Theatre Macabre: Season 1 Episode 24 Boarded Window
An isolated couple is haunted by a wife's illness.
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Detailed Synopsis
The Host introduces Ambrose Bierce's story, The Boarded Window.
Jonathan is writing when he stops to look at the boarded window. A helicopter flies overhead and drops off his and Anne's mail before flying off. He dumps the mail next to piles of mail already sitting outside the house and opens the windows to the bedroom. He offers coffee to Anne, who is in bed, and she reads from his journal. She tells him to write down that she is going crazy. He tells her to stop and she accuses him and others of calling her illness make believe. He gets ready to go fishing and she asks him to bring some poppies back for her. She tells him that she can't sleep and her mother haunts her nightmares. He says that they are only dreams, but she insists it is reality and she can see through her mother's madness. He asks if she wants to go back to where they used to live so she can be closer to her doctor, but she tells him no. She starts dreaming of a man and woman burying a baby while a tiger stalks them. After the baby dies, the mother in the dream keeps rocking an empty crib while the father boards up the windows.
Anne wakes up and opens the windows and a bat flies into the room. She goes outside and starts ripping up the mail and then collapses. Jonathan comes home in the evening and finds Anne and brings her inside. He checks her breathing and offers her water, but she spits it up. He then finds drug vials near the bed. He goes outside and sets three large bonfires in the yard and when he checks on Anne she says that her mother is coming. The next morning, Jonathan makes a large cross out of the newspaper bundles. Anne walks outside and collapses onto the ground and seemingly dies and Jonathan brings her inside and removes the boarded windows. He places Anne in her wedding dress and ties her hands together. He builds a coffin and then digs up the ground nearby which is full of worms. He then instead makes a pyre under Anne's body. During the evening, Jonathan loads his rifle and starts to drink. A tiger breaks into the cabin and attacks Anne. Jonathan shoots at it and collapses and in the morning wakes up when he hears the helicopter. He goes inside and checks on Anne's body and find her hand has a tuft of tiger fur in it, and realizes she wasn't dead. She briefly opens her eyes and he carries her out of the cabin and sees the bat inside. The people in the helicopter wave at him and he carries Anne towards the helicopter.