- Coraline tries to find a way out from inside the mirror, but she comes up with zilch. Nada. Nothing. You get the picture.
- But then Coraline bumps into some people in the dark: there are three other children in the mirror room with her!
- One of the kids, a boy, talks in a very old-fashioned way, saying things like "art thou." The other two children are girls.
- All three of them have been in trapped in the other world a very long time. The other mother, who they call the beldam (an old-fashioned word for witch), stole their souls.
- The children tell Coraline that she still has a chance to get free if she can save her parents.
- One of the girls asks Coraline to also find her soul and the souls of her two friends in the room. That's quite a request.
- Coraline eats her apple and then falls asleep in the room while the ghost children comfort her.
- As she drifts off, she hears one of them telling her to look through the stone.