MY LIFE IN HORROR: STILL, IT WOULD BE SUCH A LOVELY RIDE

15/11/2022

what finer a place could there be to end My Life In Horror? My first short horror story. A meditation on life, and the living of it, and what we pursue, and what we win and lose in the pursuit. How we all face the same destiny, at some unknown but all-too-soon future moment.

My Life In Horror

Every month, I will write about a film, album, book or event that I consider horror, and that had a warping effect on my young mind. You will discover my definition of what constitutes horror is both eclectic and elastic. Don’t write in. Also, of necessity, much of this will be bullshit – as in, my best recollection of things that happened anywhere from 15 – 40 years ago. Sometimes I will revisit the source material contemporaneously, further compounding the potential bullshit factor. Finally, intimate familiarity with the text is assumed – to put it bluntly, here be gigantic and comprehensive spoilers. Though in the vast majority of cases, I’d recommend doing yourself a favour and checking out the original material first anyway.

This is not history. This is not journalism. This is not a review.

This is my life in horror.

Still, It Would Be Such A Lovely Ride

Let’s end with something short and sweet. The first short horror story I can remember reading.

Most of the recreational time at my father’s house was spent in front of screens, both big and small. In my day-to-day life in Devon, trips to the cinema were financially impossible; hell, as we’ve discussed before, TV didn’t actually enter my life until well into my seventh year. But at dad's house there were cinema trips (and theatre trips, though truthfully they made less of an impression), a big old colour TV with a VHS player, and my beloved ZX Spectrum. This last was, in the fullness of time, replaced by an Amiga 500, and I think if you’d asked me, I’d have told you I’d have been happy to sit and play that thing until the end of time, with just the odd breaks for eating, sleeping, and so forth.

Only, you know, not really. Turned out, somewhere around the fourth or fifth day, my mind would crave something different.

When the urge hit, I’d leave the ground floor bedroom that housed the Amega, and walk into the room next door. Which contained the piano, and, more importantly, two walls of bookcases.

I think I’ve mentioned earlier in this series that my father’s current house actually contains a room called ‘the small library’, and yes, that is to differentiate it from the main library one floor up. The set up in this house of my childhood was marginally less grand; still, though, there were a lot of books. I have fond memories of two paperback runs in particular; the minimalist black and white Iain Banks collection (yes, this is where I scored that fateful copy of The Wasp Factory), and the glorious Josh Kirby Discworld covers. In due course, I’d tear through both collections, and Jim Thompson, James Ellroy and Elmore Lenord besides, and I learned a lot from all of them.

But this particular day - I suspect I’m shy of ten years old - none of them jump out at me. Instead, I’m drawn to a pile of annual-sized books piled on their side. Asterix? Tintin? Something in that wheelhouse, I think.

And then, next to them, I see…

What is that? The cover says Venture, and it’s book-thick but the size is all wrong. Plus the cover - a colour image of an old, white man’s face surrounded by stars, under a title in yellow letters - Space is a lonely place, apparently, which, you know, probably that’s true - is paper thin, like on those Commando comics I sometimes saw in newsagents.

It is a comic, then? A space comic? I pick it up, carefully. The top left corner of the cover next to the spine has been torn, and the pages are yellowed with age. As I open it up and take a quick flick through, I register disappointment at the pages of small type text. ‘No comics, Harry’, I think, in Tom Baker’s voice from Genesis Of The Daleks. I turn back to the table of contents. Just what exactly is a Novelette, anyway? And how can a 128 page book possibly have room for three of them, plus short stories?

And then I read the story titles.

And on one of them, I feel The Pull.

It’s gotta be a horror story, surely; a title like that? And I’m sure my mind is also cross referencing Bruce Springsteen’s Downbound Train, a heartbreaking short story for the ages.

And so it is, at nine years old, that I read my first short horror. The author is Robert Bloch, and the title is That Hellbound Train.

And I’m captivated from the off.

It’s the voice, of course; colloquial, welcoming. I wouldn’t have recognised how quintessentially American it is, but the simplicity would have appealed; there’s a Just So quality to it that really pulls me in. And the efficiency of the storytelling is astonishing; by the time we’re turned the first page, we know Martin is, effectively, an orphan (father dead from a combination of drink and railroad tracks, momma run off, and Martin an escapee from the state home he was put in), in his early twenties, and has recently done time, it’s heavily implied as a result of committing petty theft in an effort to keep body and soul together. The telling is neither cold nor cloying; Martin is not unsympathetic, but his simple stoicism seems to transmit itself to the reader; or, at least, this reader. I’m caught up, that’s all; same way Terrence Dicks and Stephen King and John Christoper and all the greats will catch me up; my father’s house and library and TV and Amiga 500 are fading away, and I’m instead walking with Martin down a cold railroad track, wondering what’s next. And Martin is just considering signing up with the Salvation Army - anything for a warm set of clothes, at this point - when he hears a train coming; and from the wrong direction, given the hour.

We’ve already heard, in the opening paragraph of the story, that Martin’s father would sometimes sing a song about That Hellbound Train when in his cups, and how Martin would sometimes envisage the passengers, imagining what a fine bunch of fellows they must be; how nice it would be to hang with them, if not for the destination… and when the train pulls up, the brakes screaming with suspicious levels of menace, I knew exactly the same time as Martin what was going on.

The conversation that follows is glorious; the Devil is never named, referred to by Martin as ‘The Conductor’, and the verbal jousting delighted my child’s mind - especially the moment where Martin refers to the devil as a ‘used car salesmen’ before immediately apologising, seeing the hurt look on the conductor’s face. It’s brilliant, as is the Devil’s reason for turning up, namely Martin’s consideration of approaching the Salvation Army - ‘I’d hate to lose you after thinking of you as my own, all these years’, he says, wistfully. Initially, The Conductor initially merely offers Martin a lift, but eventually allows himself to be drawn into a bargain.

The layers, here. Martin frankly admits that he’s given this moment a lot of thought. The Devil jousts and feints and feigns, and I remember feeling this incredible push/pull, because Martin can’t be smart enough to have worked out an angle… can he? The Devil must surely have his measure… right?

And then Martin lays out his proposition.

Martin wants the ability to stop time. For him only, obviously. The world will continue to turn, time’s arrow will continue to fly forward… but not for Martin. Martin will remain, frozen forever, at the moment of his choosing.

And the Devil agrees. He hands Martin a pocket watch. Twist the stopper, says the Devil, and when the clock runs down, your moment will freeze.

My memory - treacherous thing, this far out, not something we can rely on, but - is that, delightedly, I’d seen it before Martin articulates the point - once he uses the watch, time, for him, freezes forever, and he’ll never have to ride The Train.

He’s made a deal with the Devil, and he’s already won.

Goddamn.

And does the Devil know it? As he turns his back, his voice is choked, and his shoulders shake with what could be sobbing.

I remember the thrill of this moment so, so clearly. I knew he had the devil beat, you see. It was simplicity itself, and my child mind delighted.

And, at the same time, I think I was just old enough to pick up on the ambiguity in the moment, in the Devil’s reaction.

Crying?

Or laughing?

We’re almost exactly halfway through the word count.

What follows is one of the most elegantly-told stories-of-a-life-lived I’ve ever encountered. With a purpose - in point of fact, that most American of purposes, as I reflect upon it, The Pursuit Of Happiness - Martin sets off to Chicago, where he becomes, as the narrator wryly notes, first a better class of panhandler, then, eventually, scores a job.

Employment secures a place of his own, a promotion secures a car, and a car allows for the possibility of taking ladies out on dates. And with child’s eyes, the contours of the story felt instinctive, a needle following a well-worn, familiar groove. It’s only now, with adult eyes, I see the shape of a way of life that must have seemed eternal to the post war generation, and yet turned out to be a chimaera - for many of that generation too, of course, but most assuredly for those of us that came after. It's a simple fate, destiny, utterly unremarkable; get a job, get a place, get a better job, get a girl, eventually meet the right girl, fall in love, get married, get a yet better place. It’s the circle of life; or, actually, the death spiral of capitalism, but here in good old 1953, whomst could have predicted?

I think it’s the moment that he has a child that I start to work out maybe he’s screwed up. I’m young enough that sex is effectively an abstract concept, but also steeped enough in the pop culture of the 80s that I understand it’s basically The Best Thing Ever. So the moment he doesn't pull the pin while consummating the love of his life, I suspect the first trickle of unease started to creep in for me. But when the kid turns up…

I saw it in my own parents, is the thing. My mum, and most especially my dad, who, in retrospect, clearly could barely wait for me to get to the point where I was capable of more-or-less rational conversation. I saw how both of them, in their own ways, centred my sister and I, and I understood that (again, pop culture playing its part) to be the natural order of things. Once you have a kid, I thought, you’re always going to want to see what happens next.

Interestingly, it turns out for our Martin that impulse only lasts until the boy is of age, at which point his concerns become once more about the material. The facets of the character that I’m sure the author intended to be, and saw as, weaknesses, rear their heads, and the moment with his mistress is cut short by the private detective and then the divorce lawyers, and once his wife has cleaned him out, it turns out the mistress is less enamoured than she might have led him to believe.

And that’s his last opportune moment; the slide from there is slow but sure. He makes back his money, but he’s too old to really enjoy it, and also too old to make the lifelong friends that might have provided the companionship he realises now is the real key to happiness. And anyway, it’s too late; he overdoes it trying to make friends at some holiday destination, and his body gives out.

There’s an amazing moment, right near the end of the story, where Martin finds himself outside, near the trainline, almost exactly back here he started, reaches for the watch… and then the stroke or heart attack that is to end him hits, and he has the chance to complete the action, and he realises the notion of forever in this state does not compare favourably with hell… and so he doesn’t.

And the train pulls up. And the Devil pops out.

And Martin has lost.

I felt crushed for him, but also like I’d encountered something approaching wisdom; how his pursuit of The Moment meant he actually completely lost track of Now, of being. That happiness, contentment, whatever such weasel words even mean, are both states that coexist with other feelings, impossible to isolate; but also that these terms actually describe a process, not a state, steady or otherwise.

So sure, I was sad for Martin, as he boarded the train and the Devil asked repeatedly for his watch back, but I also felt the tale had been just; and, at the end of the day, when you deal with the devil, you kinda do always lose, and probably you should, at that.

But Bloch, that bloody genius, had one final card to play.

As Martin finds himself in the pullman carriage, he looks around. At his fellow travellers. The gamblers. The womanisers. The drunks and dreamers. The sinners, all bound for the same dark destination, all determined to wring every last drop out of their journey.

And at that moment, Martin realises, at last, he’s found his moment. And he turns the key.

Amazingly, In the copy of Venture in which I first read the story, the text ends at that precise moment, with a rather bland notification to turn to page 183 for the rest. And it’s doubly odd because there’s just one paragraph to go, a couple of sentences, the Devil incensed - ‘we’ll never reach our destination now!’ - and Martin taking on the role of brakeman on That Hellbound Train, on its never ending journey to the underworld.

And really, what finer a place could there be to end My Life In Horror? My first short horror story. A meditation on life, and the living of it, and what we pursue, and what we win and lose in the pursuit. How we all face the same destiny, at some unknown but all-too-soon future moment.

And how a story, well told, can crystalise a moment in time.

These columns, and the two volumes of books that came out of them, are my Hellbound Train. My modest hope is that they live beyond me; a signal across generations. A faithful attempt to describe the contours of an fundamentally unremarkable life in a manner that commanded your attention for as long as I demanded it - and, sure, an attempt to scratch my name, however faintly, in the hard rock of human history.

I was here. We were here. We lived, and this is what it was like, to try and live, in this time and place.

This was My Life In Horror.

Thank you for choosing to share it with me.

KP
30/10/22

A short postscript from Jim Mcleod

To think that My Life in Horror has been running for just short of ten years, is a treatment to Kit's brilliance as a writer and a friend, we have gone through hell and high water during the time we have been working together. And throughout this time Kit has been the voice of reason, the guiding light that kept me from doing really stupid things, and one of the people most responsible for my growth as a human being. I have changed beyond recognition, since Kit first reached out and asked if he could write a monthly column for Ginger Nuts of Horror. And for that I thank him.

It has been an honour and a privilege to host these articles, they are some of the finest pieces of genre writing you can ever hope to read.

Thank you my friend, your friendship means more to me than you will ever know.

May the best you've ever seen Be the worst you'll ever see; May a moose ne'er leave yer girnal Wi' a teardrop in his e'e. May ye aye keep hale and hearty Till ye're auld enough tae dee, May ye aye be just as happy As I wish ye aye tae be.

Slàinte mhath my brother