The Cipher

When a black hole materializes in the storage room down the hall from his apartment, poet and video store clerk Nicholas allows his curiosity to lead him into the depths of terror

Down-and-out Nicholas and his friend Nakota one day discover a black hole in the floor of an abandoned storage room in his apartment building, which they quickly christen the "Funhole." The two set out to see what happens when they drop various items into the hole, whetting its appetite with insects, a mouse and a human hand, which all come back violently rearranged. Next, they lower a camcorder into the hole to record the action within. The videotape they retrieve is spellbinding, but there's a catch: what Nicholas sees is different from everyone else's vision. To Nakota the hole means change, because whatever is dropped into the Funhole emerges transformed-- if it ever emerges. Mesmerized by the Funhole, she claims that Nicholas is the only one who can make things happen around it. For Nicholas himself, the hole is a phenomenon that forces him to face his miserable, aimless life. Koja has created credible characters who are desperate for both entertainment and salvation. Inaugurating Dell's new Abyss Books series, this powerful first novel is as thought-provoking as it is horrifying.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Winner of both a Bram Stoker Award and a Locus Award in 1991, Koja’s debut has yet to lose one iota of impact. It’s a marvel of bleak economy: Nicholas, going nowhere in his video-store-clerk job, discovers a foot-wide black vortex in an old storage room of his apartment building. His caustic sometime-lover, Nakota, christens it “the Funhole” and begins inserting experimental items: a jar of insects (they combine and mutate), a live mouse (it is ripped apart), a human hand from the morgue (it reanimates), and, finally, a video camera, which records a self-eviscerating figure of awe-inspiring dreadfulness—Koja only teases its description. Nakota becomes obsessed with the Funhole (a place of “blood and sex and revelation”) and is driven mad when it is Nicholas, not her, whose flesh becomes gloriously infected. The grungy, sweaty two-person drama, delivered in Nicholas’ vulgar ramble, widens to include additional viewers of the videotape who become fast new acolytes. Seemingly influenced equally by Clive Barker, David Cronenberg, and a particularly distasteful nightmare, this entry into the body-horror canon carries with it the kind of fatalism horror readers prize—it’s going to end badly, for sure, but just how badly? Currently available in an e-book version from multiple sources, this is well worth rediscovering, if you’ve got the guts. --Daniel Kraus