The Cipher (28 page)

Boom,
the door. Not a knock but a whack, the door itself shuddered and I opened my mouth and heard my voice, curiously distant, ominously dry: "Don't do that."

And at once the voice of the mask: "Do that," pretending to echo, malicious and cool. Voices, not so much answering as talking amongst themselves. Chiefest of course Nakota's, but somewhere in there, Randy.

So many questions, so little time. I put one hand to my mouth, rubbed it, tried to think what to ask first. "Who's there?" No doppelganger chorus; I can be grateful for the smallest of mercies; just watch me.

"All of us."

My hurting forehead against the wood of the door. Ask it succinctly, please: "How many is all?"

"You want me to count?"

Randy's tentative voice: "There's a few people out here, Nicholas." A pause. "Are you okay? You need anything?"

A hand transplant, for starters. Better yet a head transplant, if you can spare one, matter of fact just slide the mask under the door. We talk alike, we walk alike, sometimes we even— Randy was still talking, something about the mask and Malcolm was arguing and suddenly the sound of his voice, his stupid pompous voice, irritated the shit out of me and I said', "Shut up, Malcolm, or I'll come out there and I'll
hurt
you."

Silence.

Were they stupid enough to be scared of me? Of me? No one seemed to notice that there was still a big fat lock on the door, or if they did maybe thought I could surmount a detail like that, after all I had melted a camcorder once upon a time, who knew what I had up my sleeve? Besides of course my rapidly deteriorating hand. Another idea came to me: did they think it was me making the mask talk? With my new, improved Funhole superpowers? God
damn,
was everybody even crazier than me? Leave your love offerings at the door, folks, and don't forget, tomorrow is Virgin Day.

Laughing, soundless into my hand, my left hand, thank you, and I realized I had to sit down because I felt very weak, very much like falling onto my head. "Randy?"

"Yeah?"

"Is Vanese out there?"

"No." Dully, "I haven't, she hasn't been here in a long time, man."

"How long?"

Nakota: "You've been in there for a long time, Nicholas."

And how much of that spent unconscious?

How much spent with my hand stuck down the Funhole, conduit for real, absorbing, oh God. She was still talking but I had stopped listening, I sat with my back against the door shaking my head, shaking my head until something she said caught my attention and I asked her to say it again.

"I said, we broke the lock off yesterday morning." A deep frustration just out of reach, bubbling like lava under the flat planes of her voice. "I wanted to try—"

"What she wanted," Randy, dry, "was to chain-saw down the door."

Malcolm, sullenly but with a certain oblique pride: "But the head said no."

"What head?"

Randy said tiredly, "He means the mask."

The mask said no. "Randy," I said, and heard the mask speaking in tandem, a purposely ghostly sound but I ignored it. "Randy, get Vanese. Get her to come here, I don't care what you have to do. Please," less entreaty than order, I didn't mean it that way, I'm sorry, please.
"Please,"
I said, and the mask said crisply, "And everybody else, get the fuck out of here."

Shuffling sounds. People were moving. It was impossible to tell how many were out there by the sounds they made, and I couldn't count, I couldn't try, I didn't even know if I wanted to know anymore. Randy was promising something through the door but I didn't want to hear it, all I wanted in this world was to hear Vanese's voice, her comforting scolding older sister's voice explaining all to me, loaning the incredible belief, and if I was very very lucky she might say everything will be all right, Nicholas, you hear? Everything will be all right.

Silence finally in the hall, and I cried: big sloppy sobs, my chest shook, I was cold all over except the heat of my face and the heat of my tears, oh Jesus God I just want out of this but it's top late, isn't it? It's much too late, wiggling my puppet's fingers, staring at the little Funhole in my hand and wondering what might come out of it, one fine day, one fine exhausted moment when—

"Nicholas."

Nakota.

"Nicholas, let me in."

"Go away," I said, still crying. "Please, Nakota, please just go away."

"I can help you," she said, and she was probably right, if the help I wanted was to be trampled in her rush. "I'm the only one who knows."

Crying now so I could hardly talk, "Go
away,
Nakota,
please."

And the booming sound again, radiant extreme frustration, rattling the knob and yelling you son of a bitch bastard cocksucking son of a bitch and "I'll never let you in," helpless on my knees, screaming at the door, "that's what all this is
about,
that's
why—"

And her silence; and finally, her absence.

Vanese. Please, God, Vanese.

I must have slept, and deeply, because when I opened my eyes I felt suddenly not better but far more human, far more focused in simple sensations: ouch, my crotch hurts; I'm thirsty, I'm hungry, all of me is sore.

It was a relief, the plain tending to of bodily needs, not particularly dexterous but able: get the pants off, examination of the purpling rash, uh-huh. I had never seen diaper rash before in my life but it sure looked ugly. I poured a little water on it before I realized I was squandering, drank the water instead, the whole bottle. Then a paradoxical piss, and boy did it feel good, a plain piss, imagine. Eating, bare ass propped against the door, slowly because each bite was hard to swallow, Z-rations, mmm-mmm. Animal joys, can't beat 'em.

And another, keener joy: "Nicholas?" so close to the door she might have been speaking into my ear, my happy ear: "Vanese!"

"Yeah." She sounded exhausted. "What the hell's going on here, anyway?"

"I thought," struggling to swallow my food, "I thought you could tell me."

Silence. "Well, the lock's off the door." Then as

I turned, swiveled against the door as if this would bring me closer to her, her anxious angry older sister's voice, "What's happening to
you,
Nicholas, they're saying all kinds of shit, they're—"

"I'll tell you," I said. "Then you tell me."

It was definitely a story, my version worse than halting but I got across to her, I think, the skeleton of it—feelings anyway, that much I knew from the sounds she made. Her version was, to me, far more interesting than my Man vs. Funhole routine, scarier too, but then I had a unique perspective, you might say an inside view.

She was gone for most of it, she said, but what she heard from Randy, on the way over, was nothing good. It started with Nakota's rabble of recruited idiots, Malcolm included, watching the video—

"I knew it." I sighed, no sense bemoaning the obvious, forget it, go on. "Where were you, anyway?"

"Where I was was at my mother's. Trying to get somebody to come fix her garage. Your girlfriend broke it."

"I know. You told me."

"I don't remember that."

"You had a lot on your mind."

Pumped up, then, all of them, giddy with whatever black shit they had swallowed, one toilet bowl to a customer please, following Nakota and lesser-light Malcolm. Trying to rip off the lock, the door, finally Randy arriving to scream at them—the one sight I was genuinely sorry I missed—and throw the words "manager" and "police" around.

"Did it work?"

"Not really. Not enough. The neighbors, I mean even here, people expect a little peace, right? They're getting restless."

"I bet." I felt like crying again, reached without thinking to rub the pain in my forehead, it hurts when I think too hard, and caught a sideways peek at my hand, my permanent badge of abnormality, of being kissed too hard by the dark;
love you.
Right.

"Anyway." Vanese, immensely tired of her story but determined to tell it. "They settled down a little, went back into your place—"

"My
place? My
flat?'

"Uh-huh." Yahoo Nation. Drinking out of my cups. They stayed there, still watching the video, listening to the gospel according to Nakota, getting cranked for another charge which ended when they finally got the lock off, despite Randy's dwindling objections, even he wasn't big enough to beat the shit out of a mob. Me
¹
listening and mournful, thinking, For once might would really have made right, but no,

force majeure empty and weaponless before Nakota's geeks.

"Then what?"

"Then," very dry, "the door wouldn't open."

Slowly, glancing at the knob: "Nakota said— but there's no lock on this side. I mean, it doesn't lock."

"You mean it didn't lock before."

Oh boy. What now? As usual I had no clue, that ol' debbil psychic energy maybe, maybe something more complex, certainly over my sloping head. Nyah nyah Nicholas, now you can't get out even if you want to. Which roused in me a feeling of such delicate terror it was like walking across snapping ice, each step an incremental journey, farther from safety and the shore.

My hands trembled; I pressed them against my sides. "So now what?"

"You tell me," she said, and now there was sadness beneath the scold. "Randy said you wanted me here, and at first I thought, The key, he wants out. But you don't need the key anymore." A pause. "What do you need, Nicholas?"

"I don't know."

"What do you want?"

To come out, I might have said, but I felt bone-strong that this was no longer truly possible, even if I left the room forever, even if I could, I would never come out all the way. But. But.

I'm scared.

"I can't let her get in here, Vanese. It's bad enough with just me."

"Bad enough is right," a warm bitterness, I had the sensation of her face pressed close against the edge of the door. "Nicholas, I can't believe this shit, this is just
stupid,
you know what I'm saying?"

I didn't answer. There wasn't one, as far as I knew, or if there was, it was beyond me to give. Neither of us spoke. At last I said, "Vanese?"

"What?"

"I'm
scared.
" Bubbles of spit on my cracking lips, bubbles of snot in my nostrils, and blubbering, groaning like a drunk, bare-assed and stupid on the floor, weeping so long at last I thought she had gone, tried to call her but could not seem to work my voice, no new manifestation, just simple soreness, simple dry pain. Standing, my aching knees giving friendly little knuckle-crack sounds, I went for more water, shuffling back, my dick banging softly as I sat.

Then her voice, still angry, wet now perhaps with her own tears; would she waste tears on me? "You bet you're scared. I'm scared too. Listen to me now: can you open that door?"

* "I—" I coughed, cleared my throat. "I don't know."

"Well, try."

Nervous, I pulled on my pants again, wincing

at their odor, the chafing pain, standing tense, poised on the balls of my feet for some great struggle. I put my hand to the door and pulled, hard.

Nothing. I waited. It seemed like a long time; it probably was.

"Try again."

Her voice, and again I turned the knob, this time unthinkingly right-handed; it gave with a blow, almost toppling me. "Bad move," said the mask, a petulant sound as the cold hall air slipped over me and I gazed up, my first look outside, and saw instead of my own the video face, and its eyes opened very wide and it showed fat impossible teeth: "Boo!" and I cried out, fell back, Vanese stepping quick and scared inside.

Silence, for a moment, and then "It smells in here," she said. Staring at me.

"I know," embarrassed. "I'm sorry, I must be pretty ripe by now."

Still staring, shaking her head, slow back and forth of those same earrings. "I didn't mean that. It just smells—weird. Like blood or something." And then, slow sad carpet of words as she came forward, "Oh, Nicholas,
look
at you," with all the deep regret I did not merit, a loss magnified, dignified, by the caliber of her pity. She held out her arms to me, and as I moved to enter them, the magic circle of her touch where all would not, could never be, cured but for a moment I might feel as if it was, the skull bounded up like a manic ball and struck her, hard, in the back, I felt the impact in the soles of my feet, saw it in her sudden stagger, and up it came again and weak, still I threw myself with all my strength before it, into its rising way. Direct hit, my cheekbone not cracking but almost, as if it had somehow pulled its punch in the instant before landing, and now in vicious rebound it scuttled snapping after her as she fled for the door, and me after it, clumsy barefoot kicks, almost connecting but instead losing my balance and falling serendipitous and flat atop it.

Vanese in the hall, the door safely slammed and it bit my nipple, punishing petulance, before pushing free of my weight, then rolled in sullen circles a moment or two, growing revolutions till it reached the darker corners of the room, I couldn't see it but I knew it was there.