This was the book that Clive himself adapted and directed into Hellraiser, which launched the entire Hellraiser franchise. The 2022 film reboot serves as another (and somewhat Truer to the Text) adaptation of the novella.
Clive wrote a sequel novel, The Scarlet Gospels, in 2015.
The original novella provides examples of:
- Ambiguously Bi: Though her interest is in Rory, Kirsty is shown to find it hard not to stare at Julia and notice how attractive she is, but though this interest can easily be read as un-self-aware sapphic desire, it's clear from the rest of her inner monologue that Kirsty at the very least doesn't think of it as such, and thus never acts on it."She surreptitiously watched Julia as she worked, and it seemed to Kirsty that the woman was incapable of ugliness. Every gesture [was] infused with such effortless grace. Seeing it, she understood Rory’s doglike adulation."
- And I Must Scream: The fate of pretty much everyone who opens the Lament Configuration and ultimately the fate of both Frank and Julia. Those who open the box are made immortal on the other side of the schism, and are thus able to be subjected to horrific torture that would kill them otherwise and endlessly endure more of it. While it's never explicitly stated exactly what it is the Cenobites do to their victims, considering the state Frank returns in, it's probably best left unsaid.
- Artifact of Doom: The Lament Configuration opens a gateway to the realm of the Cenobites for anyone (un)fortunate enough to figure out how to open it.
- Asshole Victim:
- Frank is subjected to an eternity of torture (twice), but he is such a murderous sleazebag that he totally deserves it.
- Julia becomes this as well, an adulterous wife who lures men back to her home in order to murder them and essentially use them as sustenance for her undead lover. She does the same to her husband Rory, and also helps Frank's attempt to kill Kirsty towards the end of the novella. Then she's killed by Frank and is heavily implied to be dragged off to Hell along with him.
- Beauty Is Bad:
- Julia, the novella's secondary antagonist, is described as being a very attractive woman, with Kirsty noting how even the movements she makes seem graceful. It helps her pick up strange men in pubs with ease. Unfortunately, she's also an adulterous, murdering witch of a woman. Meanwhile Kirsty, who is described as being rather plain, having a more loving disposition and is devoted to her dear friend Rory.
- Averted with Frank and Rory; Frank, the main antagonist of the story, is described as being somewhat unattractive, even before he's turned into a skinless monster. Meanwhile Rory, the loving husband and all around Nice Guy, is described as being boyishly handsome and having a "sweet face".
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Well maybe for some.
- Big Bad: Frank Cotton turns out to be this.
- Bittersweet Ending: Both Frank and Julia's reign of terror is ended and the two are dragged off to the realm of the Cenobites. Kirsty, while worse for wear, has her soul spared by the Cenobites for keeping her word to give them Frank. Rory is still dead, but Kirsty notes that his face doesn't appear on the surface of the Lament Configuration like Frank's and Julia's does. It's implied that Rory is in a realm of genuine bliss, and Kirsty hopes she can one day find a puzzle that unlocks the realm where he is.
- The Blank: The Engineer (a fifth Cenobite known by reputation to Frank at the story's beginning) doesn't show up until the end. This may be a questionable example if he was only given human shape by virtue of occupying Julia's wedding dress.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Cenobites inhabit a dimension of pure pleasure... only their idea of "pleasure" is so far removed from what is "normal" that an ordinary human would consider it weirdly discomforting at best, agonizing torture at worst. The Cenobites don't consider their victims to be victims at all: they're giving them what they think they want. Those who use the box with better understanding are people who are addicted to the extremes of sensation, both pain and pleasure, and often blurring the line between the two before ultimately erasing it completely. The Cenobites are effectively priests of an S&M religion.
- Body Horror:
- The Cenobites are horrifically disfigured and mutilated, and those who open the box are reduced to similar states.
- The state Frank is in after having spent some time in the Cenobites' realm. He's little more than a desiccated corpse with one eye and exposed nerves. Julia even comments to herself that it should be impossible for anything like that to be alive.
- Creepy Monotone: If Clive Barker's own audiobook narration is anything to go off of, the Cenobites sound almost robotic in their speech, having no inflections and speaking stiltedly. The only one whose voice is given any characterization is Pinhead who is said to sound feminine and like an "excited girl".
- Dark Is Not Evil: The Cenobites; aside from the the soul rape you forever endure if you seek ultimate pleasure, they are quite amiable. They try to warn Frank about what he's getting into before he commits to it, and do not renege on their deal with Kirsty.
- Dark World: Where you go when you open the box.
- Deal with the Devil: When it comes right down to it, this is what the whole series is about. The pursuit of ultimate pleasure or forbidden knowledge, wherein the seeker places their trust and fate in the hands of unknown entities of supernatural origin. The Cenobites deliver. It's just that, in true Deal With The Devil style, the ultimate pleasure that the seekers get is not usually the kind they want.
- Didn't Think This Through: For all his devious cunning, the narration notes that Frank is profoundly unimaginative in some ways. He later bitterly reflects on how before summoning otherworldly beings to take him to a realm of unimaginable pleasure, it might have been a good idea to find out what their idea of "pleasure" was first.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: Frank Cotton spent all his time trying desperately to escape from the Cenobites and their realm of infinite suffering, participating in the murders of several men to revitalize himself. When Kirsty lures him into a trap by goading him into confessing his true identity (having taken the identity—and skin—of his brother Rory), the Cenobites swoop down to reclaim their escaped prisoner. Speared by a dozen hooks and his body stretched almost to the breaking point, Frank screams in horrible agony—then stops. In his final moments of life, experiencing unbelievable pain, Frank stares silently across the room at Kirsty, and flicks his tongue across his teeth in a lewd gesture that sums up his entire personality and life.
Then his body comes apart. - Early-Installment Weirdness: While anyone familiar with the way Clive depicted them in his own film can easily figure out which Cenobite is which, the descriptions don't match up completely to how most people have gotten to know them.
- Pinhead is not the leader and is described as having a more feminine voice than the booming masculine voice of the film. He/she does have the grid pattern and the pins are described as having bejeweled heads.
- Butterball still has his eyes sewn shut, but is the apparent leader of the four.
- Chatterer is described as having his eyes swollen shut and his mouth disfigured, but is never described to the degree of detail his movie version is famous for (having his teeth exposed and having his mouth wrapped in chains).
- Lastly, the Female has her movie version's signature mutilation. It's not on her neck, but much further down in another area of her body.
- Lemarchand's Box is solved by taking it apart instead of changing its shape. It's also described as having black lacquered faces and a mirrored interior; both The Scarlet Gospels and Hellraiser: The Toll retcon this and make the box look like its film counterpart.
- The first movie has Julia use a hammer as her weapon of choice instead of a knife, and The Toll also retcons this detail.
- Frank is described as being overweight with a large mustache, neither of which are present in the film. Frank's brother is named Rory instead of Larry. Kirsty is described as being plain-looking (something which can't be said of Ashley Laurence), harbors an unrequited crush on Rory, is not related to him (her last name is Singer), and is in many ways a wet blanket compared to her film counterpart.
- Evil Feels Good: Frank's motivation. Julia eventually comes to this conclusion as well.
- Evil Is Not a Toy:
- Frank Cotton releases four demons with the magical cube, which looks quite like a toy. They don't exactly reward him, although it's technically neither a reward nor a punishment. The Cenobites' job is to bring the summoner to the heights of "pain and pleasure". The summoners don't really understand what they're getting into.
- Julia is on the receiving end as well. She ends up a disembodied head that gets dragged off to Hell by the Engineer.
- Evil Versus Evil: Pretty much how the novella plays out. On one hand, we have the Cenobites, avatars of an inhuman, otherworldly evil. On the other, Frank Cotton, a man full of all-too-human depravity and cruelty.
- Eye Scream: One of Frank's eyes was missing when he escaped Hell.
- Final Girl: Kirsty.
- Gorn: It's a Clive Barker story after all.
- Have a Gay Old Time: The word "cenobite" originally referred to a monastic living as part of a religious community. It sort of does here too, after a fashion.
- Hooks and Crooks: Cenobites attack their victims with hooks on chains.
- Humanoid Abomination: The Cenobites are horrifyingly scarred and mutilated monstrosities.
- Inciting Incident: While trying to cut away part of a window form, Rory slices his thumb open with his chisel and bleeds all over the floor. It's this blood that Frank first uses to reconstruct his body and return to the world of the living. If not for that accident, Rory and Julia might have just gone on living in the house, and Frank might have stayed in Hell.
- Love Dodecahedron: Rory is a faithful husband who very much loves his wife, Julia. However, Julia doesn't love Rory, instead being sexually obsessed with his brother, Frank, whom she had an affair with two weeks before her marriage to Rory. Frank pretends to return Julia's affections but is merely using her to get more bodies. Meanwhile, Kirsty is infatuated with Rory (though she never acts upon this) and Frank, upon seeing Kirsty outside the house one day, ends up becoming fixated on her. Though, given Frank's history, it's highly unlikely he feels anything resembling love for Kirsty, seeing her more as just another woman he can use and toss aside once he's done with her.
- Love Makes You Evil: What Julia feels for Frank is likely more a kind of deep, lustful obsession rather than actual love, but it still turns her into a murderer.
- Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Inverted. Frank resorts to masturbating in an attempt to lessen the massive sensory overload the Cenobites inflict. While it doesn't help there, leaving behind "part of himself" does lead to his escape when his brother Rory unknowingly spills blood on it.
- Nightmare Fetishist: The Cenobites, but also most of the people who knowingly use the box. The latter tend to regret the choice, however.
- No Name Given: In the original text, the Cenobites were never given proper names.
- "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization: In Julia's own words, the copulation of her and Frank had "all the aggression and joylessness of rape", but that "memory had sweetened events" and made her realize her feelings for him.
- Plain Jane: Kirsty is described as being rather plain looking and having a "lack of glamor". Ironically enough, her average looks are what draw Frank to her, as he considers plain looking women to be more sexually willing and eager to please than beauties like Julia.
- The Power of Blood: Frank's key to escaping is absorbing the blood and tissues of living people.
- Punny Name: The Order of the Gash, considering that "gash" is both a type of wound and a vulgar slang term for female genitals.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Averted. Frank was implied to have raped Julia the day of Rory's wedding, yet it's treated as no less heinous than anything else Frank did.
- Frank also attempts to rape Kirsty when she stops by the house to check on Julia and inadvertently stumbling upon Frank in the middle of eating a man. Thankfully, Kirsty manages to fight off Frank but this isn't even the worst thing he tries to do to Kirsty.
- Religion of Evil: The Cenobites themselves in the original novella, as servants of the Order of the Gash (the word Cenobite means a monk or nun in a convent).
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Lament Configuration again.
- Sense Freak: The Cenobites. Albeit to a very, very extreme degree.
- Sensory Overload: When Frank makes his deal with the Cenobites, the first symptom is that all his senses are ramped up a million-fold.
- Serial Killer: Technically speaking, Julia ends up becoming one, murdering four men (including Rory) for Frank to feast upon. However, Julia doesn't seem to get any kind of sick pleasure or satisfaction from the murders themselves, instead, doing it for her sick obsession for Frank.
- Summoning Artifact: The Lament Configuration is one and Kirsty wonders if there are others.
- Straw Nihilist: Frank, who has descended into shallow nihilism after a lifetime of hedonism. It's what originally drove him to seek out the Lament Configuration.
- Too Dumb to Live: Frank. He tracks down Lemarchand's Box because he thinks the Cenobites will be beautiful women who will teach him new methods of attaining sexual pleasure. However, he's disgusted to see that they're all heavily pierced and mutilated, and even at this point it doesn't occur to him that their offering of "sensual experiences" may not fit the classic English definition of the word — which even the Cenobites themselves repeatedly warn him about. But he figures it out. Quickly.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Frank accidentally stabs Julia in a confrontation gone wrong, and kind of just keeps on rolling. No biggie.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Frank, as Rory remembers it. The two brothers were apparently very close until Frank hit puberty.
- Wham Line: When "Rory" tries to comfort a panicked Kirsty by saying "Come to Daddy". Kirsty notes how unlike Rory this is and what makes her realize Rory isn't Rory at all but Frank wearing his skin. Doubles both as a wham and a relief because, just moments prior, Kirsty thought Frank to be dead which would've damned her to eternal torture at the hands of the cenobites. Now that Frank is alive, he can take Kirsty's place.
