But when others see what their camcorder documents, Nick becomes the reluctant ringleader, the dungeon master, the barker holding the keys to this circus sideshow. It also offers more than what their faltering lives could ever hope to achieve: artistic satisfaction. However, the thrill of the unknown excites them, growing their new hobby into something akin to praying at the altar of a roadside funhouse. Each time the hole spits them back out, augmented in ways neither is prepared to see or understand.
They test its boundaries, tossing in various objects: a jar of insects, a mouse, a severed hand, a camcorder. Could it be a black hole, an orifice, a fissure, or maybe even a portal? It has many names but only one sticks: The Funhole. Tucked away in the second-floor storage room is a hole that confounds and fascinates their creative acumen. But that would all change when they discover a secret hidden within Nick?s rundown apartment building. And Nakota serves as a barmaid at Club 22, doling out drinks to career alcoholics. Nick wastes his time in the role of assistant manager, longing for the day when his haikus can generate a payday. Would-be poet and Video Hut employee, Nicholas Reid, and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Nakota, are the apathetic loners of a society indifferent to their artistic aspirations. Limited first edition, first printing - new and unread. Publisher's promotional material laid in. Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel 1991 and winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Horror Novel 1991. THE CIPHER can be read as a culmination of the two best known types of horror fiction to emerge from the 1980s, a fusion of dark fantasy's introspection and splatterpunk's nihilism." - Stefan Dziemianowicz in Necrofile: The Review of Horror Literature #1 (1991), pp.
"Kathe Koja's THE CIPHER marks the debut of an important new talent, and is that rare horror novel that causes us to rethink the parameters of horror as a literary perspective. "Horror novel of a would-be poet and his experience with a black hole in his apartment building that leads to another dimension." - Locus. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition.
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