Hellbound Hearts
Authors: Paul Kane,Marie O’Regan
HELLBOUND HEARTS
Edited by Paul Kane and Marie O'Regan
Based on the novella
The Hellbound Heart
by Clive Barker
Pocket Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors' imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Hellbound Hearts
volume copyright © 2009 by Clive Barker, Paul Kane, and Marie O'Regan
Mythology and characters as contained in the novella
The Hellbound Heart
copyright © 1986 by Clive Barker
Foreword copyright © 2009 by Clive Barker
“IntroductionâRaising Hell, Again” copyright © 2009 by Stephen Jones
“Prisoners of the Inferno” copyright © 2009 by Peter Atkins
“The Cold” copyright © 2009 by Conrad Williams
“The Confessor's Tale” copyright © 2009 by Sarah Pinborough
“Hellbound Hollywood” copyright © 2009 by Mick Garris
“Mechanisms” copyright © 2009 by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola
“Every Wrong Turn” copyright © 2009 by Tim Lebbon
“The Collector” copyright © 2009 by Kelley Armstrong
“Bulimia” copyright © 2009 by Richard Christian Matheson
“Orfeo the Damned” copyright © 2009 by Nancy Holder
“Our Lord of Quarters” copyright © 2009 by Simon Clark
“Wordsworth” copyright © 1993, 2009 by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
“A Little Piece of Hell” copyright © 2009 by Steve Niles
“The Dark Materials Project” copyright © 2009 by Sarah Langan
“Demon's Design” copyright © 2009 by Nicholas Vince
“Only the Blind Survive” copyright © 2009 by Yvonne Navarro
“Mother's Ruin” copyright © 2009 by Mark Morris
“Sister Cilice” copyright © 2009 by Barbie Wilde
“Santos del Inferno” copyright © 2009 by Jeffrey J. Mariotte
“The Promise” copyright © 2009 by Nancy Kilpatrick
“However . . .” copyright © 2009 by Gary A. Braunbeck and Lucy A. Snyder
“ 'Tis Pity He's Ashore” copyright © 2009 by Chaz Brenchley
“Afterword” copyright © 2009 by Doug Bradley
Cover Illustration of VESTIMENTI Cenobite copyright © 2009 by Clive Barker All illustrations for
“Mechanisms” copyright © 2009 by Mike Mignola
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Pocket Books trade paperback edition September 2009
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Designed by Ruth Lee Mui
Manufactured in the United States of America
10Â Â Â 9Â Â Â 8Â Â Â 7Â Â Â 6Â Â Â 5Â Â Â 4Â Â Â 3Â Â Â 2Â Â Â 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4391-4090-1
ISBN 978-1-4391-6475-4 (ebook)
To Clive Barker,
creator of this mythologyâ
and all those who followed.
With thanks to Clive Barker, Robb Humphrey, Stephen Jones, Doug Bradley, Ed Schlesinger, and the team at Pocket Books, and all the contributors for their help with bringing this project to fruition.
INTRODUCTION: RAISING HELL, AGAIN
Christopher Golden & Mike Mignola
Gary A. Braunbeck and Lucy A. Snyder
SPECIAL BONUS MATERIALâ
WORDSWORTH
GRAPHIC SHORT STORY SCRIPT
Clive Barker
The word “mythos” is used very liberally these days in regard to the characters and adventures of popular fiction. People speak of the Batman mythology, the Freddy Krueger mythology, and yes, the
Hellraiser
mythology. I have always been a little wary of this usage. It seems in some sense to be inappropriate, cheapening a word that I first encountered in reference to the deities of Olympus, or the gods and goddesses of Asgard. These mythologies are thousands of years old, and have survived many tellings and retellings, their underlying imagery often moved from one culture to another, yet still surviving at some fundamental level.
How then could the same word ever be applied with any seriousness to the products of a medium that is barely a century old? Does Pinhead's “mythos” really bear any comparison with the massive bodies of narrative that have collected around such legendary figures as Hercules and Jesus?
In one sense, of course not. Maybe a thousand years from now, some profoundly evolved version of a human being sitting at the console of a starship, exploring some distant star system, might chance upon an image of Pinhead and find that the creature means
something to him. If so, then the word “mythos” may indeed be applicable.
Why would I even breathe such a possibility? On the face of it, a screenwriter/director such as myself referring to his own story as a mythology is immensely arrogant. But here, a more subtle distinction comes into play that may be worth a moment's study.
Even though I am the man who had the good fortune to bring this image to a popular medium and therefore facilitate its dissemination throughout much of the world, I am
not
the creator of this mythology. In fact, I think the real creators fall into three categories. First, there are all those nameless men and women who over the last many centuries created the fetishes of clay, rope, bone, and nails, which are in some part the inspiration for the character called Pinhead. These fetishes are, I was told, chiefly representations of anger, which seems oddly inappropriate given how chilly and dispassionate Pinhead is. But under all that cool reserve lies a massive potential for rage, as I think most audiences understand. So those fetishes and Pinhead have a good deal in common.
The second creators are of course the special-effects men who have, over the course of many movies, variously interpreted and reinterpreted the appearance of the character. There have been beautiful renditions of his appearance in comic books and on the skins of innumerable
Hellraiser
fans who have shown me the parts of their bodies where tattooists have left
their
interpretation.
Finally, there are the people who see these movies, read these comics, and wear these tattoos who in conversing with one anotherâand occasionally, at conventions, with meâfurther enrich the complexities of the idea. Their motives for doing so are occasionally erotic (there is a healthy appetite for the
Hellraiser
stories in the S&M community) or maybe metaphysical (one of the most complex articulations of the original
Hellraiser
story,
The Hellbound Heart
, came from a Russian Orthodox Priest).
In sum, perhaps it isn't so monstrously arrogant to speak of the mythos. I am not its maker. If it survives for another hundred years or is forgotten tomorrow, I have no say in the matter.
Hellraiser
â
its stories and images, its metaphysics and its sheer visceral energyâis the work of other hands and other minds. I am very happy and very lucky to have stepped into the river of the collective unconscious and to have found there a stone with the nails hammered into it.
Clive Barker
Los Angeles, 2009
Stephen Jones
For many of us who worked on it,
Hellraiser
was a life-changing experience.
For Ashley Laurence, who made her movie debut as ingénue heroine Kirsty Cotton, it lead to a successful acting career that includes three
Hellraiser
sequels, two screen adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft stories, and a third entry in the
Warlock
series. She is also a very talented artist.
After portraying the coldly homicidal Julia Cotton, Clare Higgins has gone on to become one of Britain's most acclaimed stage actresses, winning numerous prestigious awards. Meanwhile, Oliver Parker, who portrayed one of the luckless moving men (a role he basically reprised in the sequel), is now better known as the director of such successful British movies as
An Ideal Husband
(1999),
The Importance of Being Earnest
(2002),
St. Trinian's
(2007), and a new version of
Dorian Gray
(2009).
Although originally conceived as a minor character with only a few minutes' screen time, Doug Bradley's Lead Cenobite became the character that most resonated with audiencesârechristened simply “Pinhead” for the sequels. The actor created one of the most
eloquent and iconic cinematic monsters in popular culture and has become indelibly identified with the role.
For Doug and some of the other Cenobite actors, it has also led to a profitable side career attending conventions all over the world and signing stills of themselves buried under the time-consuming prosthetic makeup.
With
Hellraiser
, Bob Keen consolidated his skills as a special makeup effects designer, later expanding his talents into special effects and directing, while for producer Christopher Figg it was the start of a career that has led to such box-office hits as
Trainspotting
(1996) and
Dog Soldiers
(2002).