TT n Sheldy: Don't Look Now Again Part Four

TT here. I have just finished typing the last page of the letter I was handed on the second floor landing of Spadina House. I have not read further than this because night is drawing in and I am not sure I can face any more without the light of the sun to protect me. So here goes

So you couldn't stop reading? I thought so. It is time I told you about the St Veyetus family.
This was taken in 1928 at a fancy dress garden party where everyone came as someone from the 1890's. Filbert St Veyetus is the man in the chair at the top of the steps. He was a distant man with his mind always on his adventures past and those to come. Whenever my Aunts went into his study he was constantly sitting with eyes half closed chanting the names of displaced tribes of natives (from the Aireeqois to the Zoletots) from all the countries he had visited on his searches for mineral deposits he and his company could exploit and export.
The hated Mrs Calliope St Veytus (closest to the camera) was the eldest daughter of a Quebec piano importer and had been destined for a concert career until an accident involving a runaway coal wagon ended it instantly. It had turned her from a beautiful, kind and generous woman into a bitter bully who ruled the family through fear and intimidation. The man on the steps at the right is her son, Boy St Veyetus. Here is a picture of him at college.

What you can't see in the picture are my Mother, Aunt Albania and Aunt Caen (Con) in the window behind the stone planter. They were readying the dining room for a finger buffet

(note the portrait of Calliope after the coal cart accident. She is hiding her disfigured fingers)

and all three had stopped to stare at their mutual obsession. They were all desperately in love with Boy. And none of them knew that he had been visiting all of them in their individual slide out drawer beds in the small room off the kitchen. He was a boy alright.

Life at the house went on with Boy deceiving all three women night after night. The stable boy ended up having to lock his door.

(Doodly, the stable boy who ran away)
Then came the time when my Mother could hide her condition no longer. She went to see Mrs St Veyetus to throw herself on her mercy. They had the showdown in the bedroom on the second floor of the mansion.

And this is where the story climaxes into a carnival of mayhemic hellishivity.

I will set the scene. It was Autumn 1929. The Stock Market in New York had crashed and the ripples were being felt in Toronto already. Filbert St Veyetus was among those who had invested in stocks and knew that evening that the St Veyetuses would not be inhabiting the house after Christmas. They were ruined

Filbert was in the billiard room burbling into his rye on the rocks

Filbert's drinking chair

This was the pet loon that actually lived on this shelf. It escaped with its life that dreadful night.

Boy was downstairs in the telephone room. My Aunt Caen walked past and heard him drunkenly mumbling " Doodly, Doodly" over and over again.

Who would know that soon this moose head would be dripping entrails
Mrs St Veyetus had been laying down after a disatrous croquet afternoon in which a mallet had accidentally broken all the fingers of her good hand. She was reclining on her bed in the master lavish room she shared with Filbert.

Blue was Mrs St Veyetus's favourite colour. What colour makes blue purple?

And what colour turns white into shocking pink?

As my Mother, Polly entered the bedroom she glanced into the closet and saw the drawers packed with the plunder these imperialist monsters had stashed away while men were selling pencils from tin cups but three miles away in the streets bordering Front Street and the flophouses near the station.

The dreadfil irony is that this is Mrs St Veyetus's piano teacher.

Polly saw too the sumptious gowns that had been paid for by the sweat of the natives in all lands who dug bauxite and lead from the soil with wooden bowls and no workers compensation

And then her mind snapped. She screamed at Mrs St Veyetus that Boy, her precious son, was nothing but a drunken wastrel who had inseminated her night after night and that she was ready to present "madam" with her first bastard grandchild.

Mrs St Veyetus went bersrk and leapt across the room , her jewel bedecked fingers stretching and twitching like frenzied talons to wrap themsekves around my Mother, Polly's ample neck. The mirrors reflected ghastly screaming mouths as both women scrambled and rolled in a battle to the death.

In an instant both Boy and Filbert were rocketed into supreme sobriety. My Aunts flung down the oven cleaner and they all rushed up the staircase from the floor below

All five would of course tread on the fatal seventh step where little Alabaster had been dethroated by the wolf.

They reached the bedroom and a ghastly sight met their eyes. Their blood would have begun to curdle as they heard the screeches of the frenzied harridans tearing each other into casserole sized lumps. When the truth about the forthcoming child became known to my Aunts in jealous rage they leapt on my Mother, Polly, and started to rip and tear and bite. Furious that the truth had come out and would probably put an end to a valuable college hockey scholarship Boy leapt onto the mound of writhing flesh and teeth and nails and began to wrench the eyes out of the sisters. But by now he did not know that Mrs St Veyetus was amongst the writhing mince and he ripped and wrenched anything he could see. You are feeling a little queasy, are you not? I thought so.

Then arrived a panting old Filbert who had been overtaken on the stairs by the maids and his son.

He cried out for "Order! Order! This is an outrage!" but by now humans had been turned into beasts and a hand reached out, grabbed his smoking jacket tassel and whipped him into the foaming mass of gore and screams. The blood and skin flecked mirrors now reflected a horror mound of impending death as mouths screamed out to the Devil for "Vengeance!" and "Victory!"

And where was I? The child in all this? In a violent spasm I was hurled forth form my Mother's body and into...an open hat box in the walk in wardrobe

And guess which box? Well it was the little one! Got it wrong? I thought so.

A newborn child could not possibly have understood what happened next. The pack of wolves which had smelled the carnage from its copse at the end of the golf course were lured by the smell of warm fresh and hot blood and it is said they feasted for hours on the mountain of meat.

And then the most extraordinary thing happened. A female wolf..attracted by the mewling from the Stetson hat box nosed open the receptacle and for a moment sniffed the air, licked her lips and made ready to swallow me whole. But then with the same instincts which made the She-Wolf of Rome suckle the twins, Romulus and Remus, she gently gummed me out of the box and took me up to the third floor where she fed me and licked me to cleanliness and well being.

And that dear reader is almost that. But then you must have one of the last words, Mr Taylor. Think! Think!

TT here. I have just thought! And yes there is one more thing I remember. The greatest feeling yet of unadulterated evil had hit me in the bedroom. Sheldon saw me about to faint and suggested we should leave. The guide was very solicitous and kind and went for a glass of water. Sheldon said he'd go down and ring a cab to get us home quickly. He had an evening show and wanted to know I 'd be tucked up and the fever that had taken me over would be rested away. I felt a little better and came out of the bedroom and onto the landing

And there she was........ the little lady in the pink cardigan from the gift shop. She hurried past me, head down and hands waving wildly. She was screaming with laughter. Then she stopped, turned and without showing her face, pressed an envelope in my hand - the very envelope that held the letter you have just read. She turned and ran away up the stairs to the third floor. Actually she didn’t run she sort of scuttled like a disgusting beetle. She left a smell like roses and smoke and brandy and lavender water and a strange smell I can only describe as ..... wet dog.

I assumed she was one of the volunteer staff and that she’d given me some sort of promotional material or a prize we’d won or something. I didn't think to even thank her but had the sense of mind to take a photo of her as she rather creepily scuttled up the stairs.

As it had been with the gift shop photo I know I had captured her in this one. I checked in the cab on the way home and there she was on the staircase.

But once home and in bed with a lemon and honey drink I looked at the last picture I had taken inside the house.....of the staircase she ran up. I only took one photograph? Where is she?

We left and I took a couple more of the hateful house.