The Damnation Game

by Clive Barker

Marty Strauss is a gambler recently released from prison. He is hired as the personal bodyguard of Joseph Whitehead, one of the wealthiest men in the world. The job is more complicated and dangerous than first he thought. He gets caught up in a series of supernatural events involving Whitehead, and a devilish man, Mamoulian, with whom Whitehead made a deal with the Devil during World War II. Whitehead is haunted with Mamoulian's supernatural powers (like raising the dead) to urge him to satisfy Mamoulian's pact. Whitehead decides to escape after several encounters with Mamoulian and after having his wife, his former bodyguard, and his daughter, Carys, taken away from him. With hope left to save Carys, Marty Strauss believes that Whitehead deserved his punishment after all and also decides to save the heroin addict from being another victim to the damnation game.