CHAPTER 8. VAMPIRE CLASS
“‘I see,’ said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window.” The old professor scanned the crowded lecture hall from behind a dark brown wooden lectern. “How many of you can tell me what book starts like that? Raise your hands.”
Perched on a comfortable cushioned seat in the top row of the amphitheater-style classroom, Leesa recognized the quote. She looked down on a sea of raised hands, amazed at how many seats were filled. Close to a hundred kids, she guessed, twice as many as in her other classes. Except for her row, which was only about half full, there were few empty seats. To her left, a group of seven or eight guys and girls clad in black were clumped together in the back two rows. Two wore white makeup on their faces, and the rest were exceedingly pale. You didn’t see many full-fledged goths nowadays, but she wasn’t surprised they were drawn to this class.
This was the class she had so looked forward to, the one she dared not mention to her mom and chose to keep quiet about with her aunt and uncle as well. Vampire Science. The name seemed an oxymoron, and Weston was one of only two colleges in the country offering such a course. With the amazing popularity of vampire books, television shows and movies, a growing number of schools were catering to the demand by offering classes on vampire lit, but vampire science was something else indeed. Leesa found the books and shows to be filled with contradictions and inconsistencies. If vampires truly existed—and while she tried to keep an open mind on the subject, she was not ready to believe they did—she wanted to learn what might be true and what wasn’t. And Bradley had told her how much he enjoyed this class, before he disappeared. She wondered if something he’d learned here had anything to do with his departure.
“Take notice of all the hands,” the professor continued. His deep voice carried easily through the hall. “More than half of you. Ten years ago, the number would have been much smaller, even though Interview with the Vampire has been around for almost thirty years now. And I bet some of you with your hands down have read the book, but didn’t recall the opening line.”
He stepped out from behind the lectern. His thin frame was slightly stooped with age, but he moved with surprising ease, given his frail appearance. Long white hair hung limply from his head onto his shoulders, the color a sharp contrast to his rumpled black suit. His black Converse sneakers did not go with the suit, but Leesa could tell he was the kind of man who didn’t care.
“As I’m sure you’ve all guessed by now, I’m Dr. Clerval,” the professor said. “And this handsome young fellow”—he indicated a young man in his mid-twenties wearing a brown sweater and dark tie sitting on a folding chair near the corner of the stage—“is Mr. Randolph, my teaching assistant. I prefer to call him Renfield.”
The remark brought a smattering of laughter from the class.
Dr. Clerval smiled. “A poor joke, I know, but one that amuses me.” He shuffled forward to the front of the dais. “Let’s have some fun before we get more serious. Another show of hands. How many of you fine young students have read the original Dracula, by Bram Stoker?”
Leesa looked down on perhaps half as many hands this time.
“Fewer hands, that’s obvious,” the professor said. “What else do you notice?”
He waited while the students glanced about the room, trying to decipher what he was looking for. Leesa noticed hers was one of the few female hands raised, even though the class was more than half girls. But she remained quiet.
“No one?” prodded the professor. “Okay, hands down. Let’s try this. How many of you have read Twilight?”
Many more hands shot up this time. Chuckles began to break out around the lecture hall, spreading quickly into louder laughter. Leesa laughed quietly to herself. Most of the hands were female.
Professor Clerval waited for the laughter to subside. “I see you got it that time,” he said. “Mostly women. For those who didn’t notice, with Dracula it was almost all men. What does this tell us?”
“Guys dig blood and guts,” a male voice answered. “Chicks go for the sappy romance.” The room erupted with more laughter.
“I may not have phrased it quite that way,” Professor Clerval said when the room quieted, “what with the PC police lurking like vampires behind seemingly every corner.”
Leesa joined in yet another round of laughter. Professor Clerval was wonderful. She was going to like this class even more than she thought. Way more than physics and math, which, judging from the first classes, promised to be deadly dull. The jury was still out on English lit, but psychology seemed like it might be pretty cool.
“Political correctness aside,” the professor continued, “our young man has a point. Vampires have something for everyone. Renfield, if you please.”
Randolph tapped his fingers on a gray keyboard resting on his lap. The lights began to dim and a large white screen descended with a low whirr behind the professor.
“Something for everyone, I was saying,” Professor Clerval said. “From Count Dracula”—he waved his hand toward the screen and the gruesome visage of the black-caped Bela Lugosi appeared—“to Lestat.” Tom Cruise’s aristocratically handsome face replaced Lugosi’s. “To Edward.” The young teen heartthrob Robert Pattinson now smiled down at them.
“We have blood and guts, as our young man so nicely phrased it.” A series of pictures flashed by—a man’s neck being torn by vampire fangs, a wooden stake thrust into the heart of a vampire, another reduced to ashes by sunlight streaming in through a window. At least ten violent images, some quite graphic in their depictions of blood and death, glowed hauntingly from the screen. Leesa cringed a little in her seat, but was mesmerized nonetheless by the parade of images. She recognized about half of them.
The screen went dark for a few seconds.
“And we have romance,” the professor continued, his voice softer now, almost feminine in tone. Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst as Louis and Claudia appeared, their loving faces in total contrast to the previous images of violence. Next came Bella and Edward, locked together in a passionate embrace. “And yes, we have sex, too.” The face of a woman Leesa didn’t recognize replaced Bella and Edward, her expression one of utter rapture as a vampire bit her pale throat. Her image was followed by a picture of the three nearly naked Brides of Dracula hovering in diaphanous gowns above a sleeping Keanu Reeves.
“We have heroes”—Louis, then Edward appeared again, in different shots than before—“and even lovely heroines.” Several pictures of Kate Beckinsale as the beautiful Selene from the Underworld movies filled the screen, followed by the sexy red-haired image of the video game character Rayne.
Finally, the screen went blank and the lights brightened. Professor Clerval moved back behind his lectern. “Dozens of books and movies, a couple of television series, even video games,” he said. “So many choices. Something for everyone. Far too many choices, I fear. With every author and director taking the parts they like, dropping what they don’t, and adding what they need, how are we to know what is true?” He leaned forward, his hands gripping the sides of the lectern. “Do vampires burst into flames when touched by daylight, or do they merely glitter under the sun? Do they sleep in coffins, or in beds like you and me? Do they fear crosses, cringe at garlic, and burn at the touch of holy water? Do we slay them with a wooden stake, by beheading, or by burning?”
A low murmur of quick, whispered conversations rumbled through the room.
“You sound like you believe vampires actually exist,” a guy in the second row said skeptically.
Professor Clerval smiled. “I would never say that,” he said, his tone implying he would like to do just that. “The administration would have me out of here so fast my head would spin. Only the exploding popularity of vampires in the last couple of years has convinced them to let me offer a class in vampire science—and you should have seen what I had to go through to get that name accepted. Before this class, only the vampire lit course was offered.”
; He walked to the edge of the stage. When he continued, his voice was lower, conspiratorial. “Just for the sake of this class, let’s assume vampires really do exist.” He winked. “It will make things so much more fun, don’t you think?”
Leesa was enthralled. The professor made her feel that maybe vampires were real. And she could tell she wasn’t the only one in the class to feel that way. She remembered a few times when her mom had been so convincing Leesa almost believed her story. She wanted to ask Professor Clerval about one-fanged vampires, but she was nowhere near ready for that yet.
“Dr. Clerval,” a male voice called out, “I have a question.”
Leesa was surprised to see the questioner was the red-haired geek from orientation. She hadn’t expected to find him in a class like this, but wasn’t surprised he had planted himself in the front row, near the teacher. She bet he sat in the front of all his classes. And he was either wearing the same outfit as at orientation, or all his clothes looked alike. Probably both, she thought, grinning.
“Certainly, young man,” the professor replied. “Your name, and then your question.”
Leesa admired the kid’s guts. She could never in a million years see herself asking a question in a group this big. She was too afraid she’d sound stupid or something, but she guessed the guy was some kind of brainiac and harbored no such fears. Class would be his element, like Cali at a party. Leesa wondered what her own element was.
“My name is Stanley,” he said, with no hint of anxiety in his voice. “Let’s assume vampires are real, like you said. They’re supposed to be immortal, right?”
“Yes,” Professor Clerval replied. “All accounts seem to agree on that. Stoker used the term ‘undead.’ Basically, vampires are already dead, so they cannot die. Technically, that means they can’t be killed—they must be destroyed.”
“So, if they live forever, and every time they bite someone that person becomes a vampire, shouldn’t there be an awful lot of vampires running around by now?”
“You make a good point, young man. Mathematically, you’d be correct—though not all victims bitten by a vampire actually become vampire. But I’m not ready to discuss that particular topic yet.” He paused for a moment, his head turning slowly as he surveyed the classroom. “We have a lot of deer here in Connecticut,” he said to the class as a whole. “And limitless food for them to eat. What keeps their numbers in check?”
“Hunters,” a guy called out.
Laughter rumbled through the room. Dr. Clerval waited for it to die down before replying. “I think someone was trying to be funny there, but actually, he’s right. Hunting does keep the population in check. And if there were no people around to hunt them?”
“Predators would do it,” a brunette in a pretty blue and white sweater a few rows below Leesa replied. “Nature’s way of insuring a balance.”
Professor Clerval smiled. “Precisely. So, getting back to Stanley’s point, how might this relate to vampires?”
“Vampire slayers!” a woman’s voice rang out.
The professor chuckled. “I don’t think Buffy is quite enough to account for what we’re talking about,” he said. “But yes. Hunters. Or predators, if you will.”
“Like lycans, in the Underworld films?” someone suggested.
“Or the werewolves in New Moon,” another offered.
“That’s the general idea,” Professor Clerval agreed. “Someone or something that hunts vampires. We’re getting ahead of ourselves again, though. And we’re about out of time this evening, anyhow. We’ll come back to this down the road. Renfield, would you pass out the reading lists, please.”
Randolph began trudging up the steps, handing a sheaf of reading lists to the person at the end of each row. As Leesa watched him climb nearer, her eyes were drawn to a guy sitting at the end of her row. Trying not to be too obvious, she leaned forward to get a clearer look past a couple of guys sitting between them.
She sucked in a sharp breath—the guy was absolutely gorgeous! He definitely was not there at the beginning of class, or she would have noticed him for sure. His thick, wavy hair had a copper hue to it—sort of like an old penny, she thought—and his smooth skin seemed to have a similar, though lighter, tint. He had impossibly high cheekbones, a strong straight nose and a firm chin. His profile reminded her of pictures of classic sculptures she’d seen in art history books in high school. It may have been a trick of the lighting, but his face seemed almost to glow, as if some inner light were trying to shine through. It was face to make any girl drool, for sure, and Leesa almost rubbed her lower lip to make certain she wasn’t doing just that.
As if sensing her eyes on him, the guy turned to look at her. She thought she saw the barest flicker of surprise crease his handsome features, but it was gone before she could be sure. He smiled, his eyes holding hers for the briefest of moments, then turned his head and rose from his seat. Moving with an athlete’s grace and without seeming to hurry, he disappeared swiftly out the back of the room.
Leesa sat paralyzed, her heart hammering. A strange warmth radiated through her body. She’d never felt anything like this and had no idea what to make of it. Guys just did not make her feel this way. She only knew she wanted to see more of him, if only to assure herself he wasn’t some vision conjured up by her imagination and the talk of vampires. But why had he left so abruptly?
She limped hurriedly out to the aisle, excusing herself as she squeezed past the two guys, and rushed to the door for one last look at him. Outside, she swung her head from side to side, but saw no sign of him on the broad grass courtyard. It had only been moments—how had he managed to vanish so quickly? He had to be out here somewhere, but he wasn’t. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, but the courtyard was still empty. Shaking her head, she wondered if he’d ever really been there at all.
She hated that this class met only once a week. She had already been looking forward to the next one, but now she could hardly wait.