THIRTEEN FOR HALLOWEEN: THE COVENANT CHILDREN

The Covenant Children are somewhat standard horror fare compared to most we have explored in these articles, and certainly the truly abstruse fauna that bestrew the pages of Barker's written work. Nevertheless, they also represent a rare step into the murky pools of gothic fiction for Barker, each of them inhabiting a particular archetype from the genre (vampires, ghosts, wherewolves et al) that has been subtly rewritten, altered or lampooned.

​Going massively off-piste for this one, in terms of both subject and medium: 


Barker's forays into media other than the printed word have always been. . .problematic, to say the least. Several attempts to bring his peculiar brand of imagery and storytelling to video games have resulted in projects that fell through before anything beyond rumour could manifest, whilst those that actually make it to some state of completion tend to be either buried by a total lack of marketing or -as in the case of Jericho- are so hideously flawed on a technical level as to alienate all but the most die-hard fans of the man's work (yes, hands up; I finished Jericho. Once. And never again). 


Undying is simultaneously the exception to and the epitome of that trend; an obscure PC title from the early 2000s that has developed something of a cult following in the decades after; a first-person horror adventure in which Barker carries the player through a tale of gothic horror and peculiarly Lovecraftian metaphysics. The game made next to no impact upon original release, despite intentions for it to be an expanded franchise involving short stories, comic books and numerous sequel and spin-off titles. Withering into relative obscurity mere months after it hit the shelves, it is barely remembered now even amongst Barker's own fanbase, but has started to slowly accrue more and more prominence in recent years thanks to the efforts of certain YouTube “Let's Players” (most notably Helloween4545, who, despite finding humour in its flaws, waxes enthusiastic about the experience in his own “let's play.”). 


This is an enormous shame as, despite being quite crude to present-day eyes, at the time of release, the game included elements that very, very few horror titles did, including an environment that shifted and warped around the player, a fantastic mechanic called “Scrye,” in which the player could activate a kind of “psychic mode” to see and hear spectral or paranormal phenomena they might otherwise not be able to perceive (this is the source of some of the game's most atmospheric scares and much of its unspoken, environmental storytelling) and dynamic, atmospheric music that shifted in tempo and intensity depending on situation. 


Barker doesn't tend to concern himself with the tropes or constraints of established genres or traditions to any great degree; usually, when his stories include or operate within such, it is only so he can lampoon or dissect them with his characteristic panache. 


Undying certainly has elements of the deconstructionist about it, but it is also extremely earnest in its gothic trappings: 


Set shortly after World War 1, the plot involves ex-soldier and paranormal investigator Patrick Galloway, who is summoned to the rambling estate of his old commander and friend, Jeremiah Covenant, last survivor and presiding incumbent of the Covenant name. There, he finds that Jeremiah is a sickly and haunted man, who believes that his long-dead siblings have returned from the grave to haunt him. 


Investigation into the matter reveals that there is absolutely something abstruse at work within the crumbling folly of the Covenant estate; staff and groundsfolk talk of sightings of strange creatures and spectral manifestations, some even claiming to have seen the dead Covenant children in various states and conditions. It isn't long before Galloway encounters one of the children himself; the distracted, spectral form of Aaron Covenant, one of twins, who obsessively wanders the manor, seeking elucidation on his undead and tethered condition. Various journals, psychic phenomena and encounters reveal that, when they were but young, the Covenant children discovered a book of occult lore in their Father's library, and that Jeremiah led them to a small island off the coast of their family's own, where a ring of standing stones stand atop a raised barrow. Called there by some unseen force, they performed a forbidden ritual culled from the book, which damned them from that moment on: 


In the years later, each and every one of The Covenant children met with tragedy, from the sickly and anaemic youngest daughter Lisbeth succumbing to a wasting disease, to the fiery and unruly Ambrose Covenant (played by none other than Barker himself) hurling himself off of a cliff edge rather than face retribution for his numerous crimes. 


However, it also becomes apparent that the curse they invoked is far from done with them; that they have been caught up in a metaphysics none of them comprehend, but which all of them have their own peculiar designs on. 


The Covenant Children are the abiding focus of the game and the source of much of its intrigue; from the first instant, hints and suggestions occur of what might have become of them, how they might manifest when they are eventually found: 


Activating the “Scrye” ability in the Covenant estate's portrait gallery causes a family painting to shift and warp, revealing the hideous conditions they have come to occupy in their undead states. Journals from various sources throughout the game detail how the Covenants variously came to their ends, and how their shadows lingered long after they were passed. 


Nevertheless, it's some hours into the game itself before Galloway encounters one of them in the flesh (there's a sub-plot involving using occult means to travel back into the island's past, to retrieve a weapon of profane significance that is the only means of slaying the otherwise immortal revenants). 


Lisbeth Covenant, being the youngest and the sickliest, is responsible, it transpires, for the most numerous enemies in the game: the strangely-canine -yet also vaguely humanoid- demonic entities known as Howlers; distorted reflections of the dogs that Lisbeth loved so much in life. She surrounds herself with the creatures in her catacomb home, amongst the bones of her ancestors and the animate corpse of her own Mother, who died giving birth to her. 


Encountering her there, Galloway finds her transformed into a bestial succubus, a thing of gruesome appetites and monstrous violence, that remains comically animated and garrulous even after he has sliced her head off (in a reference to Francis Ford Coppolla's adaptation of Dracula, he sets her snarling, burbling head alight and casts it into the ocean). 


The second child is perhaps the least likely; the “black sheep” who, it is revealed, murdered his own Father in cold blood and has returned from death as the leader of a band of murderous pirates and cutthroat criminals with his own understandings and agendas regarding the “curse” that has afflicted him: 


The entirely irredeemable -and ironically named- Ambrose Covenant, who seemingly slays his brother Jeremiah before Galloway's eyes before swelling into a monstrous, ogre-like condition which is one of the more elaborate and tricky “boss” encounters in the game. Like Lisbeth before him, he eventually succumbs and is finally released from the curse that has sustained him in unlife.


Despite being the first that Galloway encounters in his wanderings through the estate, Aaron Covenant, twin brother to the reclusive and sinister Bethany, remains obscure and distant throughout much of the game. 


That is, until you return from an extended sojourn and the heretofore benign haunting becomes one of violent poltergeist activity: 


Taking extreme umbrage with your “meddling” in family affairs, Aaron becomes an unseen stalker who can levitate items such as plates, chairs and knives, hurling them at Galloway as he wanders the halls and chambers of the estate. Likewise, Aaron himself undergoes a monstrous transformation, shifting from a suited and composed human form to a ravaged, mutilated condition that wields the hooks and chains driven through its carcass. In this condition, he stalks Galloway through the manor, and cannot be dealt with in the same way as the other children; he can only be waylaid by timely use of “spirit traps” that temporarily contain him and allow Galloway to make his escape. 


It's only by unravelling the mystery of what actually happened to Aaron that his wayward soul can be laid to rest: 


As it transpires, Aaron was hideously murdered by his twin sister, Bethany, and bricked up in one of the old stables to slowly expire. Discovering his corpse, returning to it the jaw that Bethany tore away as a form of symbolic desecration, Galloway coaxes his soul to return to its corporeal shell, which Galloway then slays in the same manner as the previous Covenants. 


The last of the siblings is Bethany herself, who, unlike the others, is entirely aware of the metaphysics engulfing her bloodline, having summoned numerous practitioners, occultists and magicians to the household in order to explore it. She has married herself to the unfolding transformations taking place around her and has used them to sculpt a dreaming reality for herself; a place that she dubs Eternal Autumn, where she is worshiped as a goddess and has transfigured into a bizarrely plant-like demonic entity. 


With her death, Eternal Autumn dies, Galloway is returned to the waking world and the ring of standing stones where the entire, sorry drama was set in motion so many years ago, only to find that Jeremiah is very much alive, or rather, undead, like the rest of his siblings, and has been using Galloway all along to dispatch the more powerful of his kin so that he and he alone will inherit the power of The Undying King to which they are all bound and which is the source of their immortality. 


Needless to say, it doesn't go terribly well for Jeremiah. 


The Covenant Children are somewhat standard horror fare compared to most we have explored in these articles, and certainly the truly abstruse fauna that bestrew the pages of Barker's written work. Nevertheless, they also represent a rare step into the murky pools of gothic fiction for Barker, each of them inhabiting a particular archetype from the genre (vampires, ghosts, wherewolves et al) that has been subtly rewritten, altered or lampooned. They are each intriguing individuals in and of themselves, quite apart from the wider mythology and metaphysics they serve, with their own -largely tragic- back stories, quirks and agendas, that make them far more than simply another slew of video game antagonists to defeat. 


Their story is one of desperate tragedy, a curse that they unwittingly brought on themselves as children (likely due to external and malign influences acting upon their young minds), that afflicted them throughout their lives and even after into death and beyond. They are representative of a strange metaphysical nihilism that you don't often find in Barker's work, but which is all the more refreshing for that, and one of the main reasons why the game maintains such a sumptuously bleak and fraught atmosphere throughout.