Steve-Calvert.co.uk
Steve-Calvert.co.uk
A Passion For Horror
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Clive Barkers novella The Hellbound Heart is 128 pages long and is, in case you didn't know, the book that the film Hellraiser is based on. When Frank Cotton buys Lemarchand's box from Kircher and shuts himself into his blacked out bedroom he has one thing on his mind: contacting The Order of the Gash. Frank has heard tales of them and believes that they can show him pleasures greater than he has ever known before. He has lead a sinful and debauched life and is tired of the pleasures of this world, and, as he fiddles with the mechanism of the puzzle box and tries to open a doorway between worlds, he never dreams that the Cenobites idea of pleasure and pain might be very different from his own. When Frank finally solves the puzzle it is too late to think about these things, he has opened not only the box, but a doorway to a whole new world of pain. Some months later Frank's brother Rory moves into the house, which they both owned. Rory brings his wife Julia with him. Nobody has seen Frank, who has been a drifter for most of his life, since the previous summer, and Rory has no reason to think that Frank will be coming back anytime soon. Julia is dissatisfied in her marriage and longs for the time - that one time, just before her wedding - that she spent with Frank. Rory is unaware of any of this, and is equally unaware about the amount of time his wife is spending in the blacked out bedroom. Julia probably has no idea herself why the room attracts her until blood is spilt on the floor: Rory's blood from the hand that he has cut on a chisel. Those few drops of blood are enough to open up a doorway for Frank to return through, but he needs more blood if he is to fully regenerate the butcher's shop of spare parts that is the present state of his body. And if he doesn't get more blood. And soon. He might slip back into the world of the Cenobites. Fortunately for Frank, Julia is more than willing to help him get the much-needed red stuff. The Hellbound Heart is rather a dark story and there is no shortage of blood and gore within its pages. I couldn't help but feel sorry for Rory, with a wife who he adored, but who didn't love him, and I can't help but wonder which character it was who had the hell bound heart. Julia or Frank. In their own ways though, I suppose both of them were equally damned. |
