First Things First…
I picked up a bunch of Clive Barker’s books over the past few years, and I love his writing. He wrote six books of short stories before any of his novels, so it’ll take me awhile to work through all these. I read the first volume a few years ago and am rereading them now as I review them. This story, I remember, is a framing device for all the rest of the stories. (It’s six volumes that are all Books of Blood.) I remember liking this, but it’s more of a prologue than a full story.
Still, let’s get to it — because some of his stuff I really can’t wait to get to.
4 Things I Like
4. Framing
Let’s start with what I mentioned in the intro — this story is a framing device for all the rest of the Books of Blood.
A bunch of violent ghosts attack this fake psychic named Simon who pisses them off (more on that in a moment) and literally carve their stories into his flesh. These are the stories we’ll be reading.
3. Reg’s Death
Poor Reg.
Reg Fuller is one of only three characters in this story (aside from the nameless dead who attack Simon). He doesn’t do anything wrong.
If anything, he’s a concerned colleague.
And yet, he drops dead just from seeing the hellscape that materializes in place of the hallway he’s in.
This land of the dead that intersects the haunted house they’re investigating appears and…
“The sight killed Fuller in a moment. His mind had no strength to take the panorama in — it could not control the overload that ran through his every nerve.”
So why do I like his death?
It’s not because I don’t like Reg, or because he deserved to die.
But imagine if someone in Stranger Things suddenly saw the Upside Down right where they were standing, while their reality faded away.
It might be so disconcerting… so upsetting… so shocking as to kill the person.
That’s what happens here — it causes Reg to join the ranks of these damned individuals, too, which he doesn’t deserve — but it’s a fascinating concept.
2. Intersections
Barker creates a compelling explanation for haunted houses.
He says the dead’s highways…
“… can be heard in the broken places of the world, through cracks made by acts of cruelty, violence and depravity. Their freight, the wandering dead, can be glimpsed when the heart is close to bursting, and sights that should be hidden come plainly into view.”
So the veil between the living and dead is thinnest in the places where unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence have occurred.
And the house where this story is set is one such place.
This is all in the first paragraph of the story, and it exquisitely sets the scene for the barbarism at story’s end.
1. Anger of the Damned
The souls of the damned don’t take kindly to Simon pretending to see and hear ghosts, writing “their” names and stories on the wall and acting as if he’s some kind of medium with special powers.
And since they’re at one of these intersections where the veil is thin, they’re able to manifest… to fall on him en masse… and carve their stories into his flesh.
They show no mercy.
“The ghosts had despaired on the highway a grieving age, bearing the wounds they had died with, and the insanities they had slaughtered with. They had endured [Simon’s] levity and insolence, his idiocies, the fabrications that had made a game of their ordeals. They wanted to speak the truth.”
And speak it they do.
The language used to describe what they do to Simon, how they tell their stories through him, using him as their Book of Blood, is so visceral, so horrific, I’ll spare quoting it.
But if you love this type of horror, or seeing charlatans and scam artists get their just desserts, you’ll feat on it.
1 Thing I’m Mixed On
1. Simon’s Plan
Simon couldn’t know the house really is haunted — that this highway of the dead really does run through it.
But his plan is still risky at best — if not downright dumb.
He pulls it off until the ghosts arrive only because Mary is so grief-stricken from her husband’s death that she clings to her hope that something she’s been searching for her entire career is real.
And she clings to her infatuation and desire for Simon.
For his part, Simon knows the hold he has over Mary. And he disdains her. But still, hiding shards of lead under his tongue to write the made-up stories on the wall… throwing himself around the room, wailing and carrying on, pretending he’s these ghosts…
I guess I can’t knock it too much because it fools her. And maybe I should give Barker more credit here for creating a character so arrogant he doesn’t even consider he’d get caught.
I don’t know, it still seems like a dumb plan to me.
1 Thing I Don’t Like
1. Still Smitten
After all the horror Simon goes through — having his body deformed and defiled by the ghosts — Mary still loves him. Or is still infatuated with him and ready to take care of him.
That’s not what I have a hard time with.
What I have a hard time with is that she understands why this happens to Simon. When the dead break through, her eyes are opened. She realizes he’s been playing her, making a fool of her…
Yet she’s still so desperate that she doesn’t care.
No one deserves the hellish torture the ghosts inflict on Simon.
But he doesn’t deserve the love of a good woman — a woman he’s been humiliating — either.
Tim Matassa
