The Boarded Window

by Ambrose Bierce


In 1830, only a few miles away from what is today the great city of Cincinnati, there was a huge forest. A few people – people who always wanted to move from one place to the next – made their homes there for a time and became rich. They then left everything they had made and went west to meet new dangers and difficulties. For some reason that they could not explain, they needed to make again and again the same comfortable life that they had just left.

At the time of this story, the new houses were already empty and many people were moving to places further away from the towns in the east, but one man decided to stay. He lived alone in a wooden house in the middle of the great forest. He seemed to be part of its dark silence because no-one ever saw him smile or speak an unnecessary word. He got the few things he needed to live by selling animals' skins in the town. He grew nothing on the land. There was a little ground around his house where he'd cut the trees, but new plants had grown in their place. It seemed the man's interest in farming was dead.

The little house, with its wooden chimney, had only one door and, directly opposite, a window. The window, however, was boarded up – nobody could remember a time when it was open. And no-one knew why it was closed. It was certainly not because the man disliked light and air, because when anyone passed that lonely place, they could see the man sitting in the sun on his doorstep. I imagine there were very few people who knew the secret of that window, but I do.

The man's name was Murlock. He looked seventy years old, but was only about fifty. It was not only years that had made him old. His hair and long beard were white, his grey eyes were empty, his face was very wrinkled. He was tall and thin. But I never saw him. My grandfather described him for me and also told me the man's story when I was a boy. He knew him when he was living nearby in those early days.

One day, they found Murlock in his home, dead. It was not the time or place for asking a lot of questions about it. I suppose everybody thought that he died of natural causes. I only know that they buried his body near the house, next to his wife's grave. She had died so many years before him that nobody could remember her. That is the last part of this true story. But there is an earlier part that my grandfather told me.

When Murlock built his little house and began to cut out a farm with his axe, he was young, strong and full of hope. He had married a young woman in the town where he came from. She lived the same dangers and difficulties as her young husband. There is no picture of her; we know nothing about her character. We do not even know her name.

One day, Murlock returned from hunting in the forest to find his wife sick with fever. There was no doctor, no neighbour. He could not leave her because she was too sick. So he tried nursing her back to health, but at the end of the third day she died, mad with the fever.

From what we know about Murlock, we can fill in some of the details of the picture that my grandfather gave me. When Murlock understood that she was dead, he remembered that he must get her body ready for burial. As he tried to do this, he made mistakes now and again. He was surprised, too, that he did not cry – surprised and a little sorry. Surely it is unkind not to cry for the dead. "Tomorrow," he said aloud, "I'll make the coffin and the grave and then I'll miss her, when she is no longer here. But now – she's dead, of course, but it's alright – it must be alright. Things cannot be as bad as they seem."

He stood next to the body in the evening light, putting her hair straight and doing everything without thinking. And he still had an idea that everything was going to be alright – that they could live together again like before. He'd never known anyone die. He did not know he was so unhappy; that would come later and never go away again.

When Murlock finished his work, he fell into a chair next to the table where the body lay and saw how white it looked as night came nearer. He put his arms on the table and his face fell onto them. He was unspeakably tired. At that moment there was a long, crying sound like a child lost in the dark woods! But the man did not move. That cry came again and nearer than before. Perhaps it was an animal; perhaps it was a dream. Murlock was asleep.

Some hours later, he woke up, lifted his head from his arms and listened carefully – he did not know why. There in the black darkness by the side of his dead wife, he remembered everything without surprise. He tried to see something – he did not know what. He was now awake. He stopped breathing, even his blood slowed down to listen to the silence. Who – what had woken him and where was it?

Suddenly the table moved under his arms and, at the same moment, he heard (or imagined he heard) a light, soft noise like feet on the floor!

He was too afraid to shout or move. He waited – waited centuries of fear there in the darkness. He tried to say the dead woman's name, to put out his hand across the table to see if she was there. He could not. Then something terrible happened. A heavy body moved against the table so hard that it pushed against his chest. At the same moment, he heard and felt something fall on the floor with a noise that was so loud that the house moved. It seemed like there was a fight and so many sounds that were impossible to describe. Murlock stood up. He put his hands on the table. Nothing was there!

There's a moment when fear can become madness; and madness pushes us to action. With no idea what he was going to do, for no reason except the reason of a madman, Murlock ran to the wall, got his gun and fired it. From the light which lit up the room, he saw a huge bear pulling the dead woman towards the window, its teeth in her throat! Then there was darkness blacker than before and silence; and when he woke again the sun was high and the wood was noisy with birds' songs.

The body lay near the window, where the animal left it when it was frightened away by the noise of the gun. Her clothes were pulled away, her long hair was everywhere, her arms and legs lay in all directions. Blood (not yet dry) had run from her throat – it was badly, horribly cut.

Her fingers had blood under the nails. And between her teeth was part of the animal's ear.