I once dreamed that I was inside the Glen Road mansion, sitting in a room with wooden wainscoting and pink accents with Ambrose and Theresa. Nobody talked to me, because even in my dreams, they refuse to help. In my mind, Ambrose Small exists in alternative realities: He is murdered, he has escaped, he is found in an asylum, humming the best songs from the 1909 theatrical season. It is quicksand, and I am sinking. I keep a file on my computer, just to make some space in my brain:
Ambrose Small was buried in the cellar of his mansion.
Ambrose Small escaped to be with his lover.
Ambrose Small was buried in the Rosedale dump.
Ambrose Small was drugged, driven to Montreal, and locked in a basement.
Ambrose Small was tied to a cement block in the bottom of Lake Ontario.
Ambrose Small was wandering the countryside near Kingston.
Ambrose Small was floating in Lake St. Clair.
Ambrose Small was decapitated and tossed in a shallow grave.
Ambrose Small lived on a mink farm.
Ambrose Small was buried in High Park.
Ambrose Small was kidnapped by a New York gang who wanted a big payday.
Ambrose Small was burned in the furnace at the Grand Opera House in Toronto.
Ambrose Small moved to Germany, where he was sheltered by his wife’s relations.
Ambrose Small was burned in the furnace at the Grand Opera House in London.
Ambrose Small lived in Manitoba under the alias of Smitty. He looked different because his nose had frozen during a bad winter.
Ambrose Small was burned in a pig furnace.
Ambrose Small lived in seclusion in Toronto.
Ambrose Small was buried under a gas station in St. Thomas.
Ambrose Small was murdered by a hitman.
Ambrose Small received a chiropractic treatment in Winnipeg before he escaped to Austria.
Ambrose Small was buried under the willow trees by the Thames River in London.
Ambrose Small liked to skulk around a bank in Perth, Ontario.
Ambrose Small lived in Halifax, in the form of a mysterious man with large teeth, small wrists and “several tiny sphere-shaped sacks” suspended from thin strands of skin in his armpits.
Ambrose Small was buried in a stretch of rural land near Danforth Avenue.
Ambrose Small lived in Whitby at the Royal Hotel.
Ambrose Small was killed after he spent some time in a house of ill repute in London, Ontario, and his body was carted in a wheelbarrow and dumped in a gravel pit.
Ambrose Small hid at St. Michael’s College in Toronto, where he lived peacefully for several years.
Ambrose Small was drugged and taken to Montreal, where he was placed in the cellar like a bulky piece of luggage.
Ambrose Small was murdered and his body decomposed in the cellar of a house on Charles Street in Toronto.
Ambrose Small escaped to a quiet life with Jack Doughty’s help.
Ambrose Small’s ghost haunted the farm.
Ambrose Small was spotted in the backseat of a car driving up Yonge Street in early December 1919.
Ambrose Small was bedridden in Windsor.
Ambrose Small was gambling in Mexico in 1920.
Ambrose Small was killed in his office on December 2.
Ambrose Small haunts the Grand Theatre in London, where he likes to steal the scissors in the wardrobe department.