The Circle Line Read Online Free PDF

on the grey stone beneath his feet. He reached the house and stole a quick look at the window where he thought he had seen the face before. The window was empty except for a little condensation on the bottom half, trickles of water running through it. That must have been all it was. Sam turned his key in the front door and stepped into the hallway. Immediately the house felt wrong. He crept towards the stairs, holding his breath, listening. A faint noise came from a room ahead of him and Sam's heart skipped a beat. A floorboard creaked under his foot and he immediately snatched his foot up, leaving it hanging in the air. A silent moment stretched out.
    Valerie stepped into the hallway. ‘Hello, dear’ she said. She looked at Sam standing on one leg, the door open behind him and she raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you alright?’
    Sam lowered his leg sheepishly.
    ‘Come on,’ said Valerie, ‘Shut the door, it's getting chilly out there. Did you know we left the back door unlocked?’ She turned and went back the way she had come, leaving Sam to close the door and follow her.
     
    Having changed into jeans and a thick hooded jumper Sam called to Valerie that he was going out as he stuffed a scarf, gloves and hat into his rucksack. He crossed the empty road and ducked between some bent and rusted railings into the thick woods opposite his house. The morning mists had mostly cleared but the air remained grey and damp. Sam threaded his way through the trees, green and yellow leaves still clinging to skeletal branches above a carpet of brown. He followed a faint path to arrive on an old tarmac road, long since disused. The undergrowth was slowly reclaiming it from the sides and weeds poked through cracks and bubbles in the surface. He vaulted one of the square-pyramid shaped concrete blocks, with its rusted red-brown metal hooks set on top. These blocks were, Sam knew, designed to stop any vehicles from passing down this road, not that any would or could now. The road led nowhere. It started at some rusted gates and led through the woods to a disused tumbledown building, more a pile of stacked bricks than a structure. The army owned the land but had not used it for many years, allowing it to become overgrown. It had had some importance in the last war but now it was forgotten. A patchwork of deep woods, cratered and tussocky fields and even deep brick-lined trenches, the woods were full of places to explore and hide. There were even a number of small, single room concrete and brick bomb shelters, but the most striking feature was the tunnel. It was called Seven Floors by all the local kids. The entrance lay in an unassuming building, deep in the heart of the woods and it drew children from all over the area. Not that many went in. It was rumoured to be haunted. Sam had been as far as the entrance inside the building to look down the long slope that led into darkness. Older and braver people had told him that that tunnel sloped down and down for miles, with rooms off each side holding old army equipment from the Second World War. Everything not bolted down had been stolen, old radio equipment here, a helmet there. Sam had been told that the tunnels could be used to get to secret places all over the county, perhaps even as far as the very edge of the London Underground. He wasn't sure he believed that but they certainly ran under his house. But Sam wasn't brave enough to go down. He preferred to climb the trees at the edge of the nearby field.  He had a particular favourite. It was tough to climb, and he almost fallen from it more than once. But in its centre were a number of boards and planks, nailed in place by someone years ago. Up there you could see anyone coming into the woods. The cracked road was in plain sight, as well as the yellow grasses of the open field and the rope swing in the distance, the only really open parts of the area. Sam felt pretty safe whenever he was up there, hidden behind branches thicker than his