An hour and a half later. Alex was in the headmaster’s office, wearing fresh pants and a clean shirt. His mind was still swimming with the nightmare—no, the thing that happened—and that wasn’t even what had brought him here. He’d have to come to terms with what had transpired in the woods, and he didn’t have the time yet.
“I want a new room,” Alex said flatly.
There. He had said it, after working up the courage to walk the long corridors, hearing the clapping of his dress shoes against the marble floors. With every step he had gone over it in his head. He knew what he had to say. And then at the last second he changed it.
“I…I mean, I need, I—I think I need a new room.”
Alex squirmed as the woman behind the desk—draped in a shawl as if they didn’t keep the foyer of the headmaster’s office toasty and warm already—eyed him through her glasses. Mrs. Hostache, he reminded himself as he read the nameplate on her neatly arranged desk. Next to the nameplate was a bud vase, and in it a white flower he didn’t recognize.
Mrs. Hostache cleared her throat. Off to the right behind her stood the door to the headmaster’s office. Over her left shoulder Alex saw a massive window revealing a view that could have been a painting: the leafy grounds of Glenarvon Academy, and beyond, the waters of Lake Geneva, cold and gray with early autumn. He got lost in the view for a second, waiting for her to respond. He had started this badly. Lemme go out and come in again, he thought.
“What was your name?” Mrs. Hostache peered through wide, blue-rimmed glasses that threatened to hide her face.
“Alex. Alex Van Helsing.”
Mrs. Hostache leaned forward, chin on her fist, seeming almost amused. Her hair was brown, pulled back in a tight bun, wisps of gray streaking through it. She chewed her lip. “Didn’t you just get here?”
Alex nodded. “Yeah, I—I got here two days ago.” So she did remember, he thought with relief. It was already two weeks into the fall term when he had come in, all of a sudden sent here by Dad and Mom because after the incident at Frayling Prep they hadn’t known what to do. Now he was in a new school, new house. New room.
“What seems to be the problem, Alex?”
“I…” Alex thought for a second.
He had found a dead mouse in his bed. He wasn’t afraid of mice, but you had to admit that was pretty nasty. He was further unnerved because he hadn’t woken up with it, not that sleeping with a dead mouse would have been better. No, he had awoken around four A.M. and realized that his alarm clock had been unplugged. His roommates, the Merrill brothers, or Merrill & Merrill as they were called by the other students, were pretending to sleep.
Sick of being there with them, Alex had risen and washed his face. He dressed and nearly gave up trying to put in his contacts, the cursed things—he had to try three times to get the right one to go in—and quietly exited the school, out into the darkness to walk. He was done with them.
And then the nightmare in the woods. He could still feel the ferocity of the girl in white’s attack. He had returned in a mild state of shock, only to find the mouse, tiny, fragile, and dead, on his pillow.
Coming off the trauma of the attack, he had wanted to throw up. He wanted to throw up now, thinking about the mouse, its tiny closed eyes, a tiny body someone had snuffed the life from just to make a point. He was more horrified by Merrill & Merrill than by the nightmare in the woods; he had just faced something that did not happen, in the words his father always used, and now he had returned to find that there were also monsters in his room: his roommates. After two days of penny-ante antics like busted alarm clocks, toothpaste in his shoes, and glue in his books, they now seemed to be turning sadistic.
“I found…” Wait. Careful, Alex. He thought down the chessboard a few moves as he stared into the giant, slightly amused eyes of Mrs. Hostache. If he told the story he might trigger some sort of investigation, or whatever it was they would do here. He pictured the Merrill brothers, Steven and Bill, with their kind eyes and cruel mouths, fessing up or not, and it wouldn’t matter, because within three days of his arrival Alex would have caused a major disciplinary event. He might even get swept up in it; the brothers might be able to turn it to their advantage. Everyone would hear, and watch.
“I found that I snore,” he said quickly. “And it disturbs Merrill and Merrill—I mean, the Merrill brothers. I think they would be happier if I…”
“What’s this?” came the voice of Headmaster Otranto, now standing in the open door of his office. Otranto was a wide-shouldered, older man, Italian with a finely trimmed mustache, wearing a topcoat. He was headed out.
“Oh, you have a message.” Mrs. Hostache rose, handing Otranto a slip of paper. She turned away from Alex, and he listened as she and Otranto lowered their heads. “In the woods…asking us to keep a watchful eye.” Alex took this in. Did they know about what had happened to him in the woods this morning? Was he walking into more than he had thought?
But no. Otranto frowned and nodded, then changed the subject. “Is there a problem with this one?” Otranto looked Alex up and down, as though he were leafing quickly through the files in his head.
“Young Master Van Helsing is thinking he would like a new set of roommates.”
Alex felt himself flush. Otranto had seen his file, had heard the whole story of what had happened at the old school. On Alex’s first day, Otranto had given him a long lecture. “What happened before is of no concern to me, young man,” he had said. “But it bears a mark, a mark of character, shall we say. And that mark must be proven to be a smudge, and not a scar.” Which was a weirdly charming way of saying it was of great concern.
“What happened?” Otranto asked.
“Nothing, I just…we have differences.”
“And are you certain, sir, that you do not invite these differences?”
Alex stared, his eye twitching. What do you say to that?
His right contact was killing him; he now suspected he might have put it in inside out, which meant it would bother him until he had the chance to take it out and try again.
“I didn’t invite—” he said. “I just think that we made the assignment pretty fast, and I thought maybe I could be matched, somehow.”
“Matched? We made the assignment?” Otranto repeated the phrase, the temerity of it.
Alex looked down.
“I think we should…”
“I think you should be getting to class,” said Headmaster Otranto. “And we will look forward to more of your learned consultation in the future.”
Alex sighed heavily.
Out of the foyer and into the corridor he slunk. First period had already begun. The year was off to a fine start.
Feeling like a mouse himself, Alex entered his first-period classroom. First period was literature, and Mr. Sangster, a teacher in his early thirties with close-cropped, slightly curly hair, was at the board, scrawling on the chalkboard. Alex scanned the room and found his desk, not far from the back. Glenarvon was a school for boys, so it was a rather smarmy, sarcastic, hostile horde that looked back at him. They were a privileged assortment. Sons of diplomats, aristocrats, and oil barons mingled with the children of high-level corporate executives from around the globe.
And then there was Alex, who was far from under-privileged, but whose old-money background was boring and staid and on the very low side of rich. Unlike the others, he wasn’t here to make lifelong connections. He was here because he had been kicked out of his old school for something that still haunted him, and sent here by his father, who had covered up the whole incident and told Alex to forget it ever happened. But how could he? Alex was still grappling with the guilt.
He walked slowly past two boys he had met—Paul, a friendly, beefy British boy who seemed to have crammed himself with great discomfort into his chair, and Sid, who was Paul’s roommate, a gangly Canadian with red, unkempt hair. Alex had already hit it off with these two at lunch on his first day, though the conversation had run little past their amusement over Alex’s “exotic”—it really wasn’t, he insisted—last name.
Alex stopped at his desk and felt the eyes of Bill Merrill on him, in the seat right next to his. Bill’s brother, Steven, was on the other side of Bill. Alex glanced over; Bill was smirking, a smirk that Alex had seen could charm teachers into missing the cruelty that hid there. Alex laid his backpack on the desk.
Sid looked back as Alex pulled out his chair. “Where have you been?” he whispered.
Alex shrugged. “Otranto’s.” He started to sit down.
There was no longer any chair, he realized. In a split instant he was falling, his arms flailing—and out of nowhere Alex felt a strong hand grab his collar and catch him.
He looked up, bewildered. There, with one arm holding Alex’s entire weight aloft, was Mr. Sangster.
How fast had the teacher moved? Had he already slid around to the side of the class as Sid had been whispering to Alex?
“You should be more careful.” Mr. Sangster had crinkles around his eyes, which looked almost merry and angry at the same time. Alex found his footing as Mr. Sangster let go.
The whole class was watching as Alex grabbed his chair and sat, staring at his desk. Why was this happening to him? What had he done? But then he remembered, and the flush of shame came again, and again was stifled.
With the stifling came a rush of hot anger as Alex looked at Merrill & Merrill. Bill had pulled out his chair. Alex was sure of it.
Mr. Sangster was moving again, toward the front. Like Alex, and unlike most of the students, who tended to be from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Mr. Sangster was an American. “I think, before the acrobatics of young Master Van Helsing, we were discussing Frankenstein.”
Alex pulled a notebook and a thumbed copy of Frankenstein from his pack. Mr. Sangster had told them he was a Romantic and Victorian connoisseur, and that he intended the study of Frankenstein to take several weeks.
“So,” said Mr. Sangster, “what sort of stories did the Villa Diodati group tell?”
“Vampire stories,” Alex heard Sid mutter.
Alex looked at Sid. “Say it,” he whispered. Sid shook his head. Apparently Sid was into vampires. He had been thrilled to hear Alex’s name was Van Helsing, even though the name meant nothing, really.
Bill overheard Sid and spoke up: “Vampire stories.”
“Eh,” Mr. Sangster said. “Not really. But close. What were they writing?”
Bill threw Sid a punishing look. “You moron, you gave me the wrong answer,” he said under his breath.
Sid reacted as if he’d been hit. He whispered, “Honestly—two of them were writing vampire stories.”
Mr. Sangster looked in the back. “Do you guys have something you want to add? Sid?”
Sid was dumbfounded for a second in the spotlight and trailed his fingers over his desk. After a moment he managed to drag forth, “Polidori and Byron were writing vampire stories.” Sid had named two of the people at the house party the teacher was going on about.
Mr. Sangster shrugged. “Well, that’s not what Mary Shelley says.”
They were talking about the introduction to the book. Not even the book. The introduction, where Mary Shelley talked about getting the idea for the book. Alex scanned the length of Shelley’s Frankenstein and calculated that at this rate they would still be reading it when he left for college.
“Ghost stories,” offered Bill. “Scary stories.”
“Right,” said Mr. Sangster. He pointed out the window, out to the trees on the grounds. “In 1816, just across this very lake, in a charming villa rented by the famous poet Lord Byron, a small party decided to pass the time telling ghost stories—or so reports Mary Shelley.”
Sangster looked up at the board, where he had written a number of key words and names. “The party at the Villa Diodati that summer—the Haunted Summer—consisted of five writers: Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, who were already quite famous; two young women writers, Mary Godwin (soon to be Shelley) and her half sister Claire—whom Mary disliked so much that she doesn’t even mention Claire was there; and Byron’s doctor friend, Polidori, who wrote short stories. And they’re bored out of their skulls, because although it’s summer, a massive volcanic eruption in Asia has clouded the sky and made the weather everywhere cold and rainy. So Lord Byron issues each of them a challenge: Write the scariest, most terrifying story you can.
“Mary says the famous guys each wrote some minor pieces, and that Dr. Polidori had, and this is fun, ‘some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady, who was so punished for peeping through a keyhole—to see what I forget—something very shocking and wrong of course.’”
Mr. Sangster looked back at the names. “And then they—gave up.”
“Maybe it was the skull-lady story,” said Bill. “Polidori sounds like a loser.”
The class laughed. Bill was a crowd-pleaser.
“Yes,” Mr. Sangster said softly. “He does sound that way.” Then Mr. Sangster turned back to the class. “But out of Byron’s challenge, a seed grew—and that seed would germinate in the wild imagination of nineteen-year-old Mary into one of the most resilient books in the history of the language. This one. Frankenstein.” He smiled.
Alex dared to raise a hand. “Not one of the best?”
“We’ll see. But it happened here. Right over there at the Villa Diodati. You all enjoy quite an honor, reading it next to its germination.”
The bell rang. “Tomorrow we begin,” said Mr. Sangster, and the class started to file out.
Alex wanted to turn back to apologize for being late but Mr. Sangster had already turned to a notebook and was scrawling in it. At the door Sid was asking, “What was that about with Bill?”
Alex looked at Paul and Sid as he adjusted his backpack on one shoulder. He didn’t know the pair that well but he felt himself desperately clawing for friends. “You won’t believe what happened,” Alex said.
A hand clamped down on his shoulder and Alex thought for a second that Mr. Sangster was yanking him up again, but it was Bill. “You should be more careful,” the smiling boy said, his brother sneering next to him. “So, Van Helsing. Kill any monsters lately?” Bill hissed the syllables out with disgust.
So Alex’s name was Van Helsing. Yes, we all get it. Like that Van Helsing, the vampire hunter from Dracula. But Alex’s father was a professor and his mother was an artist. The only great meaning to his name in all his years was carried in the ornate lettering on annual reports from the Van Helsing Foundation his father controlled. It was a name of some renown in philanthropic circles and turned up occasionally as a sponsor of public radio programs he never listened to. There was no brandishing of wooden stakes, no demons or vampires.
Not a one, not ever. “That is not how things are,” his father had told him once. “Those were things that just didn’t happen,” and they never touched on it again. But of course now Alex was sure that his father had been wrong. Or else that he himself was going insane.
Which might be the case. He had felt entirely, blissfully normal until recently, back at Frayling Prep in the United States. Short bursts of fuzzy pain behind his eyes, a feeling he could only describe as static, had started intermittently and then grown, jagged and buzzing. Alex had gotten a little paranoid. Then the incident that had gotten him expelled. Now he was here. None of this was stuff he would say to Bill Merrill.
Alex turned to Bill. He couldn’t let the mouse incident go whether he was getting a new room or not. Alex spoke softly because the door was still ajar, Sangster just beyond. “I know what you did.”
“Oh?” said Bill. His brother listened silently. Alex had slept in the same room with them for two nights and he hadn’t heard Steven Merrill say ten words. The two of them clearly didn’t want him in their room, but they couldn’t come out and say it; they had to make his life miserable. “And what did you do, eh?”
Alex noticed that Sid and Paul were watching intently, and so were some other boys passing by. Bill came closer: “What did you do that got you kicked out of your last school? You set something on fire? Steal something? I’ll bet that’s it.”
Paul moved his own massive form into the space. “Come on,” the British boy said to Alex. “Let’s go.”
Alex surveyed the scene, his eyes twitching again. Bill had his backpack hanging casually over his shoulder, an expensive model with countless cords and loops hanging down. Alex shook his head. “We don’t have to do this,” he said.
“We don’t have to do this here,” said Bill. “How about later?”
“Secheron,” whispered Steven.
“Yeah,” said Bill. “Good one, Steve.”
“Wow,” Alex referred to Steven. “He speaks.”
“Secheron,” Bill repeated, by which he meant a small village nearby. Alex had heard there were cafés, curio shops, and ice cream there. It all sounded charming. “After school.”
Steven raised an eyebrow. For the first time Alex got the impression that still waters ran deep. “Football.”
“Oh, right.” Bill consulted his brother, casual and businesslike. “Practice. You think…”
As they were discussing when to beat Alex mercilessly, and whether their weekday soccer schedule could accommodate the beating, they now really did resemble Merrill & Merrill, a law firm. There was nodding and finally Bill turned back. “Friday. Day after tomorrow. Secheron.”
Paul said, “Oh, you’re going to fight in Secheron? Where, at the ice-cream parlor?” Paul turned back to Alex. “Come on,” he repeated.
“Fine,” Alex said, feeling exhausted. “Secheron.” He rubbed his right eye, feeling some release when he pressed on it. As his vision cleared he rested his eyes on the cords dangling from Bill’s pack.
The boys all started to leave.
Suddenly, Bill Merrill was mysteriously yanked back and smacked his head on the doorjamb. He yelped sharply. “Hey!”
As they continued briskly down the hall, Alex smiled. Sid said, “What the—?”
Alex shrugged. In the moment before they moved, he had taken just a few seconds to loop one of the cords of Bill’s pack to the hinge of the door.
“I am more than just a mouse,” muttered Alex.