Voices of the Damned by Barbie Wilde
Short, Scary Tales Publications (October 2015)
Barbie Wilde cemented her genre credentials way back in 1988 when she appeared as the Female Cenobite in Hellbound: Hellraiser II. Her career since then has bounced between music, television hosting, and writing. Voices of the Damned is her first short story collection, and, much like her resume, it’s an eclectic and varied journey with deep roots in the imagination of Clive Barker.
The centerpiece of the collection is “The Cilicium Trilogy,” three stories that breathe further life into the Cenobite Wilde portrayed on film. Part one, “Sister Cilice,” tells of a nun with some rather unwholesome fantasies about a priest who serves her convent. She seeks refuge in the bowels of the convent’s library, hoping to bury her true feelings beneath a mountain of research. She discovers documentation of something called The Order of the Gash, and soon opens a portal that brings her face-to-face with some familiar demons who specialize in combining pleasure and pain. And when they can’t break her, they decide to recruit her instead…
This leads to the second story of the trilogy, “The Cilicium Pandoric.” The nun is now a first level Cenobite, but she’s yet to conquer the bored and restless nature established in the first story. She travels back to the human realm to visit a man known as the Toymaker – he
specializes in puzzle boxes – and asks for a device that will help her create a new female order in Hell. This brings us to the trilogy’s concluding chapter, “The Cilicium Rebellion,” in which Sister Cilice leads an all-star team of of sorts in her quest for control.
Wilde is clearly heavily influenced by, and having a ball playing in, the world Clive Barker created in his novella “The Hellbound Heart.” Her stories share the ideas that Barker examines in so much of his fiction: the co-mingling of pleasure and pain to create sensations to sate even the deepest, most depraved appetites; the desire to break free of normal boundaries to become something more, something better; the reality that a bargain isn’t always a bargain, and that you may not get what you want, but you’re sure to get what’s coming to you.
As companion pieces to Barker’s unique vision of Hell, the stories in “The Cilicium Trilogy” work well enough. But, to be honest, I think the most fun to be had in this collection is when Wilde roams outside Barker’s ranks and follows her own distinct muse. My favorite example is “Zulu Zombies,” in which a guy doing a terrible job of looking after a family heirloom sets off a horrific series of events. Also good is “Writer’s Block,” in which an author whose muse has fled him tries to recharge at a local horror convention. A sordid tryst with a witch and the Devil himself promises great results for the writer…but we all know how deals with the Devil usually turn out.
Voices of the Damned is the work of a fearless artist who is still trying to lock down her own voice. Readers checking out this first step on the path will find that it’s a bit uneven at times, with some rocky stretches along the way, but definitely worth the time in the end.
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