The Hellbound Heart

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2009)

The Hellbound Heart is a horror novella by Clive Barker. It was the basis for the movie Hellraiser. It was originally published in 1986 by Dark Harvest in the third volume of their Night Visions anthology series (the volume also included seven short stories by Ramsey Campbell and three by Lisa Tuttle) but was re-released as a stand-alone title by HarperCollins in 1988 after the success of the movie. It retains the gory, visceral style that Barker introduced in his series of collected short stories The Books of Blood and distorts clichéd narrative devices to depict ordinary people drawn into a confrontation with spiritual terror beyond traditional definitions of morality.

Plot summary

The Hellbound Heart tells the story of a mystical puzzle box, and the horror it wreaks on a family which is unfortunate enough to come across it.

Frank is a nihilist and selfish moral degenerate who has participated in every hedonistic pleasure, extreme experience and sexual perversion known to man, each time seeking a greater pleasure higher than the last. Jaded, Frank explores a rumour of a mysterious puzzle box (Lemarchand's Configuration) that provides the gateway into a realm of unfathomable carnal pleasures. Frank tracks down the current owner of the box in Dusseldorf and obtains it through performing "small favors". Frank manages to solve the puzzle while squatting in the attic of his grandparents' house, where he has setup an elaborate display of flowers and a jug of his own urine. A gateway does indeed open and appearing from it are the Cenobites, a race of distorted creatures who practice an extreme form of sadomasochism centred around agonising torture and mutilation. They see little difference between extreme pleasure and extreme pain. The beings drag Frank, willingly at first, into their extradimensional realm, where Frank begins what he realises too late will be an eternity of torture.

Frank's brother, Rory, moves his family into the house inherited by Frank and Rory after their grandparents' death. Rory is married to Julia, who had sex with Frank a week before her wedding and has ever since lusted for him while staying married to Rory for the financial support he provides. Due to an accident, several drops of Rory's blood land on the spot where Frank had ejaculated prior to being snatched into the Cenobites' realm. This allows Frank to contact our world, at first only as a whisper, then as an emaciated corpse. Julia, hoping to rekindle their affair promises to help him.

While Rory is at work, Julia begins picking up men which she lures into the attic and sacrifices them to Frank, whose body becomes more substantial and whose consciousness more stable with every sacrifice. Kirsty, a friend of Rory, suspects that Julia is having a series of affairs and begins trailing Julia. After sneaking into the house, Kirsty has an altercation with Frank and ends up stealing his puzzle box, knowing only that Frank has some form of extreme attachment to it. After the fight, she collapses on the street. Upon awakening in the hospital, she solves the puzzle box and the Cenobites come. She makes a deal with them, offering to deliver Frank back into their control to spare her. The Cenobites reluctantly accept, warning that if Kirsty was trying to trick them they would "tear her soul apart".

Kirsty leads the Cenobites to Frank, now wearing recently slain Rory's skin. Another altercation ensues, in which Julia is killed by Frank. The Cenobites wait until Frank reveals his true identity, then re-capture him and return with him to their own realm. The Engineer bumps into an escaping Kirsty, handing her the box, presumably for her to keep it until the Cenobites' next victim seeks it. Kirsty imagines that she sees Julia and Frank's faces reflected in the lacquer of the box, but not Rory's. She wonders if there are other puzzles, that might find a way to where Rory resides by unlocking the doors to paradise instead of hell.

See also

• Faust

External links

• The Hellbound Heart Encylopaedia