Books of Blood 1

''Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red.'' For those who only know Clive Barker through his long multigenre novels, this one-volume edition of the Books of Blood is a welcome chance to acquire the 16 remarkable horror short stories with which he kicked off his career. For those who already know these tales, the poignant introduction is a window on the creator's mind.

I look at these pieces and I don't think the man who wrote them is alive in me anymore.... We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present.

Reading these stories over, I feel a little of both. Some of the simple energies that made these words flow through my pen--that made the phrases felicitous and the ideas sing--have gone. I lost their maker a long time ago.

These enthusiastic tales are not ashamed of visceral horror, of blood splashing freely across the page: ''The Midnight Meat Train,'' a grisly subway tale that surprises you with one twist after another; ''The Yattering and Jack,'' about a hilarious demon who possesses a Christmas turkey; ''In the Hills, the Cities,'' an unusual example of an original horror premise; ''Dread,'' a harrowing non-supernatural tale about being forced to realize your worst nightmare; ''Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament,'' about a woman who kills men with her mind. Some of the tales are more successful than others, but all are distinguished by strikingly beautiful images of evil and destruction.