The Van Helsing Legacy: Dark and Hungry Graves

CHAPTER 1

Meg

4 March, 1920

Professor Sanderson stood there in my doorway, just as dead as you please.

'Miss Stuyvesant,' he said gravely, a bit of grave-mould falling from his beard, 'we really must discuss the paper you submitted. This work is no ways up to your usual standards.' He was brandishing a sheaf of typescript, and for a terrible moment, I thought the paper was drenched in blood. But no, the streaks of red were ink, lines and lines of corrections in his miniscule, seismic handwriting.

'Professor,' I replied a bit faintly. 'I...'

He watched me expectantly, dead, white eyes peering through spectacles as thick and nearly as green as the walls of a Coca-Cola bottle.

'Sir, are you quite all right?' It was all I could think to say, ridiculous as it was. 'It's only...' It was only that I had seen him buried on the previous Thursday, and seeing him again now was a bit of a shock. I had never known a man to rise from the grave in order to berate a student for shoddy work. It wasn't the sort of unfinished business that usually drove the unquiet dead.

The corners of his thin, trembling lips turned downward, making his beard quiver. 'Miss Stuyvesant, this is quite unacceptable. I have never known you to submit unacceptable work. A bit rushed, sometimes, but never abysmal.'

Bad enough to bother a man into undeath? I wanted to ask, but of course I could not. The dead sometimes became testy when their dead-ness was pointed out to them. 'I'm very sorry, sir. I'll certainly revise it according to your advice.'

If I could only get him out of the street... It is not usually advisable to invite a revenant into one's home, but anything he might try to do to me or Chessie would still be less inconvenient than anything he might try to do to a hapless pedestrian. The sun was only just down, which meant it was about six in the evening, and Oxford was still bustling. A man covered in dirt could be explained, but people would know Professor Sanderson. At least two other people in my row of flats had attended his funeral.

But his enormous eyebrows pulled together. 'People don't suddenly lose the ability to write coherently, Miss Stuyvesant, unless you have had a stroke. I came to ask if you were all right.'

I winced. If he did not know he was dead, he probably did not know that a stroke had killed him. Well, that and the fact that he was ninety-six. But then I sighed. I had never known a revenant to come griping about dodgy scholarship, but Professor Sanderson was exactly the sort who might claw his way out of his own coffin to make sure his students were safe and well.

'That's very kind, sir. I'm fine, really...'

A voice drifted down the stairs, followed by the clatter of heels. 'Who's that, Meg?'

Ye gods. 'It's for me, Chess! You don't need to come down!'

'Oooh!' she exclaimed. 'Is it Geordie?'

She reached the bottom of the stairs, then, and I heard her stop as though she'd hit a brick wall. 'What the devil!'

Professor Sanderson regarded her with intense disapproval. 'Miss Holmwood.'

I had no idea how he knew her, other than that Chessie made herself known. She had never worked with him, and while she had also come to the funeral, I didn't think the two had ever met while he was alive. But, well, it was difficult not to know Chessie.

I stole a glance over my shoulder and saw her giving me a Look.

'Meg? Isn't that...?'

'I told you, Chess, it's for me. This is Professor Sanderson. Don't think you've ever been properly introduced.' I stood aside. 'Perhaps you ought to come in, Professor.'