Wyn Deveron: The Transvestites of Weir House: Ibye Weir

Saturday, March 22, 2014

The Transvestites of Weir House: Ibye Weir

Ibye Weir was long deceased by the time Collin Weir, the narrator of Weir House, was born, but her tower rooms are now his retreat. It is in Ibye's old rooms that Collin Weir dresses up in his dead mother's clothes.

There is a secret surrounding Ibye which set in motion the events that led to the bones being secreted under Weir House. I do not want to make this a spoiler, so I won't go into Ibye's life except to say that she was a young, libertine cross-dresser who ran around with her brother, Col's grandfather, during the flapper era. Ibye, who preferred women sexually, believed that she was accepted as one of the guys as she hung out with her brother, Jonathan Weir, and his friends. This misconception led to a tragic series of events on the Evelyn Irene, the last steamboat commissioned and owned by the Weir family.

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WEIR HOUSE

Col Weir was seven years old when he and his sister Mary saw their father strangle their mother with her long yellow hair and bury her under Weir House. He was sixteen when his father threw him out of the house for dressing up in his dead mother’s clothes.

Though banished, Col never really leaves. He steals back into Weir House, living a secret life in the tower rooms which are haunted by the ghost of his great Aunt Ibye whose terrible secret had the power to kill two generations later.

The memory of the final conversation between their parents was etched indelibly in the minds of Col and Mary Weir. Or was it? As brother and sister grew up, hoarding their gruesome secret, Mary spun her own version of he said, she said, which she has repeated hundreds of times to her little brother. Now that they are adults, Col realizes that Mary has completely rewritten the script, and that his own memory is a shapeshifter.

As the legacy of murder and madness transfers to a new generation, Mary’s son, Alan, becomes the latest victim of the past. Col pins his hopes on his niece, Clara, who seems immune to the family curse, but even Clara cannot escape. Col seeks answers in a desperate quest to save Clara, but the past is a bone yard, whose skeletal embrace lures Col to his own grave.