The Cipher
by Kathe Koja
Meerkat Press ($17.95)
Available to order at Square Books (not currently in stock)
Despite the proliferation and acceptance of horror in the mainstream, there are specific kinds that are hard to find. Eerie paranormal comes in spades, there is no shortage of splatter, but that horror which disturbs by suggestion, that scares with subtlety, is rarer. This is something like Weird fiction (all grandchildren of Lovecraft), which has had a resurgence in recent times. But whereas Weird stories often have some sort of explanation or background for their horror, whether it be extraterrestrial old gods, or dimension-jumping angels, the suggestive horror I look for has no explanations. This horror works only in allegories, not facts; instead of Lovecraft and pulp, its direct inspirations are literary, Kafka and Beckett. I am looking for the book equivalent of Silent Hill, where the tension is psychological, and the terror symbolic.
If you are like me, you are also in luck, because Meerkat Press has republished The Cipher by Kathe Koja, a long out-of-print cult classic from Dell’s flagship horror imprint, Abyss. The Cipher follows Nicholas, a poster child for Generation X: slacker, sarcastic ironist, deadbeat wage slave for a video rental store. The story starts in media res; Nicholas, with his goth love interest Nakota, have already discovered the Funhole. It is their name for an inexplicable, geometrically-perfect circular hole in the floor in Nicholas’ apartment complex. Nakota, out of sadomasochistic curiosity, starts putting things near and inside the Funhole, a jar of dead insects, a friend’s statue, a camcorder turned on. The results are unsettling.
A small cast of characters interact with the doomed couple, including a mechanic/sculptor and his kindhearted girlfriend, a jealous artist and his sycophantic followers, friends and exes and thugs. But the action is almost entirely centralized in the apartment, and the conflict is mostly between Nicholas, Nakota, and the Funhole. The motion of the plot is claustrophobic, not the classically clean Freytag Triangle, but a tortured loop of impossible space. The Funhole, the mystery and surreality of it, is always there while these two antiheroes fight back and forth. Again, Koja’s novel has the most in common with The Metamorphosis, Endgame, and No Exit; this is a horror novel for the brain, rather than the senses.
Despite the grim set-up and grungy background, The Cipher has many moments of levity. There’s clever banter by three-dimensional characters, and Nicholas has vintage nineties’ acerbic sense of humor. I cannot recommend this experience enough– Kathe Koja laid down the coda and manual for a whole style of horror, and the republication of The Cipher should be heralded as the King James Bible for alternative horror fanatics. If you are looking for deeper scares, look no further. My warnings: strong language, strong violence, strong revulsion.
