Ron Reads Boring Books
Are you tired? You will be. Because I will read to you a boring book and it will be worse than you doing nothing. This podcast is not intended to entertain you. It is intended to bore you. The length of each podcast will vary so you cannot plan your listening easily. Some reads will be short. Some will be excruciatingly long. There will be no intro or outro music. The only sound is my voice and other random sounds as they happen. I change my voice as I read the dialog. Also, I have a southern accent and do not read well. Thank you for listening.
Ron Reads Boring Books
When Innocent Stories Create Perfect Horror
Ron reads H.H. Munro's "The Open Window," a masterful short story about deception and the power of suggestion. Nervous visitor Frampton Nuttall receives more than he bargained for when he meets fifteen-year-old Vera during a country visit.
• Frampton visits the Stapleton household on doctor's orders for a "nerve cure"
• Young Vera tells him a tragic tale about her aunt's husband and brothers disappearing in a bog three years ago
• The open window is supposedly kept open in eternal hope for their return
• Frampton is horrified when three figures with guns and a spaniel approach the house
• He flees in terror, unaware that Vera has fabricated the entire story
• The story reveals Vera's talent for creating "romance at short notice"
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Hello, are you tired? You will be. This is Ron Reads. Today we're reading the Open Window by H H Monroe.
Speaker 2:Saki. My aunt will be down presently. Mr Nuttall said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen In the meantime, you must try and put up with me.
Speaker 1:Frampton Nuttall endeavoured to say the correct, something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment, without unduly discounting the end that was to come. Privately, he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much toward helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing. I know how it will be, his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat.
Speaker 2:You will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice.
Speaker 1:Frampton wondered whether Miss Stapleton, the lady whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division.
Speaker 2:Do you know how many people around here? Do you know many of the people around here?
Speaker 1:Asked the niece when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion. Hardly a soul, said Frampton. My sister was staying here at the rectory, you know, some four years ago and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here. He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.
Speaker 2:Then you know practically nothing about my aunt pursued the self-possessed young lady.
Speaker 1:Only her name and address admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Miss Stapleton was in the married or widowed state, An undefinable. Something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.
Speaker 2:Her great tragedy happened just three years ago said the child. That would be since your sister's time.
Speaker 1:Her tragedy, asked Frampton, somehow in this restful country spot tragedy seemed out of place.
Speaker 2:You may wonder why we keep that window open on an October afternoon said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened to the lawn.
Speaker 1:It's quite warm for the time of year, said Frampton, but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?
Speaker 2:Out through that window. Three years ago today, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favorite snipe shooting ground, they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. It was the dreadful part of it. That was the dreadful part of it.
Speaker 1:Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human and became falteringly human.
Speaker 2:Poor Aunt always thinks that they will come back someday and they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor, dear aunt. She has often told me how they went out her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, as he always did to tease her because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they all walk in through that window.
Speaker 1:It was a relief to Frampton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance. I hope Vera has been amusing you.
Speaker 3:She has been very interesting, said Frampton.
Speaker 1:I hope you don't mind. The open window said Mr Stapleton briskly.
Speaker 3:My husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been out for a snipe in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn't it?
Speaker 1:mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn't it? She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Frampton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but partially successful effort to turn on to a less ghastly topic. He was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond.
Speaker 1:It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary. The doctors agree that, in ordering me complete rest in absence of mental excitement and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise, announced frampton, who labored under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. On the matter of diet, they are not so much in agreement. He continued no, said Miss Stapleton in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention, but not into what Frampton was saying.
Speaker 4:Here they are at last she cried. Just in time for tea, and don't they look as if they were muddy up to their eyes.
Speaker 1:Frampton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with a d intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with a dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear, frampton swung around in his seat and looked in the same direction In the deepening twilight. Three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window. They all carried guns under their arms and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noisily they neared the house and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk.
Speaker 3:I said, Bertie, why do you bound?
Speaker 1:Frampton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat. The hall door, the gavel drive, gravel drive and the front gate were dimly noted stages In his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision. Here we are, my dear said the bearer of the white Macintosh coming through the window "'Fairly muddy, but most of it is dry.
Speaker 4:Who was that? Who bolted out as we came up' "'A most extraordinary man, a Mr Nuttell' said Mr Stapleton "'He could only talk about his illness and dashed off without a word of goodbye or apology. When you arrived, one would think he had seen a ghost.
Speaker 1:I expect it was the spaniel, said the niece calmly.
Speaker 2:He told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and he had spent the night in a newly dug grave with the creature snarling and grinning and foaming just above him Enough to make anyone lose their nerve.
Speaker 1:Romance that short was her specialty. You've been listening to Ron Reads the Open Window by HH Monroe Saki. If you've enjoyed this episode, please give me a five star rating. I don't think anyone has done that yet and a kind review would be nice. Please share this podcast with your friends Bye.