The Dark Flight Down Read Online Free PDF

sending Valerian to his death, instead of Valerian sending Boy to his. He decided he owed the man one favor at least, but there was something else too. He wanted to go to the Yellow House one more time, to see what had become of where he had lived with Valerian all those years. Maybe, in some way, to say goodbye.
    He put on his coat and made for the door, leaving Kepler clutching his head.

The Yellow House
The Place of Broken Futures

1
    The new year was not quite a week old. Life in the City was not yet in full swing; it was a quiet time of year anyway, but people seemed to be using the endless snow as an excuse for doing as little as possible.
    Boy turned into a squalid and narrow street called Three Horse Run to find it empty of its usual loiterers and layabouts, and as he made his way along it, his were the first footsteps that broke the snow’s perfection.
    Everywhere was the same; he saw barely half a dozen souls as he headed for the place he knew so well, the Yellow House. Despite Kepler’s insistence that the men of the Watch were no longer after Boy, he retained his instinct to go unnoticed wherever possible, and was glad of the empty streets.
    Finally, as he made his way down Salted Frog Alley, he heard voices approaching. He looked up and saw three costermongers wheeling a barrow of vegetables slowly through the snow. Relieved that they were not Watchmen, Boy nonetheless still had no desire to see or talk to anyone, and pressed himself into a deep doorway at the side of the alley.
    He waited as they passed. They were deep in conversation and didn’t notice Boy, but even if they’d been looking for him they would probably have missed him, he was so good at hiding.
    Boy heard snatches of their conversation.
    “. . . all over the street . . .”
    “. . . couldn’t even tell who it was. Poor blighter!”
    “They said the snow was turned red for two hundred yards. This great long trail. Then it stopped at a gutter by the river.”
    “I heard the blood was sprayed everywhere, like a firework.”
    Boy shuddered. He knew what they were talking about.
    “Bits of the body were missing, that’s for sure. The same as the others.”
    “Nonsense!” said another. “It’s the blood it’s after. The Phantom can’t be seen or killed. It won’t be stopped.”
    “You’re both exaggerating. It’s just some lunatic on the loose.”
    His friend spat in the snow as they passed near Boy.
    “Maybe. But whatever it is, it’s still killing for fun, isn’t it? The Watch have no idea what to do.”
    Boy shrank back in the doorway. The Phantom had killed again.
    It was around one in the afternoon when Boy turned the corner of Blind Man’s Stick and there was the Yellow House, looking the same as it always did apart from the snow covering its roofs: tall and imposing, but faded and in need of repair.
    Boy couldn’t help lifting his eyes to the very top of the house, to the Tower, where it had all ended for Valerian. It was a bizarre addition to the rambling house, showing no sign of the horrors that had unfolded there on New Year’s Eve. Inside it lay the camera, and the lens that Kepler wanted. Boy would have to face his memories.
    He still had the key to the house that Valerian had given him only a few days before, on Childermas, the unluckiest day of the year. Well, the key was one piece of good luck, Boy thought, as he rattled it in the lock of the outer gates.
    He had to force the heavy iron gates away from him through the deep snow and squeeze through. Now he opened the door to the house itself.
    From force of habit he checked to see that no one had seen him enter. Then Boy stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him.
    It had been only six days since anyone had been there, but the Yellow House had already acquired that strange eerie silence that houses gather about themselves when left alone for any length of time.
    “Hello?” Boy said quietly into the air around him, then felt faintly stupid for doing