The Cipher (33 page)

"I wish we were somewhere else," I told her.

Her flesh began to smoke, very gently, an odor like burned cotton candy, smoldered, but was not consumed. Cold burn, and from the Funhole my name, repeated sweetly, the refrain of an old, old jingle, a ditty, a dance.

I'll take my time, thanks, I thought. I'll come when I'm ready or not at all.

When I looked up I saw the rectangle of pale light, the open doorway, it seemed strange to see it after so long. And in it, dark in its light, Malcolm's face, peering in at us.

Very yellow face, sick face. Maybe it was him I heard puking. Staring as if his eyes were pails scooping sights, water in the dry land of his life. He was a tedious son of a bitch and I was tired of him. I wasn't going to hurt him, but I felt he deserved a little something.

"Come here, Malcolm," I said.

He didn't want to, of course. But he did. He was stupid, Malcolm, stupid like me but in a different way, more selfish, meaner. He would never have tried to stop Nakota, never understood that for her there would be no transformations, no ultimate transcursion to fulfillment: she was just another insect, just another fucking bug, there were no signs and wonders to be given to her. I knew those things. I loved her.

"Here," I said. "I want to show you something."

The mask smiled, showing teeth so crooked 'and bloody that even he should have been warned. But he didn't look up, he didn't see, instead stopped, stooping, to stare at Nakota, at me, the pestilential gallop of the fluid across^my body. He stood awhile, looking, then, "You killed her," he told me, as if I didn't realize that.

"Yeah, I killed her. ... I said come
here,"
and I grabbed him, he never expected me to be so fast, I grabbed his ankle and pulled him flat as a tablecloth, flat like a magic trick and dragged him, one slewing swoop, to the lip of the Funhole and I said, "Take a good look," and shoved his head in, held it down like drowning, but I knew he wasn't drowning. I knew he wasn't going to die.

Finally I let him up.

Noises, coming from him, dry and gagging. Flailing his arms, reaching up to touch his face. His face—well, part of it was still normal, the eyes, but no transcursion for Malcolm. No nose either. He had a new mouth, though, something like a viperfish. You know what a viperfish looks like? Lots of teeth.

"You got your wish," I said. "Now get the fuck out of here."

He tried to say something back but it was going to take a long, long time for him to learn to talk with a mouth like that. I think he was crying. I didn't see when he left.

Later, lots of noises in the hall. The door had shut itself, world's fastest scar tissue, but I could still hear them, screams, arguing. Apparently Malcolm's appearance had caused quite a stir. Some guy kept insisting on the police. "They can break down the door," he said, over and over. "They can just break down the fucking door."

So can you, I thought, but I didn't say it. I was done talking to people.

Maybe the police are coming, or the manager, or whoever owns this building. I don't know for sure, I think they are, but then again I haven't exactly been paying attention. I've been busy.

After I got Nakota arranged the way I wanted her, safe there in the corner with hands at her sides, I just stopped thinking about anything. Or worrying. Things for me are very simple now, reduced to two ideas, or maybe the double sides of one.

I can never come out.

So I guess I'm going in.

Not right away, though. This fluid is moving so fast, now, my own personal tidal wave and I want to wait until I'm covered, till I'm coated like a bloody blade of glass, before I go. I'm not absolutely sure, of course I have my theories even if I'm not Malcolm, but I don't think it can hurt, anyway. And if somebody, police or whatever, gets here before then, so what. By the time they figure out how to handle me, the icky-sticky man, I'll be gone.

Don't wish me luck. All I want is a smooth ride.

There's still one thing I don't know, though, and with Nakota gone there's no one left to help me speculate: all along she called me the catalyst, said it wouldn't work without me; she said I was the key. But what happens when you put that key in the door? Does it lock, safe and snug? Does it close like water, rushing absolute and smooth to heal the gap, sealing over as if the empty spot had never been? What pretensions I have are something less than grand; I'm not much and I know it, so there's no question of hubris-when I say that I'm what it wants, even what it, maybe, came for—the why, of course, is beyond me, always will be and I don't care. All that's left for me to do is put the key in the lock, and close this door for good.

Although Nakota, if she were here enough to talk, might propose something different, might suggest that the same key that locks a door can open it, finally and wide.

But worst of all, the darkest part of me suspects a truth so black it turns my nebulous fears of a Funhole somehow empowered and unleashed by my addition to the laughable specter of an underbed bogeyman: what if it
is
me? What if somehow I'm crawling blind and headfirst into my own sick heart, the void made manifest and disguised as hellhole, to roil in the aching stink of my own emptiness forever? Oh Jesus. Oh God that can't be true.

KATHE KOJA

xause then I'd never stop thinking, ion't want to hurt anyone, but I'd rather it be
'king
but that.

Love is a hole in the heart. —Ben Hecht

KATHE KOJA has, at various times, been a bonsai lumberjack, an oyster cowboy, and a freelance criminologist. She lives on the outskirts of Detroit, aka Motor or Murder City, with artist Rick Lieder and her son. Her stories have appeared in
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
and
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Her highly acclaimed short story, "Dis-tances!' appeared in Gardner Dozois's
Year's Best Science Fiction
#6 and
Orbit.

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 WANTS' ME, NAKOTA. IT WANTS ME."

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...

"REACH IN, NICHOLAS. REACH IN..:'

Now from down the ha(l, 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..