Books of Blood
Encyclopedia
Books of Blood are a series of horror fiction
collections written by the British
author Clive Barker
.
There are six books in total, each simply subtitled Volume 1 through to Volume 6, and were subsequently re-published in two omnibus editions containing three volumes each. Each volume contains four or five stories. The volume 1-3 omnibus was published with a foreword by Barker's fellow Liverpudlian horror writer Ramsey Campbell
.
They were published between 1984 and 1985. With the publication of the first volume, Barker became an overnight sensation and was hailed by Stephen King
as "the future of horror". The book won both the British
and World Fantasy Award
s.
Although undoubtedly horror stories, like most of Barker's work they mix fantasy
themes in as well. The tales invariably take place in a contemporary setting, usually featuring everyday people
who become embroiled in terrifying or mysterious events. Barker has stated in Faces of Fear
that an inspiration for The Books of Blood was when he read Dark Forces
in the early 1980s and realized that a horror story collection need not have any narrow themes, consistent tone or restrictions. The stories could range from the humorous to the truly horrific.
For some editions, each book's cover was illustrated by Clive Barker himself.
Eighteen of the stories in the Books of Blood were adapted by Eclipse Books in the comic series Tapping the Vein
as well as other titled adaptations.
Several of the stories have been adapted into movies, "Rawhead Rex
" (1986); "The Forbidden" (filmed in 1992 as Candyman
); "The Last Illusion" (filmed in 1995 as Lord of Illusions
); "The Body Politic" (filmed in 1997 as Quicksilver Highway
); "The Midnight Meat Train
" (2008); "The Book of Blood" and "On Jerusalem Street (a postscript)" (combined and filmed in 2008 as Book of Blood), and "Dread
" (2009).
researcher, Mary Florescu, has employed a quack
medium named Simon McNeal to investigate a haunted house
. Alone in an upstairs room, McNeal at first fakes visions, but then the ghosts really do come for him. They attack him and carve words in his flesh, and these words, claims the narrator, form the rest of the stories, stories written on a literal, living Book of Blood. This prologue, along with closing story "On Jerusalem Street" from Volume Six, was adapted and directed into the film Book of Blood
by John Harrison
.
A movie
of the same name was released on August 1, 2008.
The movie, for the most part, seems to follow the storyline of Barker's original design, minus the fact that the creatures themselves are described as having existed "Before the birth of any human, or longer" and it is the train conductor who tells him that he is now their new butcher. Vinnie Jones
starred in the movie.
called the Yattering. This demon is commanded to haunt Jack by Beelzebub
, the "Lord of the Flies", in retaliation for an ancestor of Jack's who did not fulfill his part of a deal he made with Hell. Despite its determined efforts to drive Jack mad, the Yattering is frustrated by his good cheer and apparent obliviousness. Unknown to the Yattering, Jack is well aware of the demon and what it is trying to accomplish. He purposely ignores the demon to frustrate it and to keep from going insane. Bound by the powers of Hell
to stay in Jack's house until it succeeds, the Yattering subjects him to increasingly severe torments, killing his cats and terrorizing his family, but all fail. Eventually Jack tricks it into leaving the house and attacking him, and by violating the orders of its demonic masters, the Yattering becomes Jack's servant. Unusual for Barker's early work, this story is unabashedly comic. It was made into an episode of the horror anthology TV series Tales From The Darkside
.
. A former policeman named Redman, who starts working there, uncovers a deadly secret and a boy named Lacey is the centre of it. Lacey claims that a missing boy by the name of Henessey is actually there on the grounds of the facility, in the form of a ghost. As Redman unravels the mystery he finds that things are not what they seem and the giant pig in the sty located on the north end of the grounds is actually possessed by the soul of Henessey, who transferred his soul into the pig in order to live forever. "This is the state of the beast. ...to eat and be eaten."
play Twelfth Night in a disused and failing theatre called The Elysium. The production is not going well, but Terry is in a distracted affair with his leading lady Viola, Diane Duvall. She was on a soap opera and is a wonderful blow, but, on the stage, is dreadful. A mysterious, rather theatrical man in a mask, Mr. Lichfield, tells him that his wife, Constantia, would have done better. However, aside from the problem of his wife being dead, Terry cannot replace Diane Duvall since her popularity would have such a positive effect on the show's publicity.
Days pass, and Terry worries about the play, but Mr. Lichfield reassures him.
Then, the day of the show Mr. Lichfield catches Terry and Diane in the middle of sex (and after an embarrassing moment for Terry in which he leaves) confronts her about her lack of "style" on the stage and states that his wife will play the role of Viola on the following day's opening night. Diane uncovers the face behind the mask and finds that Mr. Lichfield is actually the walking dead. Mr. Lichfield then kisses Diane and she slips into a coma. His wife is introduced as the new Viola while Diane is taken to intensive care.
However, Diane returns later and finds Terry, stating that they need to "finish". After believing that Diane has recovered, Terry realises that she is in fact dead, while she is giving him fellatio
. She finds out that he knows, and dispatches with him.
The play is performed to a packed house, however, once the performance is finished (and the blinding stage lights are extinguished), the actors realise that the audience were in fact ghosts and corpses in diverse states of decay. The former trustee, newly dead Tallulah, who had been stoking a fire during the production, burns the theatre down. Every living player in the production is killed.
The story ends with several of the actors and Terry joining Mr. Lichfield and Constantia on the road as ghost actors—as they've decided to devote their life, and death, to the art.
. In an isolated rural area, there happens an astounding event: two entire cities, Popolac and Podujevo, create massive communal creatures by binding together the bodies of their citizens, with almost forty thousand people walking as the body of a single giant, as tall as a skyscraper
. It's a ritual that occurs every ten years, but this time, things go wrong, and the Podujevo giant collapses, killing thirty-eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty five citizens horribly.
They come upon the smashed bodies of Podujevo and a ravine awash with blood, but at first do not see the City of Popolac walking behind nearby hills. Meanwhile, in shock, the entire population of Popolac goes mad, and in losing their individual minds actually become the giant they are strapped into. Popolac wanders the hills aimlessly. By nightfall many of the people who made up the giant die from exhaustion, but still it walks.
Mick and Judd are told the truth about the giants by a local man who tried to steal their car in order to catch up with Popolac and reason with it before it collapses and destroys the people who compose it. But they at first do not believe his story. They seek shelter at a remote farm, but Popolac blunders right into the farmhouse that night. Its giant foot kills Judd by accident. The elderly farm couple, who saw Popolac, go crazy with fear. Mick, seeing Popolac, goes insane too, but wants to join Popolac. He climbs up the tower of ropes and bodies, and is carried away as it walks into the hills to its fate.
. He eventually shows Steve how he, Quaid, kidnapped a vegetarian woman and imprisoned her in a room with merely a steak
for sustenance, only releasing her when she finally overcame her dread of eating meat in order to prevent starvation
; she eats the meat even though it has spoiled. Steve becomes Quaid's next candidate for his experiments, held captive in a dark, silent room, forcing him to relive a childhood period of deafness that terrified him. Steve is driven insane by this forced sensory deprivation
and eventually returns to Quaid's house and butchers him with an axe. Quaid's experiments, all along, were to try to help him understand the nature of fear, but ironically his experiments in phobias made his own worst fears come to life.
This story has been made into a film
, with Jackson Rathbone
playing Steve.
. Satan
sends one of his representatives to run it against the (unsuspecting) human runners. If Satan's minion wins, then he, Satan, gets to rule the Earth. An athlete taking part in the event, Joel, begins to realise the true meaning of things and what is at stake when his fellow human competitors begin to fall, savaged by some unseen beast. We also learn of the deal a satanist, Gregory, makes with Hell. He has staked his life and soul on this race. Meanwhile, Joel does not win the race due to a struggle with Hell's shape-shifting runner, who bites off Joel's face. However, the last surviving runner jogs past them to the finishing line. Hell loses out once again. Gregory is hardly surprised when he is punished for his overconfidence by being gruesomely slain.
after becoming bored with her life. She recovers only to find that she has an ability to change people's body shapes simply with her mind. She accidentally kills her therapist and then - somewhat less accidentally - kills her husband, simply by willing their bodies into tearing apart or folding in on themselves. One man becomes obsessed with her and tracks her down. Jacqueline eventually becomes a prostitute, her abilities giving her the power to give men the ultimate sexual experience, albeit one that always proves fatal. She has by now lost control of herself and has to be watched while sleeping in case she unconsciously mutilates her own body. The man obsessed with her eventually makes love to Jacqueline and they willingly die together by Jacqueline's powers.
This story is also published in the book I Shudder at Your Touch.
after his car breaks down. He then witnesses a bizarre parade of freakish monsters. It turns out that these creatures mated with a woman in a nearby town six-years previously and are intending on reclaiming the child, which they promptly achieve. Davidson reaches the town where a posse of gun-toting locals are eager to set out to slay the monsters. Everything goes wrong, however, and Davidson and just a few other survivors end up with a horrific fate; they sink in quicksand
which then hardens when they are half-buried (one man is left with just his face exposed, the rest of him in the solidified ground) and are left for dead in the burning desert heat.
This was used in a scene in the movie, Lord of Illusions, which is in turn based on a book by Barker.
after his friend, Phillipe, is arrested for butchering a young woman. Phillipe eventually commits suicide in his cell after babbling about an orangutan
who committed the murder he had been arrested for. Lewis does not believe it until he sees the primate - dressed like a human, completely shaved, and wielding a razor - for himself. The beast had been raised by Philippe, a notorious eccentric, as a strange experiment on Edgar Allan Poe
's classic story
.
gains sentience, over the years, from the strong emotions of the movie theater's audiences and torments the few people that remain after a show. The sole survivor of the massacre is seen some time later, having tracked down the murderous entity which was roaming the country after possessing the body of a young girl unaccounted for after the events. She covers the creature with acid, killing it completely.
, who surrenders to the violent, depraved impulses that Rawhead represents, and who helps the monster slay the Vicar
, Coot.
Rawhead sets Zeal alight, and is eventually overcome by Ron, father of one of Rawhead's victims, who uses a talisman
to stall the beast until he is overrun by a mob of enraged village folk. The talisman depicts a pregnant woman, Rawhead's antithesis and the only thing he fears.
Rawhead Rex has a structure similar to Alien
or The Thing from Another World
, but uses a disturbing rural setting. It touches on themes of maleness and femaleness and the decline of rural England. The story was later turned into the movie Rawhead Rex
(1986), which Barker has disowned.
cartel. He kills some of his enemies, but is murder
ed by their cohorts. Awakening as a ghost, he possesses the shroud that covers his body in the morgue, and in the shape of the shroud takes revenge on the rest of his enemies. In a gory finale, he enters the mouth of the man responsible for his ordeal and turns him inside out, literally.
Despite containing graphic descriptions of acts of extreme violence, the story is written as a black comedy
, revolving around the visual gag of a real ghost looking like someone wearing a bedsheet over his or her head.
. At the same time, his mind and body transforms; he becomes cold and lifeless, no longer needing to eat or sleep. He finally discovers his doppelganger, the statue from the bath, at his father's grave, crying in sorrow, while he is unmoved. It becomes clear that the doppelganger has become more convincing as a human than he is, and he wanders away, allowing it to continue living in his persona.
, it appears that all our hands have their own consciousness
and are not happy at being ordered what to do by their owners. The hands of a factory worker named Charlie plan to lead the revolution. Charlie's hands even have their own personalities, with Left being more cautious and Right being very determined and even proclaiming himself a Messiah
. Right - against Charlie's own wishes - chops off Left, who scuttles away to summon other hands to do the same before returning to rescue Right, starting an unfortunate revolution for the population. This book was later adapted and used, in part, for the movie Quicksilver Highway
.
for fun. Karney steals a strange knotted piece of string he finds on the vagrant. A keen fan of puzzles, Karney undoes the knots that evening, not knowing that in doing so he is releasing a succession of demons who proceed to kill off his friends. The demons seem progressively more advanced, appearing to evolve with each knot. When he realises what he has done, Karney has to seek out the vagrant for help.
husband named John. They stay at a motel
which is visited by the ghosts of Buck and Sadie, who were married while they were alive, having visited the motel 30 years ago. Sadie murdered Buck at the motel and was subsequently put to death for the murder. Buck and Sadie find that Virginia has the ability to both see and hear them. Meanwhile a scuffle ensues when the preacher discovers their driver had been giving Virginia pills to deal with her anxiety issues, while looking for the driver to confront him about the pills, John finds the married driver in bed with the daughter of the motel owner. Virginia ends up getting her hands on the exact murder weapon Sadie used to kill Buck 30 years prior and accidentally shoots her husband while aiming for Buck.
has deserted him, and he comes up with a plan to build a Hell
on Earth in order to summon Satan
, believing that God will then sweep him (Gregorius) out of Satan's clutches and into His heavenly fold. In his vast Satanic Cathedral
, Gregorious soon loses sight of his original intention of attracting God's attention, and he is captured after torturing hundreds of people to death in the well-equipped torture
chambers. It is deliberately left ambiguous whether Gregorius went insane, or if he really did succeed in tempting Satan into taking residence in his own personal Hell.
runs experiments on volunteers to investigate the libido
and try to develop a chemical aphrodisiac
. One of the experiments goes wrong when a man goes insane with lust. His perpetual state of arousal erodes his respect for morality
or the law
. He rapes, murders and mutilates one of the scientists and then escapes to cause wanton mayhem, eventually burning himself out and dying.
student
named Helen is doing a thesis
on graffiti
, and selects a run-down estate to focus her study. She notices disturbing graffiti in an abandoned building that makes references to some sort of mythical figure, known as the Candyman. Further enquiries lead her to believe this is connected with recent murders and mutilations in the neighbourhood, although the locals are seemingly reluctant to discuss the incidents. She eventually encounters the Candyman himself, gaining notoriety by becoming his latest victim. This book was later adapted and made into the movie Candyman
.
for murderers, where killers are obliged to spend some portion of their after life
in a replica of the scene of their crime. In the end, Tait vanishes from his cell. His grandfather's coffin is exhumed and found to contain Tait curled up next to his dead grandfather. Once released, Cleve finds that he can now hear thoughts, as long as they revolve around killing people. He becomes disillusioned with humanity and later commits a murder himself. He is shot dead by the police and soon finds himself in the murderer's purgatory he previously saw in his dreams.
following a brush with cancer
. Feeling lethargic and empty after the operation, she becomes fascinated by a church that is being demolished. She encounters a cheerfully morbid man named Kavanagh who shares her fascination. The church demolition soon reveals a tomb of plague
victims that had been fermenting for centuries, and Elaine breaks in at night to view the bodies. Later, when her friends begin to die off and when the police come after her, Elaine takes refuge with Kavanagh, who she firmly believes, due to his mysterious personality and skeletal features, to be Death
. It turns out Kavanagh is only a serial killer
and necrophile; he strangles and rapes Elaine. As her soul flees her body, Elaine takes a sick glee in realising that Kavanagh will now be the carrier of the plague she contracted in the tomb and will spread it far and wide.
men, led by a cold-hearted man named Locke, have bought land in the jungles of South America
, uncaring that it is inhabited by a tribe of Amazonian natives. When the tribe refuse to move, Locke's cohort shoots one of them dead accidentally. The elder of the tribe puts a curse on the men which, one by one, strikes them down with a gruesome condition that makes their bodies incredibly delicate; a mote of dust can slice their skin open, the soles of their feet crack when they stand. After his men die off, Locke goes back to the tribe to beg for forgiveness. However, when he gets there, the tribe has been massacred by some of his other colleagues. Locke begins to suffer the symptoms of the deadly curse just as he realises there is now no way of having it removed.
.
by John Harrison
.
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
collections written by the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
author Clive Barker
Clive Barker
Clive Barker is an English author, film director and visual artist best known for his work in both fantasy and horror fiction. Barker came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of short stories which established him as a leading young horror writer...
.
There are six books in total, each simply subtitled Volume 1 through to Volume 6, and were subsequently re-published in two omnibus editions containing three volumes each. Each volume contains four or five stories. The volume 1-3 omnibus was published with a foreword by Barker's fellow Liverpudlian horror writer Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell
John Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction author.Since he first came to prominence in the mid-1960s, critics have cited Campbell as one of the leading writers in his field: T. E. D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today", while S. T...
.
They were published between 1984 and 1985. With the publication of the first volume, Barker became an overnight sensation and was hailed by Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
as "the future of horror". The book won both the British
British Fantasy Award
The British Fantasy Awards are administered annually by the British Fantasy Society and were first awarded in 1971. The membership of the BFS vote to determine recommendations, short-lists and winners of the awards...
and World Fantasy Award
World Fantasy Award
The World Fantasy Awards are annual, international awards given to authors and artists who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in the field of fantasy...
s.
Although undoubtedly horror stories, like most of Barker's work they mix fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
themes in as well. The tales invariably take place in a contemporary setting, usually featuring everyday people
Everyman
In literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances...
who become embroiled in terrifying or mysterious events. Barker has stated in Faces of Fear
Faces of Fear (interview book)
Faces of Fear is a World Fantasy award-winning book where writer, critic and lawyer Douglas E. Winter interviews seventeen contemporary British and American horror writers about their life and art. The writers are V. C. Andrews, Clive Barker, William Peter Blatty, Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell,...
that an inspiration for The Books of Blood was when he read Dark Forces
Dark Forces (book)
Dark Forces: New Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror is an anthology of 23 original horror stories, first published by The Viking Press in 1980 and as a paperback by Bantam Books in 1981. It was edited by New York City literary agent Kirby McCauley...
in the early 1980s and realized that a horror story collection need not have any narrow themes, consistent tone or restrictions. The stories could range from the humorous to the truly horrific.
For some editions, each book's cover was illustrated by Clive Barker himself.
Eighteen of the stories in the Books of Blood were adapted by Eclipse Books in the comic series Tapping the Vein
Tapping the Vein (comic)
Tapping the Vein is a comic series of Clive Barker's short stories from the The Books of Blood published by Eclipse Comics between 1989 and 1992.- Issues :- Related comics :...
as well as other titled adaptations.
Several of the stories have been adapted into movies, "Rawhead Rex
Rawhead Rex (film)
Rawhead Rex is a 1986 Irish horror film directed by George Pavlou and written by Clive Barker. The film is about a monstrous pagan god's bloody rampage through the Irish countryside, and based on the short story by Clive Barker that originally appeared in vol. 3 of his Books of Blood series...
" (1986); "The Forbidden" (filmed in 1992 as Candyman
Candyman (film)
Candyman is a 1992 horror film starring Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd and Xander Berkeley. It was directed by Bernard Rose and is based on the short story "The Forbidden" by Clive Barker, though the film's scenario is switched from England to Chicago. The film was scored by Philip Glass. The film was...
); "The Last Illusion" (filmed in 1995 as Lord of Illusions
Lord of Illusions
Lord of Illusions is a 1995 American horror film, written and directed by the British author, filmmaker and artist Clive Barker. The film is based on his earlier short story, The Last Illusion , and it presents Barker's signature character Harry D'Amour onscreen for the first time. It stars Scott...
); "The Body Politic" (filmed in 1997 as Quicksilver Highway
Quicksilver Highway
Quicksilver Highway is a 1997 horror film directed by Mick Garris. It is based on Clive Barker's short story The Body Politic and Stephen King's short story Chattery Teeth...
); "The Midnight Meat Train
The Midnight Meat Train
The Midnight Meat Train is a 2008 horror film based on Clive Barker's 1984 short story of the same name, which can be found in Volume One of Barker's collection Books of Blood...
" (2008); "The Book of Blood" and "On Jerusalem Street (a postscript)" (combined and filmed in 2008 as Book of Blood), and "Dread
Dread (film)
Dread is a 2009 horror film directed by Anthony DiBlasi and starring Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Evans and Hanne Steen, based on the short story of the same name by Clive Barker...
" (2009).
The Book of Blood
This is the frame story for the entire Books of Blood series. A psychicPsychic
A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...
researcher, Mary Florescu, has employed a quack
Quackery
Quackery is a derogatory term used to describe the promotion of unproven or fraudulent medical practices. Random House Dictionary describes a "quack" as a "fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, knowledge, or...
medium named Simon McNeal to investigate a haunted house
Haunted house
A haunted house is a house or other building often perceived as being inhabited by disembodied spirits of the deceased who may have been former residents or were familiar with the property...
. Alone in an upstairs room, McNeal at first fakes visions, but then the ghosts really do come for him. They attack him and carve words in his flesh, and these words, claims the narrator, form the rest of the stories, stories written on a literal, living Book of Blood. This prologue, along with closing story "On Jerusalem Street" from Volume Six, was adapted and directed into the film Book of Blood
Book of Blood
Book of Blood is a 2008 British Mystery-Drama-horror film directed by John Harrison and stars Jonas Armstrong, Sophie Ward and Doug Bradley.-Plot:...
by John Harrison
John Harrison (filmmaker)
John Harrison is a writer, director, producer and composer.Harrison was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. He graduated from Emerson College in Boston with a BS in Theater Arts. For several years after that, he performed on the road with his band Homebrew before moving back to Pittsburgh to take a...
.
The Midnight Meat Train
A down-and-out man, Leon Kaufman, falls asleep on a New York subway train, only to wake up at a secret station beyond the end of the line. Kaufman encounters a man named Mahogany, who has killed and butchered several people and hung their bodies up on the train. Mahogany remarks that he will be forced to kill Kaufman to guard his secrets. Kaufman fights Mahogany and kills him in self-defense, but then the train doors open and strange malformed creatures board the train. The creatures eat the dead passengers, then force Kaufman to serve them as their new butcher, cutting out his tongue to ensure his silence. They tell Kaufman that Mahogany was getting old and could not do the job any longer, and that Kaufman now has a new career. It is also revealed that the creatures have also been the secret rulers of New York City for centuries. The police have always covered up for the creatures. Kaufman finds he now has lifetime employment.A movie
The Midnight Meat Train
The Midnight Meat Train is a 2008 horror film based on Clive Barker's 1984 short story of the same name, which can be found in Volume One of Barker's collection Books of Blood...
of the same name was released on August 1, 2008.
The movie, for the most part, seems to follow the storyline of Barker's original design, minus the fact that the creatures themselves are described as having existed "Before the birth of any human, or longer" and it is the train conductor who tells him that he is now their new butcher. Vinnie Jones
Vinnie Jones
Vincent Peter "Vinnie" Jones is an English film actor and retired Welsh footballer.Born in Hertfordshire, England, Jones represented and captained the Welsh national football team, having qualified via a Welsh grandparent. He also previously played for Chelsea and Leeds United. As a member of the...
starred in the movie.
The Yattering and Jack
Jack Polo is a gherkin importer who's haunted by a minor demonDemon
call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...
called the Yattering. This demon is commanded to haunt Jack by Beelzebub
Beelzebub
Beelzebub -Religious meaning:Ba‘al Zəbûb is variously understood to mean "lord of flies", or "lord of the dwelling". Originally the name of a Philistine god, Beelzebub is also identified in the New Testament as Satan, the "prince of the demons". In Arabic the name is retained as Ba‘al dhubaab /...
, the "Lord of the Flies", in retaliation for an ancestor of Jack's who did not fulfill his part of a deal he made with Hell. Despite its determined efforts to drive Jack mad, the Yattering is frustrated by his good cheer and apparent obliviousness. Unknown to the Yattering, Jack is well aware of the demon and what it is trying to accomplish. He purposely ignores the demon to frustrate it and to keep from going insane. Bound by the powers of Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
to stay in Jack's house until it succeeds, the Yattering subjects him to increasingly severe torments, killing his cats and terrorizing his family, but all fail. Eventually Jack tricks it into leaving the house and attacking him, and by violating the orders of its demonic masters, the Yattering becomes Jack's servant. Unusual for Barker's early work, this story is unabashedly comic. It was made into an episode of the horror anthology TV series Tales From The Darkside
Tales from the Darkside
Tales from the Darkside is an anthology horror TV series produced by George A. Romero; it originally aired from 1983 to 1988. Similar to Amazing Stories, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, The Outer Limits, and Tales From The Crypt, each episode was an individual short story that ended with a plot...
.
Pig Blood Blues
A supernatural story set in a borstalBorstal
A borstal was a type of youth prison in the United Kingdom, run by the Prison Service and intended to reform seriously delinquent young people. The word is sometimes used loosely to apply to other kinds of youth institution or reformatory, such as Approved Schools and Detention Centres. The court...
. A former policeman named Redman, who starts working there, uncovers a deadly secret and a boy named Lacey is the centre of it. Lacey claims that a missing boy by the name of Henessey is actually there on the grounds of the facility, in the form of a ghost. As Redman unravels the mystery he finds that things are not what they seem and the giant pig in the sty located on the north end of the grounds is actually possessed by the soul of Henessey, who transferred his soul into the pig in order to live forever. "This is the state of the beast. ...to eat and be eaten."
Sex, Death and Starshine
Terry Calloway is directing the William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
play Twelfth Night in a disused and failing theatre called The Elysium. The production is not going well, but Terry is in a distracted affair with his leading lady Viola, Diane Duvall. She was on a soap opera and is a wonderful blow, but, on the stage, is dreadful. A mysterious, rather theatrical man in a mask, Mr. Lichfield, tells him that his wife, Constantia, would have done better. However, aside from the problem of his wife being dead, Terry cannot replace Diane Duvall since her popularity would have such a positive effect on the show's publicity.
Days pass, and Terry worries about the play, but Mr. Lichfield reassures him.
Then, the day of the show Mr. Lichfield catches Terry and Diane in the middle of sex (and after an embarrassing moment for Terry in which he leaves) confronts her about her lack of "style" on the stage and states that his wife will play the role of Viola on the following day's opening night. Diane uncovers the face behind the mask and finds that Mr. Lichfield is actually the walking dead. Mr. Lichfield then kisses Diane and she slips into a coma. His wife is introduced as the new Viola while Diane is taken to intensive care.
However, Diane returns later and finds Terry, stating that they need to "finish". After believing that Diane has recovered, Terry realises that she is in fact dead, while she is giving him fellatio
Fellatio
Fellatio is an act of oral stimulation of a male's penis by a sexual partner. It involves the stimulation of the penis by the use of the mouth, tongue, or throat. The person who performs fellatio can be referred to as the giving partner, and the other person is the receiving partner...
. She finds out that he knows, and dispatches with him.
The play is performed to a packed house, however, once the performance is finished (and the blinding stage lights are extinguished), the actors realise that the audience were in fact ghosts and corpses in diverse states of decay. The former trustee, newly dead Tallulah, who had been stoking a fire during the production, burns the theatre down. Every living player in the production is killed.
The story ends with several of the actors and Terry joining Mr. Lichfield and Constantia on the road as ghost actors—as they've decided to devote their life, and death, to the art.
In the Hills, the Cities
Two gay men, Mick and Judd, go on a romantic but strained vacation in YugoslaviaYugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
. In an isolated rural area, there happens an astounding event: two entire cities, Popolac and Podujevo, create massive communal creatures by binding together the bodies of their citizens, with almost forty thousand people walking as the body of a single giant, as tall as a skyscraper
Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...
. It's a ritual that occurs every ten years, but this time, things go wrong, and the Podujevo giant collapses, killing thirty-eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty five citizens horribly.
They come upon the smashed bodies of Podujevo and a ravine awash with blood, but at first do not see the City of Popolac walking behind nearby hills. Meanwhile, in shock, the entire population of Popolac goes mad, and in losing their individual minds actually become the giant they are strapped into. Popolac wanders the hills aimlessly. By nightfall many of the people who made up the giant die from exhaustion, but still it walks.
Mick and Judd are told the truth about the giants by a local man who tried to steal their car in order to catch up with Popolac and reason with it before it collapses and destroys the people who compose it. But they at first do not believe his story. They seek shelter at a remote farm, but Popolac blunders right into the farmhouse that night. Its giant foot kills Judd by accident. The elderly farm couple, who saw Popolac, go crazy with fear. Mick, seeing Popolac, goes insane too, but wants to join Popolac. He climbs up the tower of ropes and bodies, and is carried away as it walks into the hills to its fate.
Dread
A young student, Steve, becomes acquainted with an older student named Quaid. Quaid is an intellectual with a morbid fascination with fearFear
Fear is a distressing negative sensation induced by a perceived threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger...
. He eventually shows Steve how he, Quaid, kidnapped a vegetarian woman and imprisoned her in a room with merely a steak
Steak
A steak is a cut of meat . Most are cut perpendicular to the muscle fibers, improving the perceived tenderness of the meat. In North America, steaks are typically served grilled, pan-fried, or broiled. The more tender cuts from the loin and rib are cooked quickly, using dry heat, and served whole...
for sustenance, only releasing her when she finally overcame her dread of eating meat in order to prevent starvation
Starvation
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy, nutrient and vitamin intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death...
; she eats the meat even though it has spoiled. Steve becomes Quaid's next candidate for his experiments, held captive in a dark, silent room, forcing him to relive a childhood period of deafness that terrified him. Steve is driven insane by this forced sensory deprivation
Sensory deprivation
Sensory deprivation or perceptual isolation is the deliberate reduction or removal of stimuli from one or more of the senses. Simple devices such as blindfolds or hoods and earmuffs can cut off sight and hearing respectively, while more complex devices can also cut off the sense of smell, touch,...
and eventually returns to Quaid's house and butchers him with an axe. Quaid's experiments, all along, were to try to help him understand the nature of fear, but ironically his experiments in phobias made his own worst fears come to life.
This story has been made into a film
Dread (film)
Dread is a 2009 horror film directed by Anthony DiBlasi and starring Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Evans and Hanne Steen, based on the short story of the same name by Clive Barker...
, with Jackson Rathbone
Jackson Rathbone
Monroe Jackson Rathbone, V , better known as Jackson Rathbone, is an American actor and musician. He is perhaps best known for his role as Jasper Hale in The Twilight Saga and for playing Sokka in The Last Airbender....
playing Steve.
Hell's Event
Every one-hundred years, a race is held in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
sends one of his representatives to run it against the (unsuspecting) human runners. If Satan's minion wins, then he, Satan, gets to rule the Earth. An athlete taking part in the event, Joel, begins to realise the true meaning of things and what is at stake when his fellow human competitors begin to fall, savaged by some unseen beast. We also learn of the deal a satanist, Gregory, makes with Hell. He has staked his life and soul on this race. Meanwhile, Joel does not win the race due to a struggle with Hell's shape-shifting runner, who bites off Joel's face. However, the last surviving runner jogs past them to the finishing line. Hell loses out once again. Gregory is hardly surprised when he is punished for his overconfidence by being gruesomely slain.
Jacqueline Ess: Her Will And Testament
Jacqueline Ess is a housewife who attempts suicideSuicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
after becoming bored with her life. She recovers only to find that she has an ability to change people's body shapes simply with her mind. She accidentally kills her therapist and then - somewhat less accidentally - kills her husband, simply by willing their bodies into tearing apart or folding in on themselves. One man becomes obsessed with her and tracks her down. Jacqueline eventually becomes a prostitute, her abilities giving her the power to give men the ultimate sexual experience, albeit one that always proves fatal. She has by now lost control of herself and has to be watched while sleeping in case she unconsciously mutilates her own body. The man obsessed with her eventually makes love to Jacqueline and they willingly die together by Jacqueline's powers.
This story is also published in the book I Shudder at Your Touch.
The Skins of the Fathers
Davidson is stuck in ArizonaArizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
after his car breaks down. He then witnesses a bizarre parade of freakish monsters. It turns out that these creatures mated with a woman in a nearby town six-years previously and are intending on reclaiming the child, which they promptly achieve. Davidson reaches the town where a posse of gun-toting locals are eager to set out to slay the monsters. Everything goes wrong, however, and Davidson and just a few other survivors end up with a horrific fate; they sink in quicksand
Quicksand
Quicksand is a colloid hydrogel consisting of fine granular matter , clay, and water.Water circulation underground can focus in an area with the optimal mixture of fine sands and other materials such as clay. The water moves up and then down slowly in a convection-like manner throughout a column...
which then hardens when they are half-buried (one man is left with just his face exposed, the rest of him in the solidified ground) and are left for dead in the burning desert heat.
This was used in a scene in the movie, Lord of Illusions, which is in turn based on a book by Barker.
New Murders in the Rue Morgue
Lewis is a seventy-three-year-old man who goes to ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
after his friend, Phillipe, is arrested for butchering a young woman. Phillipe eventually commits suicide in his cell after babbling about an orangutan
Orangutan
Orangutans are the only exclusively Asian genus of extant great ape. The largest living arboreal animals, they have proportionally longer arms than the other, more terrestrial, great apes. They are among the most intelligent primates and use a variety of sophisticated tools, also making sleeping...
who committed the murder he had been arrested for. Lewis does not believe it until he sees the primate - dressed like a human, completely shaved, and wielding a razor - for himself. The beast had been raised by Philippe, a notorious eccentric, as a strange experiment on Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
's classic story
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. It has been claimed as the first detective story; Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination". Two works that share some similarities predate Poe's stories, including Das...
.
Son of Celluloid
An escaped convict dies behind a movie screen. After his death, his cancerous tumorTumor
A tumor or tumour is commonly used as a synonym for a neoplasm that appears enlarged in size. Tumor is not synonymous with cancer...
gains sentience, over the years, from the strong emotions of the movie theater's audiences and torments the few people that remain after a show. The sole survivor of the massacre is seen some time later, having tracked down the murderous entity which was roaming the country after possessing the body of a young girl unaccounted for after the events. She covers the creature with acid, killing it completely.
Rawhead Rex
An ancient, malevolent monster, magically imprisoned underground, is accidentally awakened in the town of Zeal, Kent. Rawhead is a nine-foot humanoid with a huge, toothed head, and is extremely ferocious. Rawhead goes on a rampage, killing and eating people, including two children. He corrupts the local VergerVerger
A verger is a person, usually a layman, who assists in the ordering of religious services, particularly in Anglican churches.-History:...
, who surrenders to the violent, depraved impulses that Rawhead represents, and who helps the monster slay the Vicar
Vicar
In the broadest sense, a vicar is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior . In this sense, the title is comparable to lieutenant...
, Coot.
Rawhead sets Zeal alight, and is eventually overcome by Ron, father of one of Rawhead's victims, who uses a talisman
Amulet
An amulet, similar to a talisman , is any object intended to bring good luck or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants and animals; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—, to...
to stall the beast until he is overrun by a mob of enraged village folk. The talisman depicts a pregnant woman, Rawhead's antithesis and the only thing he fears.
Rawhead Rex has a structure similar to Alien
Alien (film)
Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature which...
or The Thing from Another World
The Thing from Another World
The Thing from Another World , is a 1951 science fiction film based on the 1938 novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell . It tells the story of an Air Force crew and scientists at a remote Arctic research outpost who fight a malevolent plant-based alien being...
, but uses a disturbing rural setting. It touches on themes of maleness and femaleness and the decline of rural England. The story was later turned into the movie Rawhead Rex
Rawhead Rex (film)
Rawhead Rex is a 1986 Irish horror film directed by George Pavlou and written by Clive Barker. The film is about a monstrous pagan god's bloody rampage through the Irish countryside, and based on the short story by Clive Barker that originally appeared in vol. 3 of his Books of Blood series...
(1986), which Barker has disowned.
Confessions of a (Pornographer's) Shroud
Ronnie is a strait-laced Catholic man who is set up to look like the king of a pornographyPornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
cartel. He kills some of his enemies, but is murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
ed by their cohorts. Awakening as a ghost, he possesses the shroud that covers his body in the morgue, and in the shape of the shroud takes revenge on the rest of his enemies. In a gory finale, he enters the mouth of the man responsible for his ordeal and turns him inside out, literally.
Despite containing graphic descriptions of acts of extreme violence, the story is written as a black comedy
Black comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...
, revolving around the visual gag of a real ghost looking like someone wearing a bedsheet over his or her head.
Scape-Goats
A yacht is stranded on the beach of a deserted island. The island is located at a point in the North Atlantic ocean where converging undersea currents bring all the human bodies of sailors and those who drown in the sea. The hundreds of bodies littering the ocean floor, unfortunately for the stranded crew, aren't as dead as they should be.Human Remains
A young gay prostitute is hired by an archeologist. During the course of night he stumbles into the bathroom to discover a Roman-esque statue of a man lying in the bath. Over the next few weeks he has the sense of being followed and being haunted by a doppelgängerDoppelgänger
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...
. At the same time, his mind and body transforms; he becomes cold and lifeless, no longer needing to eat or sleep. He finally discovers his doppelganger, the statue from the bath, at his father's grave, crying in sorrow, while he is unmoved. It becomes clear that the doppelganger has become more convincing as a human than he is, and he wanders away, allowing it to continue living in his persona.
The Body Politic
In a bizarre version of a revolutionRevolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
, it appears that all our hands have their own consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
and are not happy at being ordered what to do by their owners. The hands of a factory worker named Charlie plan to lead the revolution. Charlie's hands even have their own personalities, with Left being more cautious and Right being very determined and even proclaiming himself a Messiah
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
. Right - against Charlie's own wishes - chops off Left, who scuttles away to summon other hands to do the same before returning to rescue Right, starting an unfortunate revolution for the population. This book was later adapted and used, in part, for the movie Quicksilver Highway
Quicksilver Highway
Quicksilver Highway is a 1997 horror film directed by Mick Garris. It is based on Clive Barker's short story The Body Politic and Stephen King's short story Chattery Teeth...
.
The Inhuman Condition
A young man named Karney and his friends beat up a vagrantVagrancy (people)
A vagrant is a person in poverty, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular employment or income.-Definition:A vagrant is "a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging;" vagrancy is the condition of such persons.-History:In...
for fun. Karney steals a strange knotted piece of string he finds on the vagrant. A keen fan of puzzles, Karney undoes the knots that evening, not knowing that in doing so he is releasing a succession of demons who proceed to kill off his friends. The demons seem progressively more advanced, appearing to evolve with each knot. When he realises what he has done, Karney has to seek out the vagrant for help.
Revelations
A woman named Virginia is unwillingly taken on a tour of the USA by her unfeeling preacherPreacher
Preacher is a term for someone who preaches sermons or gives homilies. A preacher is distinct from a theologian by focusing on the communication rather than the development of doctrine. Others see preaching and theology as being intertwined...
husband named John. They stay at a motel
Motel
A motor hotel, or motel for short, is a hotel designed for motorists, and usually has a parking area for motor vehicles...
which is visited by the ghosts of Buck and Sadie, who were married while they were alive, having visited the motel 30 years ago. Sadie murdered Buck at the motel and was subsequently put to death for the murder. Buck and Sadie find that Virginia has the ability to both see and hear them. Meanwhile a scuffle ensues when the preacher discovers their driver had been giving Virginia pills to deal with her anxiety issues, while looking for the driver to confront him about the pills, John finds the married driver in bed with the daughter of the motel owner. Virginia ends up getting her hands on the exact murder weapon Sadie used to kill Buck 30 years prior and accidentally shoots her husband while aiming for Buck.
Down, Satan!
One of the shortest stories relates the tale of a wealthy middle-aged businessman, Gregorius, who becomes depressed when he believes GodGod
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
has deserted him, and he comes up with a plan to build a Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
on Earth in order to summon Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
, believing that God will then sweep him (Gregorius) out of Satan's clutches and into His heavenly fold. In his vast Satanic Cathedral
Cathedral
A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop...
, Gregorious soon loses sight of his original intention of attracting God's attention, and he is captured after torturing hundreds of people to death in the well-equipped torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
chambers. It is deliberately left ambiguous whether Gregorius went insane, or if he really did succeed in tempting Satan into taking residence in his own personal Hell.
The Age Of Desire
A private laboratoryLaboratory
A laboratory is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. The title of laboratory is also used for certain other facilities where the processes or equipment used are similar to those in scientific laboratories...
runs experiments on volunteers to investigate the libido
Libido
Libido refers to a person's sex drive or desire for sexual activity. The desire for sex is an aspect of a person's sexuality, but varies enormously from one person to another, and it also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly...
and try to develop a chemical aphrodisiac
Aphrodisiac
An aphrodisiac is a substance that increases sexual desire. The name comes from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexuality and love. Throughout history, many foods, drinks, and behaviors have had a reputation for making sex more attainable and/or pleasurable...
. One of the experiments goes wrong when a man goes insane with lust. His perpetual state of arousal erodes his respect for morality
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
or the law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
. He rapes, murders and mutilates one of the scientists and then escapes to cause wanton mayhem, eventually burning himself out and dying.
The Forbidden
A UniversityUniversity
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
student
Student
A student is a learner, or someone who attends an educational institution. In some nations, the English term is reserved for those who attend university, while a schoolchild under the age of eighteen is called a pupil in English...
named Helen is doing a thesis
Thesis
A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...
on graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
, and selects a run-down estate to focus her study. She notices disturbing graffiti in an abandoned building that makes references to some sort of mythical figure, known as the Candyman. Further enquiries lead her to believe this is connected with recent murders and mutilations in the neighbourhood, although the locals are seemingly reluctant to discuss the incidents. She eventually encounters the Candyman himself, gaining notoriety by becoming his latest victim. This book was later adapted and made into the movie Candyman
Candyman (film)
Candyman is a 1992 horror film starring Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd and Xander Berkeley. It was directed by Bernard Rose and is based on the short story "The Forbidden" by Clive Barker, though the film's scenario is switched from England to Chicago. The film was scored by Philip Glass. The film was...
.
The Madonna
A man named Jerry is trying to talk a local shady businessman into financing the redevelopment of an old swimming pool complex. However, the swimming pool has some mysterious inhabitants in the form of nude teenage girls who flee should Jerry or his would-be financial backer encounter them. A swimming pool in the centre is, unlike the other pools in the building, full, and glows with a strange light and appears to be inhabited by some misshapen life-form. Curiosity leads Jerry to return to the place, which somehow causes him to wake up one morning to see that he has been transformed into a woman.Babel's Children
After breaking down in the middle of nowhere, a young woman happens across a secluded compound in which the world's greatest minds, a group of elderly scientists and scholars, are responsible for determining the outcome of major world events. They have lived in the complex for many years and by this point their decisions have degenerated to being made solely via games of chance. Chaos ensues when the woman and the men seek to flee the compound. They end up getting in a car accident and all the elders are killed with the exception of the single one who refused to go along. The woman is forced to participate in the games of chance with him until replacements can be found.In The Flesh
A career criminal named Cleve has a new cellmate, a mysterious young man called Tait who admits that he committed a crime with the sole intention of coming to this particular prison. Tait believes he has been summoned there by his grandfather, a supposedly powerful sorcerer, who is buried in the jail having been executed for murder years before. Cleve is later haunted by dreams in which he is in a form of purgatoryPurgatory
Purgatory is the condition or process of purification or temporary punishment in which, it is believed, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven...
for murderers, where killers are obliged to spend some portion of their after life
After Life
After Life, known in Japan as , is a 1998 film by Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda starring Arata, Oda Erika and Terajima Susumu.-Plot summary:...
in a replica of the scene of their crime. In the end, Tait vanishes from his cell. His grandfather's coffin is exhumed and found to contain Tait curled up next to his dead grandfather. Once released, Cleve finds that he can now hear thoughts, as long as they revolve around killing people. He becomes disillusioned with humanity and later commits a murder himself. He is shot dead by the police and soon finds himself in the murderer's purgatory he previously saw in his dreams.
The Life of Death
Elaine, a 36-year-old woman, has just had a hysterectomyHysterectomy
A hysterectomy is the surgical removal of the uterus, usually performed by a gynecologist. Hysterectomy may be total or partial...
following a brush with cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
. Feeling lethargic and empty after the operation, she becomes fascinated by a church that is being demolished. She encounters a cheerfully morbid man named Kavanagh who shares her fascination. The church demolition soon reveals a tomb of plague
Bubonic plague
Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
victims that had been fermenting for centuries, and Elaine breaks in at night to view the bodies. Later, when her friends begin to die off and when the police come after her, Elaine takes refuge with Kavanagh, who she firmly believes, due to his mysterious personality and skeletal features, to be Death
Death (personification)
The concept of death as a sentient entity has existed in many societies since the beginning of history. In English, Death is often given the name Grim Reaper and, from the 15th century onwards, came to be shown as a skeletal figure carrying a large scythe and clothed in a black cloak with a hood...
. It turns out Kavanagh is only a serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
and necrophile; he strangles and rapes Elaine. As her soul flees her body, Elaine takes a sick glee in realising that Kavanagh will now be the carrier of the plague she contracted in the tomb and will spread it far and wide.
How Spoilers Bleed
Several EuropeanEuropean ethnic groups
The ethnic groups in Europe are the various ethnic groups that reside in the nations of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....
men, led by a cold-hearted man named Locke, have bought land in the jungles of South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, uncaring that it is inhabited by a tribe of Amazonian natives. When the tribe refuse to move, Locke's cohort shoots one of them dead accidentally. The elder of the tribe puts a curse on the men which, one by one, strikes them down with a gruesome condition that makes their bodies incredibly delicate; a mote of dust can slice their skin open, the soles of their feet crack when they stand. After his men die off, Locke goes back to the tribe to beg for forgiveness. However, when he gets there, the tribe has been massacred by some of his other colleagues. Locke begins to suffer the symptoms of the deadly curse just as he realises there is now no way of having it removed.
Twilight At The Towers
A British agent (Ballard) stationed in Berlin meets with a Russian KGB man (Mironenko). After their meet, the KGB man disappears. Ballard witnesses a vicious mauling, then soon learns that he and Mironenko are both werewolves, trained by each agency to defeat the other. Both governments raid their meeting place, causing Mironenko to transform fully. Ballard runs and wakes up in a fellow operatives house. Ballard's rival (Suckling) arrives and kills the agent, only to be killed by the transformed Ballard. Ballard seeks Mironenko, and finds him preaching to a group of wolves, verbally preparing them to overthrow humankind.The Last Illusion
The private investigator Harry D'Amour takes a strange case where a magician named Swann has been killed under mysterious circumstances. D'Amour is recruited by Swann's wife to watch over his body so he can be cremated in line with a letter written before his death. Almost immediately, D'Amour is drawn into a mystery beyond this world and enters a survival battle with disgusting demons from the underworld seeking to claim Swann's body due to a deal he made with them which gave him the magical powers he possessed. With the assistance of Swann's underling Valentin, who is secretly a demon himself, D'Amour fights off the demons desiring Swann's body and manages to cremate it, but not before Swann performs one last magical act. This story was later adapted by Barker himself into the film Lord of IllusionsLord of Illusions
Lord of Illusions is a 1995 American horror film, written and directed by the British author, filmmaker and artist Clive Barker. The film is based on his earlier short story, The Last Illusion , and it presents Barker's signature character Harry D'Amour onscreen for the first time. It stars Scott...
.
On Jerusalem Street (a postscript)
Only included in some UK editions of the Books of Blood, "On Jerusalem Street" is a sequel to The Book of Blood from Volume One told as a sort of wrap-around tale. Wyburd is hired to obtain the Book of Blood for a collector. He captures and skins Simon McNeal. Later, the skin starts to bleed and won't stop, and Wyburd eventually drowns. He ends up on the Highways of the dead where he tells his story. This story, along with the prologue from Volume One, was adapted and directed into the film Book of BloodBook of Blood
Book of Blood is a 2008 British Mystery-Drama-horror film directed by John Harrison and stars Jonas Armstrong, Sophie Ward and Doug Bradley.-Plot:...
by John Harrison
John Harrison (filmmaker)
John Harrison is a writer, director, producer and composer.Harrison was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. He graduated from Emerson College in Boston with a BS in Theater Arts. For several years after that, he performed on the road with his band Homebrew before moving back to Pittsburgh to take a...
.
External links
- Revelations - The Official Clive Barker Online Resource - Includes a full bibliography, filmography and frequently updated news.