a turnoff that someone should have found on the map before we got into town."

"You don't have to get all snippy about it," Coraline muttered, but without real venom. She was too busy staring out the window, her palms now pressed against the glass as she searched for any sign of whatever it was that she'd seen.

"You make a left turn here, and then a right at the four-way stop," Coraline's father offered helpfully.

"Left at the next intersection?"

"No, here."

The little blue Bug veered sharply to the left, giving Coraline a clear view of her mysterious pink thing as it swooped over the rooves of downtown and dipped out of sight. Seconds later, something much smaller and dark against the beautiful blue of the sky followed it, streaking along the horizon and then vanishing before she was even sure she'd really seen it.

Coraline's face stayed pressed against the window all the way into the residential neighbourhoods, but neither of the flying things reappeared.

"Where are we supposed to be going, then?"

"Well, you wrote down the address."

"Great. Just peachy. Maybe if we drive around all night, we'll eventually see the moving van and we can follow them!"

"It's just going down that street," Coraline volunteered. Both of her parents turned to look at her.

"Which street?" her mother asked, stamping on the brake and coming to a halt in the middle of the road.

"This one on our right that you just passed," Coraline answered. Her mother threw the car into reverse and backed up quickly, stopping again in the middle of the street, then jerking around and tearing off after the moving van. Coraline reflected that it was really a miracle that her mother hadn't gotten them all into a fatal car accident yet. They'd only had three minor fender-benders on the way here from Ashland, and no one had been injured yet, which was a new record. Coraline's mother seemed to take out her ever-present annoyance on the road and its other occupants whenever she got behind the wheel.

"Why did you stop working at the catalogue, again?" she wondered aloud as row after row of nearly identical brownstone houses and miniature pseudo-Victorian mansions flickered past. Having lived in a real Victorian mansion, Coraline found that she was severely unimpressed. "I thought you were going to be working there forever."

"Well, it's like you said," her mother answered, without looking away from the moving van she was tailing with undue ferocity. "I really do hate gardening."

"Yeah, but…paranormal phenomena?" Coraline leaned against the window so that she could see ahead, past her father's ear, to the moving van's tail end. "I didn't think you liked that kind of stuff either."

"I don't. It's all a load of bunk." Coraline's mother peered around the moving van. "But this magazine was offering a very good price for an article on one of America's most haunted places. And when you're working freelance, you have to take money where you can get it."

"I don't think Coraline really needs to hear about our financial situation, dear," Coraline's father said mildly.

"Well, she asked," Coraline's mother answered. "And your gardening book is no nearer to being done than it was when we left Pontiac."

"So you don't think there are really any ghosts in Amity Park?" Coraline asked, idly, as they turned a left and beetled down the next street.

"I highly doubt it," her mother said, flatly.

The moving van's brake lights blazed red, and Coraline's mother stamped on the brakes, throwing Coraline forward into the back of her father's seat. Coraline barely managed to catch herself, and braced herself as the car lurched forward in a series of stops and starts. She wondered if her mother had ever learned to drive a standard properly.

"What," Coraline's mother asked, her voice stiff with disbelief and disapproval, "is that?"

Coraline leaned as far across the seat as her seatbelt would allow, but all she could see was the tail end of the moving van. Her father, likewise, was leaning over in hopes of seeing whatever it was. "What's what, dear?" he asked mildly, craning his long neck to try to see around the moving van.

Coraline's mother shook her head. "I don't – it just -" She shook her head again. "You're going to have to see this for yourselves."

"Is it a ghost?" Coraline asked, half-hopefully, knowing what the answer would be.

"Of course not," her mother answered shortly, as she swerved in to hug the pavement. She spent a moment fiddling with the gear stick, and then turned the key in the ignition. There was a faint whine as the engine cooled down. "You might as well get out; it looks like we're here."

Coraline didn't see anything particularly interesting as she piled out of the back of the Bug, grabbing her satchel as she did so and slinging it across her shoulder. There was just an ordinary street, lined with ordinary houses, if you could call identical Frankenhouses ordinary. A perfectly ordinary moving van sat parked at the curb, obscuring her view of the other side of the street.

Two men came out of the van, opened the back end, and walked inside. Moments later, they came out carrying a sofa. She watched them start across the street, only to stop in the very middle of it, set the sofa down, and then pick it up, carry it back to the moving van, close it up, get back inside, and drive away, giving Coraline an unobstructed view of the thing that had caused her mother so much distress.

The moving van turned a U at the end of the street, and pulled up in front of the house next to the three-story-tall, nightmarish … building on the corner. Pipes and satellite dishes and various other unidentifiable mechanical things stuck haphazardly from the roof, which had apparently had had some sort of observatory built on top of it by a mad scientist. Foot-tall letters, illuminated by garish blinking lights, announced to the world at large and the neighbourhood in particular that this was FentonWorks, whatever that meant.

Coraline's father, standing beside her, scratched his head. "That is almost definitely not built to code," he commented.

"What is that monstrosity?" her mother snapped. "Never mind, I don't want to know." She got back into the car, muttering something about more crazy neighbours, and slammed the door behind her.

Coraline just grinned.

AN: Aha. I'm alive? I'm alive.

This is part of a crossover fic I started nearly two years ago. It may never be finished, but I put time and effort into what little there is of it right now, and I want it to be available for people who are not me to read and hopefully enjoy.