Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

CLIVE BARKER – THE SCARLET GOSPELS – 2015

Clive Barker decided to bring back his more than famous Pinhead Cenobite that he brought to life in his novella “The Hellbound Heart” in 1986. The world generally identified as Hell is a parallel though inferior underground universe with a few doors that can be opened with a special Lemarchand box that looks like a complex Chinese lock puzzle that brings that universe and the Cenobites living there into our world. The book became a real legend or myth maybe even a cult with the series of film adapted from it. Nine films in all: “Hellraiser” (1987), “Hellbound: Hellraiser II” (1988), “Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth” (1992), “Hellraiser: Bloodline” (1996), “Hellraiser: Inferno” (2000), “Hellraiser: Hellseeker” (2002), “Hellraiser: Deader” (2005), “Hellraiser: Hellworld” (2005), “Hellraiser: Revelations” (2011). Clive Barker is the writer and director of only the first one. All the others are a franchise with various directors and writers.

Nearly thirty years after the original and four years after the ninth and latest film Clive Barker decides to bring that Pinhead back to life, but in 2015 that Pinhead no longer is the prophet or advocate if not guru of the pleasure of suffering, the bliss of any exquisite torture. We mean of course the pleasure and the bliss of the victims of this torturing. So Clive Barker has to take into account all that has been written after him on his own model, and by written I mean on paper, for the cinema screen, for the TV screen and particularly for and on the virtual screen of the Internet. And that was a challenge for sure but he had to understand we would of course recognize the models.

But first we must note that the Cenobite Pinhead is alone. The Order of the Gash that counts numerous members in Hell is marginal because Pinhead is a solitary being that manages to get ostracized and eventually expelled from the order and from Hell itself by the current boss of the place, the Unconsumed and his police force that is a private military militia more than any “justice for all 14^th amendment” fable. This is a change that has to be justified. And that is the second characteristic of this long novel that no longer is a novella.

It starts with the final killing of four of the last five witches, sorcerers, wizards, or whatever you want to call these magicians who use black magic more often that white or colorless inoffensive entertaining magic. The fifth one of these five, hence the last magician, is turned into a pure dog for Pinhead and by Pinhead. Note at this moment Pinhead impregnates one of the two women of this pentacle. She is brought to delivery on an express path and strangely enough the child disappears from the novel right after its birth though it is brought to teenage within a few pages and a few hours. This disappearance is a bad sign for an author who makes an effort to introduce a twist in the fabric of such a myth about witches and does not use it afterwards.

But here Anne Rice is the main master of witches with her Mayfair family showing that witches can have children. In fact Pinhead killed all magicians and witches to appropriate and confiscate their knowledge, books and knowhow. Actually here and there he uses magic just like in the case of his progeny that is born in a few hours after impregnation and turns into a teenager in a few more hours, and then it disappears for good or bad and forever.

But we recognize many other models and first of all Dante and his “Inferno.” Here too we have a long and picaresque descent into Hell and a description of its cities and geography. Note Clive Barker is not interested in the victims because Hell is only inhabited by monsters who love suffering and being tortured just as much as they love torturing. But of course there will be no Purgatory and no Heaven. Moreover the picaresque trip down there is not a Quixotean fight against windmills but the objective for Pinhead is to take over the position of the founder of Hell, hence Lucifer, and the objective for the heroes of the novel is to destroy Pinhead and Hell if they could, or at least close Hell and neutralize it with Pinhead dead or alive locked up in it.

That leads me to what I will call Clive Barker’s homage to Stephen King. The central hero is a blind black woman, Norma Paine, just like the prophetess of “The Stand” (1978 &1990) is a blind black woman, Mother Abagail. In the same way as in Clive Barker’s novel she is surrounded by a close group of three men and one woman, Harry the straight private detective, Dale and Caz the two gay men and Lana a solitary  straight woman. The gay theme is of course Clive Barker’s. But in the same way as in “The Stand” the blind black woman will die. She dedicates her life to helping the dead to find their way out of suffering. She is blind to the living but she can see the dead. The sacrifice that brings the epiphany of the end is not the “real sacrifice” in “The Stand” of the delegation of the good ones from Boulder by the bad ones led by the Man in Black in Las Vegas. Pinhead has nothing to do with the man in black.

This group of five, a pentacle of course, is referred to as the Harrowers in allusion to the episode of Jesus’ crucifixion: his descent to Hell to save those who had to be saved, Adam and Eve first of all. This episode is called by Clive Barker the Harrowing. Strangely enough, this heavy reference to Jesus and the frequent allusion to God do not imply at all the slightest presence of Heaven that is in fact reduced to the heaven of Hell, which is the stone lid or stopper that closes Hell from any superior sphere, hence closes it underground. Actually this stone heaven of Hell is crucial but over that closing lid there is only the earth and the human world? We have in this novel the total erasing of God and the only priest or preacher mentioned in the book is a super obese anti gay bigot going from one church to the next in a chauffeured limousine.

Yet the parallel with Stephen King is a lot more pregnant when we consider “The Dark Tower” series: “The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger” 1982, “The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three” 1987, “The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands” 1991, “The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass” 1997, “The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla” 2003, “The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah” 2004, “The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower” 2004, “The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole” (2012). The gunslinger, Roland Deschain, who is a gun carrier by profession like Harry, draws three more, Jake Chambers, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, which makes four. One of these three is a legless black woman in a wheel chair. But these four will in fact be five because a doglike billy bumbler Oy will join them. They experience a journey in an underground parallel world that has known better times and in which every spot is a trap. The decay and desolation in this world is the mirror image of what is happening in the human world, of the mistakes made in this human world. In other words it is a fantasy western version of Hell. They have to reach the Dark Tower where they are supposed to deal with the Crimson King (isn’t that color close to the scarlet gospels?), the master of this decaying world. In Clive Barker’s book four of the five have to run after the abducted black blind woman and they cross Hell from end to end that looks like a derelict dilapidated battlefield. They are chasing the Cenobite and his captive. Pinhead has his own program. He is after the White Prince of Hell, Lucifer, who is somewhere in his own dark tower that is in fact a dark cathedral.

When the gunslinger and his friends find the Crimson King everything ends exactly the way it had started and then the journey starts all over again. When Pinhead finds Lucifer, he has to revive him, to steal his armor, and then to try to kill him. Impossible. That leads to a fight that Lucifer might have lost since he did not have his supernatural armor but he does not lose it and he has to go back to the beginning and put himself to death again, since he wants to die, and that is impossible. So what? So what! If you can’t kill yourself, then kill the world.

But the main model of Clive Barker’s book is of course the TV series, “Supernatural.” I will not get into much detail here. It is so obvious with the obsession of Lucifer and the King of Hell. But the main difference is that there is no brotherly pair. Even the two gay men are not brothers of any sort. Gay lovers for sure but no incest, no wincest if you prefer. And yet Lucifer, all kinds of demons, the King of Hell Crowley, etc…, are there, all present, with hardly a change of name, but, main difference, there are no real angels, no struggle in heavens among the archangels and all other supposedly divine creatures. And no sudden descent of creatures from paradise onto earth like as many terminators. God is absent like in “Supernatural” but everything divine is too. And yet Clive Barker’s roots are so strong in this series “Supernatural.” Chasing Lucifer or Crowley, with all kinds of monsters from vampires to Leviathan to shape shifters and tricksters.

But the series “Supernatural” is an entertaining light show. Not so with “The Scarlet Gospels” that is a prophetic book. You cannot destroy Lucifer, since even God could not do it, but you can manipulate that son of God fallen into Hell and make him destroy Hell. At least you can try. But then Lucifer is going to come back because he will not die with Hell, he just plainly cannot die. It is not the same fate for Pinhead but is he really dead and is Lucifer really incognito among us? And the messianic and prophetic details are on every page.

First the miraculous and diabolically surreal pentacles. I have quoted them. Then the systematic ternary references, trinities of all types.

The Cenobite is called Pinhead, the Hell Priest and the Black Inside. And this trinity leads to a pentacle with Cenobite used from time to time as his name and the concluding final Great Pretender (two meanings possible).

In the pentacle of the Harrowers you have three men, the father, the son and the holy spirit I guess, and two women, and there you can choose who you want, the mother or the Holy Virgin or Mary Magdalene or Saint Anne, the grandmother of Jesus and the famous Saint Anne Trinatarian of the Quadrocento.

Among the witches and magicians you also have three men and two women, a trinity contained in a pentacle and one of these men is going to be extracted and turned into an obscenity with no name and no soul, if it had one before.

But that’s where I think we come to a short-coming in this novel. A short coming that is a long coming in fact. The story is slowed down and even made rather stagnant at times because of the length of some descriptions or stories, because of the excessive length of the enumerated and accumulated details. We lose the global vision and the dynamism of the story. That is regrettable. Even worse is the fact that we lose our concentration or even attention.

Altogether it is good because it tries to terminate the story of that Pinhead but a good story should be like a good cockroach. It should always survive extermination. And here we miss that open final page about Pinhead or Lucifer, and the main hero Harry, aka aroldHarold, is promised to humdrum solitude in a humdrum post mortem service: helping the dead to find their way out. But the humor of ”Beetlejuice” is absent, completely absent, since Clive Barker is not at all a humorous person.

A last side remark: Stephen King established the hierarchy Terrorize-Horrify-Gross-out. Too often in this novel we are grossed out and particularly with sexual direct interpellations that are not necessarily always well chosen nor welcome. I felt horrified a few times but never really terrorized or terrified.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU