 LIZBETH: THE
TORMENTED SOCIALITE
"My
family has a secret that has burdened it for far
too long. I am the last now, but I’m
afraid my death is not the end of our
family’s curse. It may be only the
beginning………I feel that only a man
of your knowledge of the occult will be able to
comprehend and unravel the mystery of my
family."
"CLIVE
BARKER’S UNDYING"
It is 1923, and Patrick Galloway has come to the
decaying ancestral estate of his close friend,
Jeremiah Covenant, on the rugged coast of Ireland
to see if he can uncover – and vanquish
– the secrets of the curse that has consumed
Jeremiah’s family. Galloway will
eventually be challenged by five perilous quests.
But it is his first encounter with an
otherworldly entity that haunts him the most.
Lizbeth Covenant was the last of the five
Covenant children born, and she was the first to
die, perhaps accounting for her tragic
legacy. Known as the family socialite,
Lizbeth briefly thrived in the high society
circles of London. But a mysterious wasting
disease cut short her social career and she
returned to the family home in Ireland where she
was often seen roaming the grounds desolately,
spending many hours in the family mausoleum,
reading the headstones of her ancestors. At
the time, Lizbeth still maintained her striking
looks. In her early 20’s, Lizbeth had
pale blond hair and striking blue eyes. A
refined, fashionable young woman, she was a jewel
of social society.
But her untimely demise changed all of that and
Lizbeth was not destined to enjoy a serene
afterlife. There is something evil
pervading the Covenant estate, as though the land
itself is sick and is seething with a dark
power. Lizbeth seems to thrive on this
power, and is locked in a struggle for control of
the estate. She is a harrowing shadow of
her former self, wandering the grounds wearing a
torn and bloodstained burial gown, with dried
rivulets of blood running down her chin and
throat. Her hair, now dirty and matted, her
hands sharpened, like that of an animal.
One thing about Lizbeth remains constant: she has
a powerful intellect and an unbending will.
And she is deadly serious about getting what she
wants.
From the
outset of the story in Clive Barker’s
Undying – when Galloway first arrives at the
Covenant estate –he begins his investigation
of Lizbeth at the family mausoleum, which is
located on the manor grounds. When he opens
her coffin, he finds it empty. Galloway
realizes she has dug her way out of her coffin
and can be found leaping around the upper
battlements of the Monastery, lurking in the vast
catacombs beneath the cathedral and is at home in
the vast system of tunnels that connect beneath
the estate. It soon becomes all too clear
that these same settings are at the core of
Lizbeth’s realm. Although she may have
been seen lurking in the shadows of the manor,
the truth is that Lizbeth will not leave her dark
and shadowy realm, even if it means allowing
Galloway to escape.
Serving
Lizbeth is an army of lethal creatures called
Howlers that will do anything she bids.
They are capable of great speed, and derive true
strength from their considerable numbers.
The Howlers are blindly devoted to Lizbeth and
she employs their ferocity to do her
bidding. The story offers a suggestion that
her unholy alliance with the Howlers was the
result of Lizbeth using their tunnels to escape
her coffin in the family mausoleum.
Galloway, unable to determine whether the Howlers
are the only creatures that Lizbeth has at her
disposal, encounters skeletal remains in the
ruins of the monastery that are the remains of
the monks buried there. Sworn even beyond
the grave, they protect the holy edifice
attacking everything in sight.
Lizbeth,
the most intriguing of the five tortured Covenant
siblings, is the most fully developed and vividly
depicted throughout Galloway’s five
quests. Her mystique derives from various
clues provided during the course of the story.
Galloway’s inspection of the room Lizbeth
occupied while at the family manor provides
valuable insights into her tormented spirit. He
finds a poem that Lizbeth had written years
before her death about the Monastery in which she
now makes her home. And there is the painting
hanging on her bedroom wall. Galloway
discovers a provocative painting depicting
Perseus holding the head of the Medusa over the
ocean. But he doesn’t know if this
image foreshadows Lizbeth’s ultimate fate,
or if it is yet another of the pervasive red
herring clues that lead nowhere in his quest to
solve the curse of the Covenants.
Lizbeth is by no means the most potent or lethal
of the reanimated siblings and other supernatural
presences that haunt the battered remains of the
family estate, all of who seek control of this
mysterious source of magical power. She is
slower and more measured in her afterlife
incarnation, and she often avoids direct conflict
and confrontation. But she has one
particularly effective bit of witchcraft at her
disposal – the Haste spell. Using the
spell, her speed increases and her attacks become
even more ferocious, and it does make for a
nightmare of a confrontation for Galloway to
endure.
Lizbeth’s final showdown with Galloway
– in which she is threatened with eternal
purgatory – is harrowing and lethal.
"You cannot stop what has begun," she
curses at the intruder. "The family is
to be reunited." With that, the
one-time socialite calls upon all of her
considerable instinctual and animalistic powers
to vanquish Galloway, whose perilous journey is
only just beginning.
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