Hellbound Hearts

by Paul Kane

  The pill gave me a deeper, perhaps a better, sleep than I could ever have achieved on my own account; my body doesn’t like to sleep in storms. I woke to the hush and ruin of what follows on land, and longed to be at sea where all the damage is swept away or left behind. When I called to ask for food, I got the manager instead, still horrified by the morning’s news. A window gone and a life lost—a guest’s friend, subtly and discreetly to be distinguished from a guest—such a thing might be common news in the typhoon, might almost be commonplace at other establishments but had never happened, should never have happened, here. Should not have been possible. The glass was guaranteed, promised to be proof against the strongest wind. There must have been a fault in that one sheet, that triple-sheet, or perhaps an unregarded twist in the frame, damage from the last quake, though the whole hotel was promised to be earthquake-proof also. There would be an investigation, of course. And in the meantime, of course, I was a guest of the management for so long as I cared to stay; and if my, ah, friend had any family living locally, the hotel would do everything in its power to ease their transition through this difficult period . . .

  Did Shen have family? I couldn’t say; I found it hard to care. Johnnie would know, perhaps. I put him on to Johnnie.

  The police, too, I sent them round to Johnnie with their questions and my apologies. It’s no kind thing to bring the attention of the law down on a waterfront trader, who may lack import licenses and invoices, whose contacts might well prefer their anonymity; but I couldn’t be kind that day. I answered what questions I could, not many, and most of those with “Best ask Johnnie.”

  I asked one question of my own: What of the yacht I’d left in the marina, had she survived the storm and the tidal surge? The management there had claimed their covered berths in their isolated dock to be typhoon-proof, but then, so did the management here . . .

  They promised to let me know, as soon as practical. They implied that they had more urgent matters to attend to first, the recovery of bodies, Shen’s among them, and how could I be asking about a boat?

  I didn’t say it, but I doubted they would ever find Shen’s body.

  I didn’t say much of anything, indeed. I gently let them infer that I was still in the grip of shock or tranquilizers, both; I said I wanted to go back to my room, and they obliged me. Offered an escort, indeed, which I declined.

  For good reason, because I had let them assume I meant the new room, the windowless, the safe.

  I still had my original keycard in my money belt, and they hadn’t thought to recode the door; why would I go back there, why would I want to go back?

  There was no watch in the corridor, for much the same reason. The police had been, had seen, had taken what evidence, what photographs, they needed; why should they want to go back? Or to keep guard? It wasn’t a crime scene, after all. Officialdom was done with this place. A minor tragedy, after all, in a city overtaken by them . . .

  I let myself in and found that the absent window had been replaced with deadlights, boarded up. Otherwise, the room had been left largely untouched except by storm. The police would have wanted it preserved, of course, at least for their cursory inspection; the management would see no hurry in it now, when they had live guests to attend to.

  My things: someone might have been sent to fetch out my things, but they had not. Not yet. They might still come, of course, at any moment. I didn’t overly care. If they caught me here, they caught nothing but a disturbed guest among his own possessions.

  Among what was left of his possessions. Anything that had been lying loose in the room was gone, scoured away by too much wind, tai feng, and its attendant water. But I’m a sailor, long trained to neatness and alert to storm; I had unpacked, of course, and put most of my things away.

  The nightstand was gone, with its drawers. With my watch, my phone, my cash purse and medications. No matter.

  The wardrobe was extant, built-in. The sliding doors were off their tracks, but only wedged more firmly in place; it took ocean muscles and a degree of ocean experience to shift them. Behind, everything was sodden that could be soaked: which meant my better clothes, but there were few enough of those. All my practical wear is waterproof by necessity, by definition. As is my bag, and the useful stuff it carries; and . . .

  And I was here for none of that. Of course. I was only displacing the moment.

  Close by the boarded window stood the compass box, not quite where Shen had left it: set aside, I supposed, by the men who came to seal up that appalling breach.

  I thought Shen had meant to take it with him, and had not been given the chance.

  Left behind, it was closed up tight against the weather. Locked up tight, apparently, when I tried the lid; although there had only been one key and that was with me, in my money belt.

  When I tried it, the brass lock moved as sweetly as if it sat in an oil bath; when I lifted the lid and looked inside, so did the compass needle.

  It pivoted and spun, reacted to any movement of the box, paid no heed to any outside force or inclination: nothing to point at, nowhere to go.

  Wherever Shen had been taken, you couldn’t get there from here. Not anymore.

  Next day, I carried the box back to Johnnie’s place. On foot, necessarily, through streets still full of ruin, busy with people, no wheeled traffic at all.

  I found him dealing with the aftermath of his own broken window, sweeping up glass in the street.

  I put the compass down and helped haul out ruined stock—all those things that no one had ever wanted; anyone could have them now, if they would only take them away—and said, “I thought you were safely boarded up before the typhoon hit?”

  “I was,” he grunted. “Someone came, ripped down the boards, broke the window to get in.”

  “Christ. What did they steal?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s gone.”

  How he could tell, I was not clear; everything was overturned, broken open, torn apart. He was entirely certain, though. And oddly phlegmatic, I thought. If he was angry that morning, it was with me. “Sending the police to me—to me!—over some whore-boy I do not know . . .”

  “Wait, what? You didn’t send . . . ?”

  “I did not. I am not your pimp.”

  That was a blatant lie; he had pimped for me for longer than either of us would credit, but I let it by.

  And went on fetching and carrying, until there was as much sodden trash outside as in; and then, remembering, I glanced aside for the compass where I had set it down just by the step there.

  No one had come, but it was gone, and I was somehow not surprised at all.

  Afterword

  Doug Bradley

  Hello. Welcome to the other end. Did everyone make it out okay? I do hope so, we can’t go back in for the bodies, you know.

  For some reason, I seem to be getting the last word here. If this was a film, I’d be the credits. Half of you are already grabbing your coats, stuffing your empty popcorn buckets under your seats, and heading for the neon EXIT signs. “Sorry! Excuse me! Sorry!” While the other half—the cinephiles or cineastes: it always sounds faintly wrong, don’t you think?—are determinedly watching, convinced it’s going to somehow do you good, but really wanting to get the hell out. Or in this case, perhaps get the hell out of Hell.

  Anyway, bear with me. I promise I’ll try to be brief. . . .

  Great labyrinths, it seems, from little puzzle boxes grow. The thread that Clive began to unwind somewhere in Crouch End, North London (sometime in the early eighties), and unraveled somewhat farther among the weeping willows and duck ponds of Cricklewood (a handful of years later), shows no sign of reaching the end of its skein: it has raveled on cinematically through Carolina and Holly, through Captain George Vancouver’s place to the Paris of the east where, at the time of writing at least, it seems to have ground to a halt.

  It is twenty years and more since Clive plucked the Lemar-chand Configuration and its attendant intrigues and custodians from the r
ecesses of his restless mind and placed it in our midst, yet its fascination shows no sign of waning. Quite the opposite, in fact. It appears to have reached every corner of the globe (a delightful geometric impossibility that, isn’t it?) and still be traveling.

  Around the world in eighty perversions, perhaps.

  Some ten to fifteen years ago, I was asked to undertake a similar exercise to this in writing an introduction for a collection of Hellraiser-inspired comic strips. I commented then on how exciting it was to see a group of writers and artists take a basic idea from one writer/artist/director and run off with it in myriad different directions, with nothing but their imaginations as a compass. Here we are again, and exactly the same thoughts are coming to mind.

  I suppose I’m here as some kind of Keeper of the Flame. And it is clearly true that I have been the one consistent link through the series of films. True also that it was Pinhead who very quickly became the figurehead for the series: the face and the image that everyone now associates with the Hellraiser films, so much so that I even hear the character being sometimes referred to as “Hellraiser” rather than Pinhead (which is of course not the character’s name at all; for me he really has no name and if you ever called him Pinhead, he’d ignore you). I’ve been in lots of situations where people have said they don’t know the Hellraiser films and don’t watch horror films. And yet they all know the image of “the guy with the nails in his head.” “Oh him! That’s you? That’s amazing . . .”

  It has been his face on all the DVD boxes, the Hellraiser films always being sold on the promise of more and more Pinhead even when, in some cases, he was barely to be seen in the film contained within.

  And yet you’ll have searched in vain for Pinhead featuring among these pages. There are other Cenobites, yes, newly sprung from the imaginations of the contributing authors here, and at least one very familiar to fans of the original films. But no Pinhead, at least not in the strictest sense. Does that bother me? Not one jot. Quite the opposite, in fact. Consistently, though not uniformly, the writers have gone straight to the real heart of the Hellraiser “mythology,” if such a thing exists. To the Lemarchand Configuration, the ever innocent puzzle box: and beyond that to what Lemarchand’s plaything represents and points toward. The labyrinth, the puzzle, internal and external, the riddles and enigmas.

  And is there, I was just wondering, any precedent for this? Oh, novelizations aplenty. But a horror franchise throwing out original off-shoot stories like this where the central character—the “monster”—is conspicuous by his absence? And surely not a precedent for not one but two cast members from the films to contribute their own original pieces of fiction. Take a bow and some plaudits, Mr. Vince and Ms. Wilde, for boldly venturing where this thespian has never trod.

  And we’ve been on quite a journey, haven’t we? From London’s South Bank to Constantinople, from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries, from convents to cemeteries, puzzle boxes in computers and labyrinths in strange gardens and more. It would be invidious of me to list everything—and slightly pointless as well, perhaps. It is to be assumed you’ve just read them. Or, if you’re one of those people who likes to flip to the back of a book first, you’re just about to.

  And once again, these gathered words, whether you’ve read them yet or not, are vivid testimony to the power and the glory that is the imagination of my friend Clive Barker. It would be an exercise in stating the blindingly obvious to say that without him none of this would have been possible, but it’s also to me an exercise in stating a wonderful truth: that the last twenty years (for me personally, obviously, but I make a broader point), particularly in the world of horror, would have been a much poorer place without Hellraiser. Yet again, my thanks to him.

  And final plaudits here to Paul and Marie. For being mad enough to take this project on board and patient enough (in my own case at least, above and beyond the call of duty) to see it through to the finish.

  So there you are. Thank you for coming. Please take a moment before you leave to look around and make sure you have all your personal belongings with you. Like your souls, perhaps. . . .

  Doug Bradley

  London

  February 2009

  About the Authors

  CLIVE BARKER was born in Liverpool, England, where he began his creative career writing, directing, and acting for the stage. Since then, he has gone on to pen such bestsellers as The Books of Blood, Weaveworld, Imajica, The Great and Secret Show, The Thief of Always, Everville, Sacrament, Galilee, Coldheart Canyon, and the highly acclaimed fantasy series Abarat. As a screenwriter, director, and film producer, he is credited with the Hellraiser and Candyman pictures, as well as Nightbreed, Lord of Illusions, Gods and Monsters, and The Midnight Meat Train. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

  STEPHEN JONES lives in London, England. He is the winner of three World Fantasy Awards, four Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Awards, and three International Horror Guild Awards, as well as being an eighteen-time recipient of the British Fantasy Award and a Hugo Award nominee. A former television producer/ director and genre movie publicist and consultant (the first three Hellraiser movies, Night Life, Nightbreed, Split Second, Mind Ripper, Last Gasp, etc.), as an editor and writer he has had around one hundred books published, including Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide, The Essential Monster Movie Guide, The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide, Clive Barker’s A–Z of Horror, Clive Barker’s Shadows in Eden, Clive Barker’s The Nightbreed Chronicles, and The Hellraiser Chronicles.

  PETER ATKINS is the author of the novels Morningstar and Big Thunder and the screenplays for Hellraiser II, Hellraiser III, Hellraiser IV, and Wishmaster. With Glen Hirshberg and Dennis Etchison, he cofounded the Rolling Darkness Revue, which tours the west coast each October, bringing original ghost stories, live music, and theatrical effects to bookstores and libraries. His short fiction has appeared in several award-winning anthologies, and he has also written for the stage and television. His latest novel, Moontown, was published last year, and a new collection of his short fiction is forthcoming.

  CONRAD WILLIAMS is the author of the novels Head Injuries, London Revenant, The Unblemished, and One. His novellas include Nearly People, The Scalding Rooms, Rain, and Game. Some of his short fiction was collected in Use Once then Destroy. As Conrad A. Williams, he wrote Decay Inevitable. He is a past recipient of the British Fantasy Award and the International Horror Guild Award. He lives in Manchester with his wife and three sons. At a convention in the 1990s he picked up, from a display table, one of the actual models of Lemarchand’s Box used in the Hellraiser films. He apologized profusely when its guardian had a conniption fit and is happy to report that, to date, he has not suffered any kind of Cenobitic visitation, punitive or otherwise.

  SARAH PINBOROUGH is the author of five horror novels—including The Hidden, The Reckoning, The Taken, and Tower Hill—and various short stories. She has been short-listed twice for the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel and lives in Milton Keynes, England, with her cats, Peter and Mr. Fing. Her next horror novel, Feeding Ground (Leisure Books)—a sequel to her popular book Breeding Ground—will be out in all good bookshops in the United States in October 2009. Her first thriller, A Matter of Blood (Gollancz), will be out in the UK in 2010. Sarah is also a member of the MUSE writing collective with fellow authors Sarah Langan and Alexandra Sokoloff. To find out more about her, visit www.sarahpinborough.com.

  MICK GARRIS is an award-winning filmmaker who began writing fiction at the age of twelve. By the time he was in high school, he was already writing music and film journalism for various local and national publications. Garris hosted and produced The Fantasy Film Festival on Los Angeles television for nearly three years, and later began work in film publicity at Avco Embassy and Universal Pictures. It was there that he created “Making of . . .” documentaries for various feature films. Steven Spielberg hired Garris as story editor on Amazing Stories for NBC, where he wrote or cowrote ten of the forty-
four episodes. Since then he has written or coauthored several feature films (including The Fly II and Riding the Bullet) and teleplays (such as Quicksilver Highway and Nightmares & Dreamscapes), as well as directed and produced in many media: cable (including Psycho IV: The Beginning), features (like Sleepwalkers), television films (such as Desperation), series pilots (The Others), and network miniseries (The Stand, The Shining). He created and executive produced the Masters of Horror anthology series of one-hour horror films written and directed by names like John Carpenter and George Romero. He also created the NBC series, Fear Itself. A Life in the Cinema, his first book, is a collection of short stories, and his short fiction has been published in numerous books and magazines. Development Hell is his first novel. Garris lives in Studio City, California, with his wife, Cynthia.

  CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN is the author of such novels as The Myth Hunters, Wildwood Road, The Boys are Back in Town, The Ferryman, Strangewood, Of Saints and Shadows, and (with Tim Lebbon) The Map of Moments. Golden cowrote the lavishly illustrated novel Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire with Mike Mignola. He has also written books for teens and young adults, including Poison Ink, Soulless, and the thriller series Body of Evidence. Upcoming teen novels include a new fantasy series coauthored with Tim Lebbon and entitled The Secret Journeys of Jack London. Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com.

  MIKE MIGNOLA is best known as the award-winning creator/writer/ artist of Hellboy. He was also visual consultant to director Guillermo del Toro on both Hellboy and Hellboy II:The Golden Army. Most recently he was coauthor (with Christopher Golden) of the novel Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire. Mignola lives in Southern California with his wife, daughter, and cat.