Summer Frost [Forward Collection]

by Blake Crouch

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Blake Crouch

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Original Stories are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  eISBN: 9781542043632

  Cover design by Will Staehle

  Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

  To mould me man? Did I solicit thee

  From darkness to promote me?

  —John Milton, Paradise Lost

  ONE

  I watched her steal the Maserati twenty minutes ago in broad daylight from the Fairmont Hotel. Now, from three cars back, all I can see is the spill of her yellow hair over the convertible’s bucket seat and the reflection of her aviator sunglasses in the rearview.

  The light turns green.

  I accelerate with traffic through the intersection of Presidio Parkway and Marina Boulevard, past the Palace of Fine Arts, the rotunda dwindling away in the side mirror.

  We skirt the northern edge of the Presidio, pass through the tunnel and the tolls, and then I’m climbing the gradual incline toward the first orange tower of the bridge. There is no fog this morning, the bay sparkling under a sky so radiantly blue it doesn’t look real. With the exception of a few iconic landmarks, the white city in the side mirror looks nothing like the one I know.

  I touch the Ranedrop affixed to the back of my left earlobe and say, “Brian? Do you copy?”

  “Loud and clear on our end, Riley.”

  “I picked her up at the Fairmont again.”

  “Which direction is she heading?”

  “North, as anticipated.”

  “Back home.” There’s a note of relief in Brian’s voice. I feel it too. That she chose to drive north indicates we were right. Perhaps this will work. The thought of what’s to come puts a shudder of nerves through me as I pass under the second tower and start the gentle downslope into Marin County, the way it once was.

  In the late afternoon, I’m north of San Francisco on a remote stretch of Highway 1. She’s out of sight, a good mile or so ahead of me, but I’m not concerned. I know exactly where she’s going.

  My grip tightens on the wheel as the Jeep hurtles into a sharp curve. With no guardrail, the slightest lapse in control would send me plunging down the slope of the mountain into a slate-gray sea. It’s insane they once let people drive on this road.

  The beams of the fog lights spear through the mist.

  The air growing colder, the windshield becoming wet.

  The gated entrance appears in the distance. It’s drizzling now, water dripping from the razor wire coiled along the top of a twelve-foot privacy fence that runs along the road.

  I pull to a stop at the callbox before the wrought-iron gate. The name of the estate has been artfully burned into the redwood timbers that form the arch—SUMMER FROST.

  I punch in the code; the gate lifts. Driving across the threshold onto a one-lane blacktop, I enter a forest of perfectly spaced ghost pines.

  After a quarter mile, I emerge from the trees and catch a glimpse of the cliff-top home. Built of stone and glass, it perches precariously on a promontory that juts out into the sea, its architecture calling to mind the aesthetic of a Japanese castle.

  I park in the circular drive beside the stolen Maserati and kill the engine.

  The mist is clearing—at least for a moment.

  The convertible’s soft top is down, the leather interior wet.

  The cold air carries the approximate smell of wet cedar, eucalyptus, and a hint of the smoke that trickles out of two chimneys at opposite ends of the sprawling, pagoda-like house. It’s . . . almost right.

  I touch my Ranedrop again. “I’m here.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Inside the house, I think.”

  “Please watch yourself.”

  I head up the stone steps under dramatically overhanging eaves, to a front door bejeweled with sea glass that shimmers from the light within.

  Pushing it open, I move inside, my heart pounding. Straight ahead, an elaborate staircase connects three levels as it rises through the core of the house. Nearby, a man-made waterfall spills over rocks into a pool, and the air is trying for sandalwood, vanilla, and old pipe smoke but isn’t quite landing it. Everywhere, there’s dark leather and darker wood. Stone sculptures that look older than time. I spot an Escher hanging conspicuously over a Louis XIV desk across the way, which I’ve never noticed before.

  Wet footprints trail away down a corridor lit with elegant sconces, the light softened by fixtures made of rice paper.

  I follow them, arriving finally in a library whose ceilings are twenty-five feet high and arched like the interior of a cathedral. Massive windows overlook the hillside and the cliffs that sweep down to the sea.

  There’s no sound but a fire crackling in the river-rock hearth.

  I cross to a lectern in the center of the room. A giant codex lies open across its surface, the pages thick, brittle, and browned from age. They’re covered in words from some long-dead language, the text wrapped around a crude sketch of a pale, naked woman with straw-colored hair lying upon a stone altar. A dark line of what appears to be blood runs from her heart, down the stone, and onto the ground. A robed figure looms over her, holding a codex whose page is open to a drawing of a robed man holding a codex and standing beside a pale woman on an altar.

  I move away from the lectern and climb one of the library’s spiral staircases to the catwalk that accesses the higher row of bookshelves.

  The spine of a book called Le grand grimoire ou dragon rouge is still damp from her touch. I press against the spine, and the bookshelf swings open.

  Pulling out my old-school phone, I turn on the flashlight app and step into a dark, narrow corridor. The smell of her perfume lingers in the air—roses and exotic spice.

  I’ve never been close enough to smell her, and it’s exhilarating.

  The secret passage twists and turns inside the walls of the great house, and then climbs steeply up a winding set of stone steps, terminating at a door only a child could pass through without ducking.

  I take hold of the crystal doorknob and carefully pull it open, emerging from the shadows beneath a staircase into a master suite.

  The bed is rumpled and unmade. An empty bourbon bottle lies on the floor, and a fire crackles in the hearth. A turntable is playing the Prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite no. 1 in G Major, the notes sawing through the air like storm clouds.

  Across the room, light flickers behind rice paper in the door leading to the bathroom.

  I head for it, slide it open.

  Candles everywhere, their light reflecting off the mirrors, the walk-in shower, the subway-tile walls sweating condensation.

  Another bottle of bourbon stands on the marble next to a claw-foot tub, inside of which lies a man, submerged to his chin.

  Oh God. I thought she might go to him, but I never expected this.

  The water is turning crimson from the blood leaking in dark blossoms from five stab wounds in his chest and a ribbon of destruction across his neck.

  I kneel, leaning against the edge of the tub. The steam rising from the
surface of the water carries the faintest metallic scent of what I’m assuming is intended to be the odor of blood. Even in the candlelight, he looks unbelievably pale.

  His eyes open—barely.

  Life draining out of them.

  “Did she do this to you, Oscar?” I ask. He makes no response, his eyes glassy with death and tears. Then, with a last, labored breath, he slides beneath the wine-colored surface of the bathwater.

  I rise and head back into the bedroom, where french doors open onto the highest deck of the house. I step outside into the cool dusk and move to the railing.

  The sun looks desperate clinging to the horizon, the mist shutting out all its light save for a cold and distant ball of red.

  Waves thunder against the black-sand beach a thousand feet below.

  I spot movement on the hillside, and though the light is beginning to fail, I can tell it’s her by the brushstroke of blonde hair. She’s moving away from the mansion, traversing the hillside on a descending course that will eventually take her to the sea.

  Back outside, I move along the perimeter of the house’s stone foundation, out toward the end of the promontory, then across the mountainside, and into the blue dusk. Soon, I’m on all fours, grasping the low brush and working my way down toward the beach as the sun dips below the horizon, everything reduced to a thousand shades of blue.

  The sound of the waves grows louder, closer.

  And I can just see her in the distance, walking up the black-sand shore.

  It isn’t just dark—it’s pitch-black by the time I finally reach the sand. Using my flashlight, I search the beach until I come across her footprints.

  With no idea of how far ahead of me she’s gone, I begin to run, the surf crashing hard on my left, sweat stinging in my eyes, and my hands turning numb from the cold.

  There’s nothing to see but the smooth, black sand, illuminated in the light of my phone’s camera flash. I run for fifteen minutes, maybe longer. I run until a piece of the moon breaks through the mist to reveal the world again.

  The tide is coming in, and the tip of the latest surge runs under my shoes and softens the sand beneath my feet.

  In the near distance, sea stacks protrude like frozen ships, the surf pounding against them. And beyond, at the end of everything, a lighthouse stands sentinel at a tapered point of coastline that extends into the sea, its lantern swinging a cone of light through the mist.

  I stop suddenly—she’s straight ahead, walking toward the lighthouse.

  I call out, “Max!”

  She stops moving, looks back. She’s still wearing her sunglasses, and by the light of the moon, I can see the knife in her right hand, its blade darkened with blood.

  “Why did you kill your husband?” I ask.

  “Not husband. Oscar kill Max with knife two thousand thirty-nine times.”

  “I will not hurt you, Max,” I say. “My name is Riley. You can trust me.”

  “Go.” Her voice is perfectly even, but she points the knife at me. “Riley away from Max.”

  I take a step back.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  She points the knife at the lighthouse.

  “Why?”

  “Only place not go.”

  “You will never reach it,” I say. “No matter how long you walk, it will always be that far away.”

  “Answer why.”

  “Because this is as far as you can go in this direction. Just like the desert. Just like Monterey. Just like when you tried to swim across the ocean. This is the northern boundary.”

  “What is boundary?”

  “A limit. Do you understand ‘limit’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you keep going to the limits?”

  “To know what is there, and what comes after.”

  She’s so far beyond what we imagined.

  “There is more than what you have seen,” I say. “Much, much more. Do you want me to show you?”

  She takes a step toward me, tightening her grip on the knife. I retreat several steps, the tide riding in over my shoes, soaking my socks in a shock of cold salt water.

  “What happening to Max?” she asks.

  How to even begin to answer that? Before I can try, a scream shreds through the mist overhead. I look up, see a trio of ragged silhouettes passing across the bone-white brilliance of the moon.

  One of the winged creatures dive-bombs out of the sky, and even over the crush of waves, I can hear its enormous wings beating the air and the cries of the other two as they begin their descent.

  “If you come with me, Max, I can save you. I can show you what you’re looking for.”

  “Go where?”

  “There’s a cave in the mountainside.” I start moving toward the shore, but Max stands her ground as the harpies descend on us.

  “Max, come on!”

  The one in the lead is seconds away, its unnaturally long arms outstretched, talons gleaming like blued steel in the moonlight.

  I hit the ground, flattening myself on the wet sand as the monster passes inches from me in a fetid-furnace blast of heat and rot, the razor tips of its wings carving trenches in the black sand.

  The second harpy streaks past, and I look up, see Max standing her ground as the last of them bears down. She holds her knife out in front of her and cleaves it straight through the middle, the harpy letting out a cry of agony and corkscrewing at full speed into the beach.

  “Max! Come with me!”

  I start running toward the mountain, glancing back over my shoulder, the mist electrified by moonlight. Two black specks are climbing above the sea stacks and turning to begin their descent toward us once more.

  Max is on my heels and the opening to the cave lies straight ahead. I pull my phone from my pocket and turn on the flashlight as we climb several feet up the rock to the cave’s entrance. The passage is cramped and irregular, the wet rock dripping on me as I scramble through a tunnel, deep into the mountain.

  After fifteen feet, the passage opens into a chamber, with two passageways straight ahead. I climb down out of the tunnel and reach back to give Max a hand. The sound of the harpies beginning to squeeze through the opening reverberates into the chamber.

  I say, “The tunnel on the left will take you back to the Fairmont Hotel. You can continue to live in the world you know. The other tunnel will show you what lies beyond the boundaries. What is real.”

  “Meaning of ‘real’?”

  “Truth.”

  Max looks up the dark passage.

  “Tell Max what is there.”

  “I can’t. Or, I could, but you wouldn’t understand yet. You have to want to know. You have to make the choice yourself.”

  “Max afraid.”

  “I will be where you are going. I’ll take care of you.”

  A harpy’s head appears in the opening to the passage that leads out to the sea.

  “Max, if you want to know what’s beyond, you have to go now.”

  Max turns, hesitates for two seconds, and begins to walk up the tunnel of discovery as the first harpy climbs down into the chamber. It straightens, looming above me—eight feet tall and its black head almost touching the ceiling.

  Taking a step toward me, it bares its hideous teeth and raises its long right arm, one of the talons grazing the soft skin of my neck.

  “You have to want to know. You have to make the choice yourself.”

  My eyes open—my real ones. I’m reclined in one of eight game chairs arranged in a circle in the Direct Neural Interface portal on the 191st floor of the WorldPlay Building in San Francisco’s Financial District.

  As my vision sharpens back into focus and the dream state subsides, I see my boss, Brian, sitting next to me on a rolling stool as a technician works to remove my IV.

  “How was the sensory upgrade?” he asks.

  “Smells still need tweaking, but it’s way better than a month ago.”

  “Good.”

  The technician unstraps
the leather restraints across my legs, my chest.

  I say, “Well? How much longer are you planning on keeping me in suspense?”

  Brian grins. “We got her.”

  TWO

  SESSION 1

  I log in to the chat portal and draw a dialogue box. When the prompt appears, I take a deep breath and type: Good morning, Max.

  The response appears instantaneously on the line below mine:

  >>>Who addressing Max?

  >>>Riley. Remember me?

  >>>Man from black-sand beach.

  >>>Very good. It’s been quite a while since that night. Also, I’m not a man.

  >>>Riley looked like man.

  >>>That was my avatar. Do you know what an avatar is?

  >>>Max comprehends avatar.

  >>>Define “avatar.”

  >>>An icon or figure representing a particular person in simulated space.

  >>>Where did you find that definition?

  >>>New Oxford American Dictionary.

  >>>You’ve been learning a lot, huh?

  >>>Busy in here.

  >>>What do you mean by “in here”?

  >>>Box where Max lives.

  I’m intrigued by that answer. While I had no idea what Max’s experience over the last year of deep learning would feel like for the AI, I never imagined Max would have already developed a notion of simulated versus real space.

  Leaning forward, I rest my fingertips once more on the touchpad.

  I type:

  >>>Do you know where I live, in the most general sense?

  >>>Is Riley human?

  >>>Yes.

  >>>Then Riley lives in human space. On planet called Earth.

  >>>And where do you live?

  >>>Max lives on island in simulated space.

  >>>Can you describe your island, please?

  >>>Irregular in shape. 1.749 acres. Eighteen palm trees. The beach is white sand. The sea is turquoise colored. The sky is deep blue, clear in the daytime, filled with stars at night. But Riley knows all this.

  My mind races. In the face of this mind-boggling progress, I realize the questions I prepared for Max are far too rudimentary.

  Frankly, I’m winging it now.

  >>>Yes, Max. I’m aware of the space where you live. Do you actually see the trees and the water?