The Hellbound Heart

The Hellbound Heart' is a gory and disturbing tale about a sexual adventurer named Frank, who in search of new pleasures obtains a puzzle box said to give him the kind of experiences that will satisfy his unquenchable earthly desires. He brings it back to his London home and eventually solves it, unleashing sadomasochistic demons from Hell known as the Cenobites. The sensations that await him, however, are not quite what he expected, and certainly not pleasurable.

Some time later, Frank's brother, Rory, and his wife, Julia, move into the house, which they assume Frank has abandoned for some new sexual quest. When Rory's blood drops onto the floor of the attic where the Cenobites took Frank, he manages to escape the Hell beings and appear in physical form, albeit as a very weak and fleshless creature. When Julia discovers him, he convinces her to secretly lure men into the house and spill their blood so that he can fully come back as a human before the Cenobites track him down and bring him back for good. Meanwhile, Rory's friend and secret admirer, Kirsty, notices Julia bringing strange men back to the house and thinks that she is cheating on her husband, but when she tries to investigate, she discovers the gruesome truth.

Clive Barker's intensely disturbing novella gets its point across without wavering for a moment; the depraved, never-ending search for pleasure that results in unimaginable pain is embodied in the character, Frank, whose selfishness and cruelty know no bounds, even after escaping the hell that should have been his punishment. Julia is a hardened and dispassionate woman, willing to kill several men in order to earn the touch of a violent and abusive man like Frank. Kirsty is too hopelessly timid to win Rory's affections, and Rory himself is oblivious to it all. None of the four characters are admirable people in any sense of the word, and it's a wonder that any of them escape the situation alive. This fact in itself makes 'The Hellbound Heart' the perfect horror story. It is a tale about human flaws, and those flaws are magnified and studied until the Cenobites actually seem like preferable company.

Despite the lack of pages, this is undeniably one of Barker's best works. 'The Hellbound Heart' was adapted into the movie 'Hellraiser,' which was released in 1987.