Alex Van Helsing Read Free

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 crinklesaround 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 whenhe 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