Lament Configuration

Lament Configuration
The Lament Configuration, as shown in Hellraiser
Plot element from the Hellraiser franchise
First appearance	The Hellbound Heart
Genre	Horror
In-story information
Type	Puzzle box
Element of stories featuring	The Cenobites
Function	To summon the Cenobites

Lemarchand's box is a fictional lock puzzle or puzzle box appearing in horror stories by Clive Barker, or in works based on his original stories. The best known of these boxes is the Lament Configuration, which features prominently throughout the Hellraiser movie series. This was designed and made by Simon Sayce, one of the original creative team members. A Lemarchand's box is a mystical/mechanical device that acts as a door — or a key to a door — to another dimension or plane of existence. The solution to the puzzle creates a bridge through which beings may travel in either direction across this "Schism." The inhabitants of these other realms may seem demonic to humans. An ongoing debate in the film series is whether the realm accessed by the Lament Configuration is intended to be the Abrahamic version of Hell, or a dimension of endless pain and suffering that is original to the Hellraiser films.

Fictionally, the boxes were created by Philip Lemarchand, who is mentioned in The Hellbound Heart (the novella upon which the film Hellraiser was based) as a maker of mechanical singing birds.

He first appeared as a character in the Epic Comics Hellraiser comics series and was portrayed as an older man, though still a creator of toys and singing birds. This version, created with the support of Clive Barker, was a mass murderer who used human fat and bone in the construction of his boxes. He was aided by a material given to him by the Cenobite known as Baron.

The film Hellraiser: Bloodline, written several years later, portrays the character as much less morally reprehensible. In this version, Lemarchand is a young ingenious toymaker known for his intricate mechanical designs. The character Paul Merchant says in the film that the Lament Configuration was commissioned from Lemarchand by the Duc de L'Isle in 1784.