The Hellbound Heart: A Novel

Name: The Hellbound Heart: A Novel
Rating: 4.0 (640 reviews)

Ratings:

176 pages2 hours

Summary

Frank Cotton's insatiable appetite for the dark pleasures of pain led him to the puzzle of Lemarchand's box, and from there, to a death only a sick-minded soul could invent. But his brother's love-crazed wife, Julia, has discovered a way to bring Frank back—though the price will be bloody and terrible . . . and there will certainly be hell to pay.

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Publisher: HarperCollinsReleased: Mar 17, 2009ISBN: 9780061760877Format: book

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The Hellbound Heart - Clive Barker

HEART

ONE

So intent was Frank upon solving the puzzle of Lemarchand’s box that he didn’t hear the great bell begin to ring. The device had been constructed by a master craftsman, and the riddle was this—that though he’d been told the box contained wonders, there simply seemed to be no way into it, no clue on any of its six black lacquered faces as to the whereabouts of the pressure points that would disengage one piece of this three-dimensional jigsaw from another.

Frank had seen similar puzzles—mostly in Hong Kong, products of the Chinese taste for making metaphysics of hard wood—but to the acuity and technical genius of the Chinese the Frenchman had brought a perverse logic that was entirely his own. If there was a system to the puzzle, Frank had failed to find it. Only after several hours of trial and error did a chance juxtaposition of thumbs, middle and last fingers bear fruit: an almost imperceptible click, and then—victory!—a segment of the box slid out from beside its neighbors.

There were two revelations.

The first, that the interior surfaces were brilliantly polished. Frank’s reflection—distorted, fragmented—skated across the lacquer. The second, that Lemarchand, who had been in his time a maker of singing birds, had constructed the box so that opening it tripped a musical mechanism, which began to tinkle a short rondo of sublime banality.

Encouraged by his success, Frank proceeded to work on the box feverishly, quickly finding fresh alignments of fluted slot and oiled peg which in their turn revealed further intricacies. And with each solution—each new half twist or pull—a further melodic element was brought into play—the tune counterpointed and developed until the initial caprice was all but lost in ornamentation.

At some point in his labors, the bell had begun to ring—a steady somber tolling. He had not heard, at least not consciously. But when the puzzle was almost finished—the mirrored innards of the box unknotted—he became aware that his stomach churned so violently at the sound of the bell it might have been ringing half a lifetime.

He looked up from his work. For a few moments he supposed the noise to be coming from somewhere in the street outside—but he rapidly dismissed that notion. It had been almost midnight before he’d begun to work at the bird maker’s box; several hours had gone by—hours he would not have remembered passing but for the evidence of his watch—since then. There was no church in the city—however desperate for adherents—that would ring a summoning bell at such an hour.

No. The sound was coming from somewhere much more distant, through the very door (as yet invisible) that Lemarchand’s miraculous box had been constructed to open. Everything that Kircher, who had sold him the box, had promised of it was true! He was on the threshold of a new world, a province infinitely far from the room in which he sat.

Infinitely far; yet now, suddenly near.

The thought had made his breath quick. He had anticipated this moment so keenly, planned with every wit he possessed this rending of the veil. In moments they would be here—the ones Kircher had called the Cenobites, theologians of the Order of the Gash. Summoned from their experiments in the higher reaches of pleasure, to bring their ageless heads into a world of rain and failure.

He had worked ceaselessly in the preceding week to prepare the room for them. The bare boards had been meticulously scrubbed and strewn with petals. Upon the west wall he had set up a kind of altar to them, decorated with the kind of placatory offerings Kircher had assured him would nurture their good offices: bones, bonbons, needles. A jug of his urine—the product of seven days’ collection—stood on the left of the altar, should they require some spontaneous gesture of self defilement. On the right, a plate of doves’ heads, which Kircher had also advised him to have on hand.

He had left no part of the invocation ritual unobserved. No cardinal, eager for the fisherman’s shoes, could have been more diligent.

But now, as the sound of the bell became louder, drowning out the music box, he was afraid.

Too late, he murmured to himself, hoping to quell his rising fear. Lemarchand’s device was undone; the final trick had been turned. There was no time left for prevarication or regret. Besides, hadn’t he risked both life and sanity to make this unveiling possible? The doorway was even now opening to pleasures no more than a handful of humans had ever known existed, much less tasted—pleasures which would redefine the parameters of sensation, which would release him from the dull round of desire, seduction and disappointment that had dogged him from late adolescence. He would be transformed by that knowledge, wouldn’t he? No man could experience the profundity of such feeling and remain unchanged.

The bare bulb in the middle of the room dimmed and brightened, brightened and dimmed again. It had taken on the rhythm of the bell, burning its hottest on each chime. In the troughs between the chimes the darkness in the room became utter; it was as if the world he had occupied for twenty-nine years had ceased to exist. Then the bell would sound again, and the bulb burn so strongly it might never have faltered, and for a few precious seconds he was standing in a familiar place, with a door that led out and down and into the street, and a window through which—had he but the will (or strength) to tear the blinds back—he might glimpse a rumor of morning.

With each peal the bulb’s light was becoming more revelatory. By it, he saw the east wall flayed; saw the brick momentarily lose solidity and blow away; saw, in that same instant, the place beyond the room from which the bell’s din was issuing. A world of birds was it? Vast black birds caught in perpetual tempest? That was all the sense he could make of the province from which—even now—the hierophants were coming—that it was in confusion, and full of brittle, broken things that rose and fell and filled the dark air with their fright.

And then the wall was solid again, and the bell fell silent. The bulb flickered out. This time it went without a hope of rekindling.

He stood in the darkness, and said nothing. Even if he could remember the words of welcome he’d prepared, his tongue would not have spoken them. It was playing dead in his mouth.

And then, light.

It came from them: from the quartet of Cenobites who now, with the wall sealed behind them, occupied the room. A fitful phosphorescence, like the glow of deep-sea fishes: blue, cold, charmless. It struck Frank that he had never once wondered what they would look like. His imagination, though fertile when it came to trickery and theft, was impoverished in other regards. The skill to picture these eminences was beyond him, so he had not even tried.

Why then was he so distressed to set eyes upon them? Was it the scars that covered every inch of their bodies, the flesh cosmetically punctured and sliced and infibulated, then dusted down with ash? Was it the smell of vanilla they brought with them, the sweetness of which did little to disguise the stench beneath? Or was it that as the light grew, and he scanned them more closely, he saw nothing of joy, or even humanity, in their maimed faces: only desperation, and an appetite that made his bowels ache to be voided.

What city is this? One of the four enquired; Frank had difficulty guessing the speaker’s gender with any certainty. Its clothes, some of which were sewn to and through its skin, hid its private parts, and there was nothing in the dregs of its voice, or in its willfully disfigured features that offered the least clue. When it spoke, the hooks that transfixed the flaps of its eyes and were wed, by an intricate system of chains passed through flesh and bone alike, to similar hooks through the lower lip, were teased by the motion, exposing the glistening meat beneath.

I asked you a question, it said. Frank made no reply. The name of this city was the last thing on his mind.

Do you understand? the figure beside the first speaker demanded. Its voice, unlike that of its companion, was light and breathy—the voice of an excited girl. Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its tongue was similarly decorated. Do you even know who we are? it asked.

Yes. Frank said at last. I know.

Of course he knew; he and Kircher had spent long nights talking of hints gleaned from the diaries of Bolingbroke and Gilles de Rais. All that mankind knew of the Order of the Gash, he knew.

And yet . . . he

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Reviews

Go to whitewavedarling's profile

For readers of horror, this is a must-read. The basis of Hell Raiser, this is one of those short Barker novels that packs so much into each line that the book seems to come alive, and brings together separate types of horror, felt by different individuals, in a way that makes it all too real. The effect is one of falling into a story that one can too easily imagine happening just next door, if they allow themselves to believe, for even a moment, in the supernatural element at the heart of the book. Without doubt, this is a more gruesome book than some readers will want to take up, but it's also striking and masterfully written--dare I say fun, as well, for horror lovers.Recommended.

Go to bgnbrooks-1's profile

Fascinating, frightening, enjoyable, and much better than the movie! One of the greatest things about Clive Barker is that no two books of his read the same, they are all truly original and so different. If not for the advertised fact, I wouldn't know that the same man who wrote The Abarat wrote Mister B. Gone and any of his others. It seems the main thing they have in common is their fantastic consistent quality. I definitely count him among my favorite authors.

Go to theampersand's profile

"The Hellbound Heart" has a lot of surprises in it. The first, of course, is that everyone's favorite cenboite, Pinhead, makes only a cameo appearance. I'd been warned about that one, but it also surprised me how much like a regular literary novel "The Hellbound Heart"can sometimes seem. Sure, it involves bloodthirsty unspeakable ghouls from another dimension who have disfigured their bodies beyond recognition, but it's also the story of an upwardly mobile Thatcher-era British couple called Rory and Kristy whose marriage is falling apart. It's kind of surprising how much of "The Hellbound Heart" doesn't involve people getting torn limb from limb. "The Hellbound Heart" could even be mistaken for a stealth critique of boring yuppiedom. Yes, Frank's a monster, but it's clear that he's got much more ambition than his brother, and Barker seems to kind of admire him for it. To be perfectly honest, Barker's not at his best in that part of the book: the characters aren't particularly memorable, and there's a lot of stock language to be found in the book's quieter scenes. The horror stuff is, of course, a fair sight better. I'm a sucker for art about bodily difference and transformation, and that seems to be one of Clive's major obsessions, too. The cenobites aren't, after all, anyone's victims, and they weren't born looking that way. They're the weird products of their own out-of-control desires. In fact, despite the fact that the Hellraiser movies are notorious for their references to S and M and fetish sex, there's less of that sort of thing here than I expected: the cenobites aren't much for talking, and they keep things pretty understated when referring to the bizarre pleasures that they've experienced. It is, in a way, wonderfully British of them. Lastly, I also wondered how much "The Hellbound Heart" prefigured the modern vogue for all things steampunk: Barker's "hooks, chains and pulleys" fixation seems more industrial age than Gothic, and we meet a cenobite called "The Engineer" as the book closes. I'm not really a horror fan, and don't know if I'll read any more of the Hellraiser books, but this brief, gory little novella was still worth my time.

Go to Chris 's profile

Really interesting short story. The movie actually does a great job of capturing the characters in the book too!

Go to weeturtle's profile

This novella started the Hellraiser franchise when it was adapted to film, though not having seen the films won't have much affect on reading the book, save potentially not knowing what one might get into. If you're interested in the Hellraiser franchise at all, give the book a read so you can say you have done so, it's short, and you can see where it all began.The book is graphic, with gore and bodies described in very direct fashion as is Barker's writing style. If body horror and violence makes you squeamish, it's best to give the book a pass. Though I will say it feels tamer than the film on that front.Plotwise, the book is the story about a sex-obsessed man seeking more pleasure and finds a mysterious box that promises what he's after, but things are not what he expected and his married lover and innocent niece both become involved in the consequences. The book reads like an indulgent horror but it still have some things to day, and in some ways it's the catastrophe that you can't turn your eyes from for the sake or morbid curiosity. "Pinhead," the literal face of the Hellraiser franchise, doesn't make much of an appearance save in description. He figures much more prominently in the sequel. I enjoyed the sequel more as there is a grander story involved, but I doubt I'd have enjoyed it as much without having at least some background in the franchise.

Go to Suneish Basu's profile

I really enjoyed the book's prose, and to an even greater extent, I liked its brevity. I also liked its sympathetic villains.
I found the climax to be a bit shakily executed.
I'll definitely read other works by this very interesting gentleman, Mr Barker.

Go to mrs_mcgreevy's profile

The fiction that came out of the Splatterpunk era is often dismissed as being violent or gory strictly because it can. The Hellbound Heart is an example of a story that gets it just right.

Gross? Yes. Visceral? Yes. But also redemtive and even bizarrely touching.

My book group read this for Valentines Day one year, and it was an oddly appropriate choice.

Go to daniel_davis-1's profile

Pretty good, if a little slight. It's totally ridiculous how the publisher has tried to stretch this out to be a novel by increasing the font size and line spacing to absurd amounts.It's a rather simpler tale. The character are entirely uninteresting, their relationships meaningless, and are given zero context outside of the immediate plot.The stuff with the Cenobites is interesting, if fleeting, and over all it's a bit creepy but it doesn't haunt for long because nothing ever really feels at stake.

Go to Joshua Hockenberry's profile

very good book

Go to bridgey_1's profile

The Hellbound Heart - Clive Barker ***I don’t know if many people realise that the 80’s film Hellraiser was based on a short novella by Clive Barker?The Hellbound Heart is quick read. The basic plotline is that Frank has come into possession of a box. This box has a number of secret switches and slides that when pressed in the correct sequence allow it to be opened. This then acts as a sort of portal that allows mystical beings of Hell called the Cenobites to enter into our world. Their mission is to deliver extremes of torture to the person that has summoned them, some intentionally, some on accident. For Frank this means endlessly having all his flesh torn off by hooks for an eternity, not what he had planned.... he was just looking for the ultimate pleasue. He opens the box in a bedroom of his deceased grandparents house, the property which has been left to both him and his brother Rory. Throw into the mix that Frank was having an affair with his brother’s wife Julia and things get a little more complicated. After Frank has been missing several weeks, Rory and Julia move into the property, but there is always something odd about that one bedroom. An accident sees a bit of blood spilled and this appears to be enough to drag Frank back from the bowels of hell, however he is stripped of flesh. The only way that he can become human again is by Julia luring victims to the house so he can repair himself using their bodies and blood. The book was ok. At around 128 pages it wasn’t as good as I had anticipated but it was still worth a read. For those that are a lover of horror they may find something here to keep them occupied. Although I always enjoy a scary book, this wasn’t the suspenseful type and relied on the shock and gore factor to keep the reader satisfied. I wish that the ideas behind the Cenobites and their world had been explored more rather than just the fleeting glimpses. All in all, not a bad novella, it hasn’t made me want to pick up any more of Barker’s works, but hasn’t put me off him either.

Go to jaredorlando-1's profile

Clive Barker’s classic introduction of his cenobites is gruesome and fun. Although Pinhead is mentioned only briefly in the introduction, the world of Hellraiser is all there, hooks and all.

Go to sixteendays's profile

I found myself surprised how true-to-the-story the film turned out to be. It also made me wish I’d read the book first, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more.I still don’t understand Kristy’s relationship to Rory, and it’s been like 30 years.

Go to sofi qb's profile

I was thoroughly disgusted and disturbed, but I couldn't stop reading!

Go to ralphlagana's profile

This is a novella which I really enjoyed. If you're looking for something in horror and want to cut your teeth on Clive Barker's writing, this is a good plce to begin. The work is more than a little uneven, rough in places; but it also shines at times. At the "heart" of the story rests a completely sick, twisted set of relationships and despite this the book works. I finished it in two sittings and was completely enraptured throughout. Although you can see the end coming, I still wanted to get to it and I wasn't the least bit disappointed. I might even goes as far as to suggest that this story be set beside classics like "The Monkey's Paw" and "The Tell-Tale Heart".

Go to regularguy5mb's profile

I've been a fan of the original Hellraiser film for years (the sequels being very hit or miss, mostly miss once you hit the third one) and have always wanted to read the original story it was based on. So, I finally got around to reading it, after owning a copy for a number of years but always putting it off for one reason or another.It was nice to see how faithful the film stayed to the source material, outside of making Kirsty Julia's stepdaughter instead of potential rival for Rory (Larry in the film, who becomes Kirsty's father, which makes Frank's "Come to Daddy" line all the more disturbing now that I think about it). Of course, considering how nebulous Kirsty's relationship with Rory is in the book (she's "a friend" who is apparently secretly in love with him, but it's never clear how he feels about her since he seems to keep her close), this change makes sense.One thing that the novel does, as well as the first film, that the rest of the franchise doesn't, is downplay the Cenobites. They aren't the main focus of the story, which I enjoyed. They are more of a literal Deus ex Machina that propels the story of Frank and his desire for the ultimate pleasure. Frank and Julia are the important elements of "The Hellbound Heart," seeing to what ends these two will go for what they want. And that is what makes this such an interesting read.

Go to elizajane_1's profile

I was addicted to watching the movie "Hell Raiser" when I was a young teen, watching it a multitude of times; the sequels never did anything for me, but the original just really captured my imagination. It was the Cenobites, of course, that intrigued me. I don't think I ever really understood the meaning of anything. So anyway, I've wanted to read the original novella ever since then. Unfortunately, I wasn't impressed. The Cenobites play a minor role, there is no character development in the "good guys" though you are made to really dislike the "bad guys". The overall theme is sensual pleasure to a debaucherous level that turns into the utmost degraded sadism possible. It is afterall a horror story. Even with this theme though there is no sex and I didn't find the story gross or scary or even all that macabre in the end. It's pretty tame by today's standards, a very quick read that bordered on boring.

Go to thewallflower-1's profile

I think I've learned that it's impossible for me to be scared by the written word. Maybe it's the medication, maybe I'm older. I hear people who couldn't sleep after reading Salem's Lot or The Exorcist, and I just don't get it. This book is no exception for me. It follows the movie quite well, so if you've seen the film, I don't think you'll get much more out of this book. The Horror Guru had a lot of good things to say about both, but I believe that not all stories fit the medium. Horror, as good as the written word has been, just thrives better in cinema. It was very "meh" for me. Maybe it's too wordy to be scary.Maybe it's scarier in concept and theme than the words on the page. One thing that happens to horror as it ages is that the scariness becomes campy. No one takes Freddy and Jason seriously anymore. When you grow up and look at it, it's just a Rubik's Cube and a guy who fell on a nail gun.

Go to gregorio_roth's profile

One can see how clearly Clive Barker sees his movies before he even scripts them, as this book was the basis for Hell Raiser. I can picture the movie and scenes and how they were portrayed word for word at times. It is a great read though.

Go to revslick_1's profile

human depravity meets the human condition aka Hellraiser along with the adorable Cenobites

Go to birdo82's profile

Familiarization with the far more popular movie version may make this a weak read for some, but The Hellbound Heart is still a well-written, sexual romp with unique imagery.

Go to 26kathryn's profile

I finished this book very quickly as it was very fast paced. There is a lot of action and gory scenes in the story. But because the book is short I didn't get to learn much about the characters which meant that I didn't really care whether they lived or died.The plot of the story is very imaginative, I just wish there had been a bit more background about the cenobites and their world.

Go to brookeashley-1's profile

Truly super creepy. I have not seen Hellraiser (or most 80s horror movies), so I wasn't sure what to expect. My only complaint is that it's really easy to dislike the victims. It might have been a little creepier if more morally ambiguous people had suffered; instead, I prayed for their painful demise.Reading it after Mister B. Gone just confirmed what a disappointment Barker's newest book was. This one will be like The Thief of Always, I suspect, which has stayed with me for over a decade.

Go to matthew254's profile

I somehow got through the 80s without watching "Hellraiser". I like the horror genre so I thought I'd check out the novella that the film was based on. It's not a bad premise and it certainly does have some merit; I can see why it might have broke the mold at the time. For me, though, it felt mostly gratuitous for the sake of trying (and failing) to be gratuitous. For better or for worse, I was not grossed out or offended by the content. It just seemed like an attempt to shock the reader which is kind of insulting. After I finished the story I watched the movie and ended up preferring the book. Pinhead is overrated.

Go to itsmysailboat's profile

Short novella by Clive Barker. Concise and to the point. So, so good.

Go to sallowswine's profile

This was a fantastic little novelet (novelette? noveletta?). Unfortunately the images from the film have been ingrained in my subconscious so it was difficult to allow myself to see the characters how I/Clive wanted to view them (e.g., Pinhead's voice being reminiscent of an "excited teenage girl"), but all in all I think the book made up for it with its vivid descriptions of insanity, pain, pleasure, and the nexus of the three. The Book-of-Blood-esque description of Frank's first encounter with the Cenobites in the first chapter had me close to seeing stars.I would not rank this above Clive's short stories ("Dread" is a favorite), but it is definitely worth a read.

Go to librarianbryan's profile

I noticed flashes of the literary touches on which Barker's seems to have made his reputation. Being saturated with Hellraiser fandom (the film is based on this novella) since adolescence, the story wasn't all that much of a revelation.

Go to shob7dw's profile

Ah, the book that spawned Hellraiser. Forget the movie, the book is beter. This is Barker at his prime ... dark, imaginative and utterly freaky. The pace is quick and twisted. The result – one of the most original horror tales in a long time.

Go to titania86_1's profile

Morally bankrupt and nihilistic Frank Cotton has found this world and the pleasures it has to offer lacking, boring, and predictable. After hearing about Lemarchand’s Configuration, a puzzle box that if solved opened up a realm of unimaginable pleasure, he finds it and spends hours trying to solve. He succeeds, but instead of hoards of nude women, like he was expecting, the Cenobites emerge instead. They are horribly scarred and mutilated beings that perceive extreme pain as not different from extreme pleasure. They take him to their extradimensional plane to suffer for eternity. Meanwhile, Rory, Frank’s brother, and his wife Julia have moved into the house passed down from their grandparents. When Rory is injured during the moving in process, Frank uses his blood to communicate with our world. He demands more blood from Julia, who has been infatuated with him ever since their affair shortly before her marriage to Rory, to become whole again. She complies and feeds him several men. Kirsty, Rory’s friend, suspects Julia is having an affair and discovers Frank and Julia’s horrible plot. Will she be able to return Frank to the dimension he escaped from or would the Cenobites rather have her instead? I recently saw the film Hellraiser, so I had to read the novella it was based on. There is very little difference in plot and characters between the two works. However, both have their own strengths and weaknesses. The strength of the film is the horrific visuals it provides. The Cenobites look so much more disfigured and fetishistic than I ever would have imagined. The audience is also shown some of the horrors in the other world and I was shocked by how twisted and horrifying the images were, considering it was made in the 80’s. I was riveted to the screen (with my mouth gaping open) and literally couldn’t look away. The book only describes the Cenobites, but not in a great amount of detail. The other world’s sights aren’t described at all, but the novel excels in ways the film did not.The novel is incredibly well written. Even though the character development is a little lacking, I really didn’t notice too much because the writing is so fluid and rich with dark imagery. The relationship between Frank and Julia seemed to happen spontaneously, but their evil tendencies that were exhibited later made them a fitting couple. Their sick relationship is an interesting comparison to the false, empty one between Julia and Rory. However, Frank’s interest in her is only to be restored to human form and nothing more, showing Julia in the role of her husband: adoring and unaware of the others indifference. Both relationships are exposed to be hollow and devoid of anything remotely resembling love. Julia is portrayed as much more malicious than in the film. She has nothing but disdain for her husband and would like nothing more than to kill him. Frank and Julia represent the need for man to seek more and more empty, fruitless sensory experience and where this road will lead if gone to extremes. This view may be depressing, but makes for an entertaining and horrifying read.

Go to avalon_today's profile

“Come to Daddy” it said. “Frank, go to Hell! And take your wannabe bride with you!” I said.

Go to bookwormteri's profile

Not my favorite of Clive Barker's and he is such a great author. If you have seen the movie, you have read the book. They are practically one and the same, minor, minor, minor differences. Okay book, but I expect more from such a master.