That Hell-Bound Train

"That Hell-Bound Train" is a fantasy short story by Robert Bloch from 1958 that won the Hugo Award in 1959.

Plot summary

In the beginning of the story the main character, Martin, is orphaned when his father, in a drunken stupor, is killed by a train, and his mother runs away with a traveling salesman. Martin drifts from job to job, once even stealing hub-caps for a living. He is oddly attracted to trains, and he rides them everywhere he goes, and continually hums a tune his father use to sing, "That Hell-Bound Train".

One day a train he does not recognize stops near him. The train conductor gets off, and offers Martin anything he wants, in return for which he will ride the Hell-Bound Train (give his soul to the Devil) when he dies. Martin believes he has outsmarted the conductor by asking for the ability to stop time forever at the moment of his choosing, when he is happiest. Surprisingly, the conductor agrees, and gives him a watch with which he may stop time. (It is never made clear if the conductor actually is the Devil, or one of his minions.)

He fixes up his life, getting a job and working hard to get a raise. He meets a woman he would like to marry, and wonders if he should stop time at the moment she accepts him but decides against it. He has children, but then decides to wait until they are grown to stop time. But when they are grown he has an affair with a younger women and his wife leaves him.

He is old, but decides to travel around the world to look for happiness there, but there is no moment in his travels perfect enough to warrant stopping the watch. He tries to make some friends, in order to stop time at a moment of ideal friendship, but it is too late. He has a stroke, and goes to the hospital. He sneaks out of the hospital to look for his moment, only to have a second stroke. As he lies dying, he wonders if he should stop time then so as to save his soul, even if he has to live his dying agony forever. He decides against it and dies.

The conductor returns on his train to take Martin's soul to Hell. The Conductor tells Martin that others have tried this wish, but they never found the perfect moment, always waiting for something better, until they died just like him. Martin laments for a moment but then realizes there are others on the Hell-Bound Train, and they are all having their last and greatest time of their lives because soon they will be damned in Hell. He chooses that moment to stop time, thus rendering the train and all its riders permanently travelling, never arriving at their destination, as he has realized that it is the journey which is 'the one perfect moment', rather than any hypothetical arrival.

Awards