Ambrose Nast

When I was five years old, I became terrified of something in my room.

My name is Ambrose Nast.

At half past seven o'clock on the night of the 9th of September of the year 1870, I set about my habitual duty of securing Florence Morrow inside her house beside the North Road.

For nine months this had been the most rudimentary of tasks, requiring nothing more than a brief consultation at the front door with Florence's waiting-maid on the girl's general state, before seeing it locked for the night.

When I approached the house on the 9th, however, my lantern fell on a troubling sight, which was a wide open door leading into darkness.

Alarmed, I entered the front room and called out to young Beverly as leaves, impatient for autumn, tried to sweep inside around my legs.

For the first time ever, I received no reply.

I called out for both her and Florence as I climbed the stairs, greeted only by silence, growing frightened.

Both of their rooms were unoccupied.

It was then that I spied Beverly far away through the high window looking out on the rear acreage of the forlorn property.

She was walking back and forth near the brush line and visibly calling out for her charge.

I rushed back through the house and out into the chilly darkness to intercept her.

She was in a panic and reported that Florence must have slipped from the house sometime in the last hour.

It was not the first occasion of such an escape.

We judged it most likely she would have made her way to her father's house on Frostmas Lane.

I had Beverly roam a wide circle behind the house, venturing into the heath if need be, as I began to trot along the stone road leading west along the bay.

rounding the curve marked by the infamous black oak where Governor Arthur had been hanged ninety years before.

My eye was caught by a glint of yellow light beyond the tide line.

I hastened towards it, and there Florence appeared, clumsily lifting a branch longer and heavier than she was, and feeding it into a crude fire she had managed to build herself on the beach, its limp flames struggling against the wind.

Fearing for her delicate health, I wrapped my topcoat around her awkwardly.