The Cipher
Ratings34
Average rating3.3
Nicholas is a would-be poet and video-store clerk with a weeping hole in his hand - weeping not blood, but a plasma of tears...
It began with Nakota and her crooked grin. She had to see the dark hole in the storage room down the hall. She had to make love to Nicholas beside it, and stare into its secretive, promising depths. Then Nakota began her experiments: First, she put an insect into the hole. Then a mouse...
Now from down the hall, the black hole calls out to Nicholas every day and every night. And he will go to it. Because it has already seared his flesh, infected his soul, and started him on a journey of obsession - through its soothing, blank darkness into the blinding core of terror...
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Body horror at its best
Are we just the sum of our physicality? Are we more? And is that physical barrier between what is me and the rest of the world breachable? Should it be?
“It's so easy to be nothing. It requires very little thought or afterthought, you can always find people to drink with you, hang out with you, everybody needs a little nothing in their life, right?”
― Kathe Koja, The Cipher
This is Weird Fiction with body horror. The story revolves around some repulsive hipster artists/poets who are drawn to the weird and the ugly. Ex-lovers Nicholas and Nakota discover a supernatural black hole, a “funhole.” Angry, aggressive Nakota is obsessed with the phenomenon. But it all seems to revolve around Nicholas, who is passive, apologetic, and submissive. As he voluntarily spends more time around it, he mutates. The pair draw followers, other failed artists who become fascinated with the hole and see it as some kind of “movement.”
This tale takes a long time to build and does not really satisfy. We spend a lot of time with the characters obsessing over the hole (and a video taken inside the hole) but not really doing anything. The cheap, sad, squalor increases as the story goes on. These frustrated characters make no attempt to be productive or find some type of fulfillment. We see the story from Nicholas' point of view, and though it is hard to like him as such, he does make humorous observations and is sympathetic in his way.
I'm assuming the funhole is supposed to have some deeper meaning, not just be a “monster” in this horror book. Possibly, the hole symbolizes some emptiness in Nicholas and in everyone? Or maybe his destructive, one-sided attachment to Nakota? Or possibly the frustration of all these characters who are searching for some greater meaning in their art but not finding anything. A Picture of Dorian Gray for the Gen-Xer set? These were interesting ideas to think about, and I'm glad to have read the book but something is missing for me, some connection or excitement I would expect from a horror story.
