Gabriel-Ernest

·29 min·2 clips

Otis Gray reads a haunting short story by H.H. Munro about a wild boy who might be a werewolf.

Gabriel Ernest appears in the woods beside a pool. Van Cheel questions the strange boy, who says he feeds on flesh and names rabbits, wild fowl, hares, poultry, lambs, and children among his prey. The answer lands badly. When Van Cheel presses him about hares, the boy says he hunts on four feet at night, leaving the meaning balanced between a child's joke and something far darker. The boy adds that no dog would be anxious for his company, especially at night. Van Cheel tells the boy that he cannot remain in the woods, while the boy replies that Van Cheel would prefer him there to inside the primly ordered house. The encounter grows alarming. The boy flashes into the pool and climbs the slippery bank, leaving Van Cheel nearly prostrate beneath the stare of his tigerish yellow eyes. His laugh carries more snarl than chuckle. Then the boy makes another lightning movement and plunges away. Neither Gabriel Ernest nor the child is ever seen again. Gabriel Ernest's discarded garments are found lying in the road, and it is assumed that he entered the water while trying to save the child. Bansheel and nearby workmen say that they heard a child scream loudly near the spot where the clothes were found. Mrs. Two, who has eleven other children, accepts her bereavement with resignation, while Miss Bansheel mourns the lost foundling. The parish gives Gabriel Ernest a memorial. Put up at Miss Bansheel's initiative, the brass names him an unknown boy who bravely sacrificed his life for another, even though Bansheel refuses to subscribe to it. Sleepy ends with a good-night farewell. The memorial stands in the parish church, carrying a rescue story that the encounter in the woods makes hard to trust. Gabriel Ernest remains an unanswered presence. His strange appetite and sudden disappearance linger after the farewell, letting the tale close with unease tucked beneath its gentleness.

As heard by us

A quiet woodland encounter turns a bedtime story into an eerie argument about what the parish chooses to remember.

A woodland meeting becomes a tight little study of appetite, menace, and the stories a community is willing to accept once something has gone wrong.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You get a bedtime tale where a boy's answer about flesh turns a woodland encounter suddenly uncanny.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Sleepy