The Hellbound Heart: A Novel

By Clive Barker

“Barker’s the best thing to happen to horror fiction for many moons. . . [he] never fails to deliver the compelling prose and relentless horror his readers expect.” —Chicago Tribune

The classic tale of supernatural obsession from the critically acclaimed master of darkness—and the inspiration for the cult classic film Hellraiser

From his scores of short stories, bestselling novels, and major motion pictures, no one comes close to the vivid imagination and unique terrors of body horror provided by Clive Barker. The Hellbound Heart is one of Barker’s best—a nerve-shattering novella about the human heart and all the great terrors and ecstasies within its endless domain. It is about greed and love, desire and death, life and captivity, bells and blood. It is one of the most frightening stories you are likely to ever read.

Frank Cotton's insatiable appetite for the dark pleasures of pain led him to the puzzle of Lemarchand's box, a hellish artifact that summons the Cenobites, 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 from this dark fantasy realm—though the price will be bloody and terrible . . . and there will certainly be hell to pay.

• A great read for spooky-season nights
• A perfect addition to any Halloween reading list

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Mar 17, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061760877

Clive Barker

Clive Barker was born in Liverpool in 1952. His earlier books include ‘The Books of Blood’, ‘Cabal’, and ‘The Hellbound Heart’. In addition to his work as a novelist and playwright, he also iilustrates, writes, directs and produces for stage and screen. His films include ‘Hellraiser’, ‘Hellbound’, ‘Nightbreed’ and ‘Candyman’. Clive lives in Beverly Hills, California.

Book preview

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 had expected something

Reviews for The Hellbound Heart

[Chris · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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

[Oso Isko · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Barker has beautiful prose. That in itself makes this a good read. However the structure of the story is bit off. It leaves little surprise outside of how things play out. If it had been played more mysterious as to what exactly is going on, it would've been way spookier. I can see why things were changed in Hellraiser to make it a better horror movie. Still a great tale.

[Eric Taylor · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A must-read for any horror fan. Clive Barker is well beyond his time.

[Francisco Rogelio Samour Hernández · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reading it feels like watching a movie. Clive Barker's cinematic style is fantastic.

[Suneish Basu · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[Michael Erdman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful, little short story! It lasts for probably a day, or maybe two if you take a break. People claim it goes with the movie, whereas I see little innuendos from the movie. It has the feel of a wicked, much more graphic companion to the movie "Hellraiser." If you don't read this and you absolutely love the movie, you are missing out on the true experience of what is "Clive Barker!"

Read this!

[whatalicesaw · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reread.

I first read this when I was 16. As a quality horror it still holds up. From 1986 to 2021, this book can still make me look over my shoulder.

[obscura-762247 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Barker is truly not my vibe.

[mrs_mcgreevy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[ennuiprayer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Several times I watched Hellraiser as a kid, never knowing it was based on a novella written by Clive Barker. And several times - despite its cheap effects - the sheer thought of something so metaphysically neutral scared me. (Of course, I had to ration my reasons later in life.) There wasn't anything good about Pinhead, nor was there anything pure evil about him and his gang of Cenobites. There was just something that seemed rather in the between - like the Grim Reaper, who is thought to be as an evil entity, but really, he's just a wraith doing his job.

Thinking sheer genius, because Clive Barker is a genius, what I got was a play by play of the motion picture adaptation. While I read Barker's words, scenes from the movie played in my head. I shouldn't be at all surprised by this, as Barker was both director and writer of the film. There are notable changes from the novella and its adaptation brethren - like there being no actual Pinhead.

Nevertheless, it was a good book, and I praise it higher than most others have on Good Reads. Still, it's not enough to say it's five-star worthy. Four stars at most.

[Joshua Hockenberry · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

very good book

[sixteendays · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[sofi qb · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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

[ralphlagana · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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".

[longcluse · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This story commands some respect for the committed trashiness of the writing. The Lovecraftian italics, the sadomasochistic bodice-ripping! And for shameless use of Hollywood horror tropes: The tinkle of a music box in the opening scene. The walking back into The House of Horrors alone, unarmed, and without a plan. The characters with soap opera relations and no backstories. The classic “Come out come out wherever you are” structure of the denouement.
It also has me re-evaluating the most elemental conviction of my existence as a sentient being: that the book is always better than the movie unless Stephen King. I give two more stars for the identity crisis it triggered. The characters are mere empty husks (lol!) and it was impossible not to contrast the ways the lead actresses made this story real for me, in film version.

[lynnmpk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. I do wonder if it would have been a bit creepier if I hadn't been familiar with the movie.

Also, now I will always feel slightly unsettled whenever I hear church bells.

[elizajane_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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.

[amcheri-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Always loved the Hellraiser movie and wanted to see how the book compared. It's pretty close with the major difference being the relationships (ie the daughter in the movie is a friend in the book) but I would absolutely read this novella again. It's dark and bloody and good.

[beethovensfruit · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

listen - this isn't a perfect book by any means. but i just can't help myself, i love this story. it's ridiculous and horrifically sadomasochistic, but like c'mon.... it's great.

[joligula · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What was opened and refuses to be closed. This story spawned two really good movies and a basket of terrible ones. For all of his literary greatness it saddens me that we have access to such a small amount of literature regarding the Cenobites and the Lemarchand Box. Neither this story or the The Scarlet Gospels has enough length to amount to much. But damn...do they leave a scar on your senses. It is a true shame that we do not have THOUSANDS of pages of the Cenobites. Still, it leaves much to the imagination. The Hellbound Heart merely wets our appetite and leaves us to wither like the dusty bones in Rory's house. The Hellbound Heart is pure poetry and the opening of the gates to what Barker will make into a grand career.

[revslick_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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

[birdo82 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[daniel_davis-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[brookeashley-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[danielstj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A solid novel, and the first, by Clive Barker. Here, we get to see evil unhinged. The novel is not too complex and Barker still manages to shine and show his craft, illustrating the pivotal battle between good and evil in a setting that transcends the boundaries between regular life and that of the surreal. It was a good journey and I'm glad that I read it.

4 stars.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[jaredorlando-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[sublunarie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[bgnbrooks-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[edward.lorn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've now officially read three Clive Barker books to completion. The Great and Secret Show was my first, and though I enjoyed it, I can't remember what happened therein, nor can I recall exactly what I enjoyed about it. I do, however, recall laying it down and saying, "I need to find more from this author." I then went on to read The Thief of Always because I thought the blurb was coolio. I enjoyed it immensely. The rest of my experiences with Barker were not so good. I tried and failed to read four different novels (The Damnation Game, Galilee, Sacrament, and Mister B. Gone) and the first volume of his Books of Blood shenanigans. Out of all of that, I liked one story: "The Yattering and Jack." Everything else bored me to point that I traded them in to my local USB. I have enjoyed more Clive Barker celluloid than I have paper. This is my subjective opinion, and only my subjective opinion. I know this guy has fans, and I do not argue that he is a talented author. It's just that, mostly, he's not for me.

Which brings me to why I like this book. It reads almost exactly like the movie plays out. Hellraiser is one of my favorite films, and one that is erroneously stuffed into the slasher film genre. Pinhead is categorized with the likes of Freddy and Jason and Mike Myers when he really has no reason to be. The Hellraiser movies that work have very little to do with Pinhead and the cenobites. The ones that work have everything to do with the worst of humanity being on display, and said horrible human beings just happening upon Lemarchand's puzzle box.Thus, the most interesting part of The Hellbound Heart is its darkly disturbed cast. Julia is one sick heffie, as is Frank the Skinless Psychopath. Frank's brother is oddly clueless, and his niece is seemingly inconsequential - that is until she's needed to save the day. At times I wish that this book had been written entirely from Frank's point of view. He's about as disturbed as they come, and a blast to hang out with. I wanted more Frank time. Call me nuts, but he and I could share a beer, I think. I kid, I kid... dude would probably try to fuck me with a fire extinguisher wrapped in barbed wire.

Even though this book is short, it's still wordy as balls, and yet manages to be repetitive, as well. Adverbs are used to death, and it seems as if Clive made a pact with devil wherein he must use the word "din" as many times as possible in 164 pages. How many times is that, you might ask. Well, that would be 12 times, Virginia, and yes, there really is a Santa Claus. I find it funny how an author that prides himself on using the most lavish, sweeping prose imaginable repeats such a word as many times as he does in this book. With any other author, you might find "din" once in a five hundred page outing, if you find it at all. But here, Clive said, "Screw it! It's my party and I'll "din" all over your face until I get tired or someone calls the police!"

(Note: "din" is NOT another word for jizz. It means loudness, yo. You just got learnted!)

And, oh my Tom Cruise, the gore. I was pleased with the amount of catsup/ketchup coating the walls. Some dude got his jaw ripped off, and I love a good mandible yank. Makes me shiver, it do. Splatter-fiends will find their fix in this fearsome freakshow, trust the fuck outta me!

In summation: The best Clive Barker I've managed to finish because it's just like the movie. This is probably because Barker wrote/directed/and masturbated on set of the film adaptation, or whatever, but it is what it is. And it is a fun, if verbose, bit of literary horror. The book and the movie can both be completed in the same amount of time, so take your pick. That's all I got... Get outta here, kid, ya bother me!