I love Clive Barker. Anyone who frequents this review blog
will know that as I’ve reviewed both Books
of Blood vol. 1 and Coldheart Canyon.
Today’s review is not from Barker himself, but from a short story collection
featuring stories based on his classic horror novella The Hellbound Heart, and although Barker did not write any of the
stories, it is still a treat to read.
In short, Hellbound
Hearts is an anthology that is based on the critically acclaimed novella The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker.
It’s a collection of twenty-one stories, all from authors of different walks of
fiction, which expand and explore the merciless realm of the demonic Cenobites,
of the puzzles that call them forth, and the types of people that would dare
summon them.
There were quite a few that caught my attention and held it
without pause until I had finished it, but the one that sticks out most
prominently after having read all of them, is Every Wrong Turn by Tim Lebbon.
Tim Lebbon is a veteran dark fantasy and horror writer. His
short story Reconstructing Amy won the Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction in
2001, and his novel Dusk won the August Derleth Award in 2007. He’s had a few
things appear on the New York Times bestseller list and won a Scribe Award in
2008. All in all, the man knows his way about short story, horror fiction, and
the mythos that Barker created with The
Hellbound Heart was perfect or Lebbon to work and expand in his own way.
Every Wrong Turn is
a story about a man–who remains unnamed–exploring a labyrinth that shows him
all the sins he has committed through his lifetime. He sees himself beating and
raping his wife Michelle, killing a so-called friend that he thought was a
charlatan, abandoning his daughter Jenny, and more. While we see little about
the above mentioned characters, we get a good, long look at the unnamed main
character. He’s a fiend: rape, murder, child abuse, anger, violence–the list is
long. We see his past transgressions and loath him for it. But so does her.
He’s remorseful of his actions and becomes more panicked and desperate as he
realizes that even though he’s been living with these memories, it’s a
horrifying experience to smell and hear them again. He wants to–needs to–be punished for them so that he
might have some sort of peace in his life. It’s an interesting angle to work
from having your main character seeking redemption for his actions but not have
the audience feel sorry for him. Trust me, the guy is a monster and no matter
how badly he wants forgiveness, the author sees that he doesn’t get it, from us
or himself.
The location of the piece takes place entirely within some
sort of ethereal labyrinth, created long ago by a man who then became lost in
his creation. The labyrinth holds the pasts of everyone who enters, and as you
move further into it, your sins are shown to you: the worse they become the
further in your go. The labyrinth is a very interesting place for this story to
take place. Is it an alternate dimension? A delusion of a crazy mind? Perhaps a
glimpse into the future, or your life flashing before your eyes before you die.
It’s never said exactly what it is and it’s up to the reader to decide what
they want to believe.
The themes of Every
Wrong Turn, like the story it’s based on, involve pain and pleasure
interweaving into something greater. The labyrinth is a supposed gateway to
hell but scores of people have still tried to make their way through it in
search of something they can’t find on Earth. There’s also a theme of memories
as the unnamed man has to confront his past, each memory becoming worse and
worse as he gets further into the labyrinth. He’s searching for the centre of
the maze because he believes it will bring him some kind of peace from his
memories, but the story shows us that to leave bad feelings behind, we must
first face them head on: whether we like it or not.
My final thoughts on Every
Wrong Turn are that Lebbon created one hell of a short story. Strangely, it
was not my favourite one within the collection, but it is the one that is
staying with me the most. There was just something about the way the unnamed
main character is forced to explore his dark memories that… well, disturbed me.
There was no puzzle box, no classic Cenobites to speak of, but what the
character experienced terrified me more than Cenobites ever have! And I think
that because I have no idea why that’s the case–why these memories that someone
else and not myself is reliving are capable of disturbing me so much more than
demons from a torture dimension… it’s just fascinating. It adds a whole new
layer to Barker’s mythos and left me feeling unsettled and anxious, and–in the
end–isn’t that what good horror fiction is all about?
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