The Cipher

by Kathe Koja

Hands on the newel post, swinging around like a child does in play, an actor in a movie and I saw a babble of motion, heard a sonorous tone that seemed to be emanating from somewhere close by the storage-room door, where Randy tussled now with Mr. Bed, another of Nakota’s goons pushing Malcolm who was yelping like a pig and somebody’s head above the door. Hey, I thought, that’s my head. Plaster white and blind-eyed, frozen face not in peace but in ice, the coldest place of all. The mask. From which the sound issued. Twin to the sound of my hand. Twin to the sound of the Funhole, so loud it seemed from behind the door and a pull like gravity, I pushed without effort through the crowd, Malcolm’s yell directly in my ear, Nakota at my elbow, the others lost in swirling babble, the Brownian motion of a hopelessly unchoreographed fistfight, what the fuck were they fighting about anyway and someone, some guy I didn’t recognize, the upstairs neighbor presumably, wild-eyed and bellowing “What the hell is going on!” with such enraged and poignant confusion that at another time I might have felt sorry enough to explain.