“And deadly. Zombies aren’t just scary, they try to kill the living,” said a third. “Make us one of them.”
“Vampires do that, too,” Harper pointed out. “And again, there was a logic to it: There were many incidents of ‘vampire crazes’ associated in time and place with diseases such as tuberculosis and porphyria. People came up with stories to try to explain what was happening.”
“Hey, Professor, I read something one time? About vampires in China? And how you can save yourself from them with rice?” asked a student who until today had not said a single word.
“Rice?” another student guffawed. “Weird.”
“No weirder than repelling them with garlic,” a young woman pointed out.
“Do you throw the rice at them, or what?”
Harper jumped in. “According to Chinese folklore, vampires are compelled to stop and count small items. So to repel a vampire, one would place a large bag of rice by the door. If a vampire comes calling, it must first stop and count the grains of rice, thereby allowing the humans to escape. Also, these particular vampires don’t run or fly—they hop.”
The students broke up laughing.
“Sounds more like a mummy,” one student said.
“Or a zombie.”
“Zombies shamble, they don’t hop,” another student said.
“Oh, and vampires do?”
“But this is all just superstition, right?”
The students looked at Harper expectantly.If it takes zombies and vampires to get them interested in history, then by God, I’ll talk about zombies and vampires.
“Here’s the funny thing about superstitions: Once you label something as ‘just a superstition,’ you close off inquiry into what a reasonable response to dire circumstances might be. This is what I’m saying: There are reasons this kind of folklore is common to cultures around the world. Remember, people in the past were every bit as intelligent as we are today, they just lacked many of the scientific tools we have. There’s a certain logic behind beliefs and stories that sound fantastical to us. Folk systems offer people a way to explain, and even attempt to control or manipulate, the world around them.”
“I heard that they buried vampires differently,” said Jenny. “Like, face down, or whatever?”
“True,” said Harper. “And although scholars don’t agree on the causes of the vampire panics, a key detail unites them: The public hysteria almost invariably occurred in the midst of terrible tuberculosis outbreaks. For example, a rural familycontracted the wasting illness, and the survivors accused the early victims of becoming vampires who in turn preyed upon family members, who subsequently fell sick. Often an exhumation was called for, to stop the vampire’s predations. In some communities they tried flipping the ‘vampire’ face down in their grave, while others beheaded corpses, or bound their feet with thorns. Sometimes they burned the dead person’s heart, in the belief that inhaling the smoke might act as a cure.”
“Ew!” Blanca said, her nose wrinkled. “Imagine inhaling burnt vampire smoke.”
“It makes sense if you think it might save you,” said another.
Harper was pleased to see the students absorbing what she was telling them and putting the pieces together.
“Didn’t they also, like, mark the coffins with symbols and stuff?” asked Blanca. “I think I read that somewhere.”
“They did in some areas, yes. The point is, we can’t dismiss such stories out of hand as mere superstitions; they arose from a need to understand the vagaries of our world. Speaking of which, let’s get back to today’s topic: the history and meaning of Gothic literature in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Did you knowDraculawas published more than a hundred years ago?”
At the end of the hour, the students filed out, still chatting about zombies and vampires. Pleased but tired, Harper stifled a yawn and shoved her lecture notes into her new leather messenger bag. Although the expensive Coach briefcase her mother had given her when she finished her PhD was still in good shape—her mother had beensoproud of her—Harper had bought the less formal messenger bag because it was more in step with the relaxed culture of coastal California.
Harper’s office was located down a long, nondescripthallway that could easily have doubled for the offices of a high-tech company or the DMV. Monterey College’s administration, classrooms, and dorm buildings were brand spanking new, built on six hundred of the twenty-eight thousand acres that used to comprise Fort Ord, one of the country’s largest military bases before it was decommissioned in the 1990s. About half the acreage had been ceded to a national monument full of hiking trails, there was a large military cemetery, and there were a few small housing developments, but the rest of the land remained in the hands of the military, which was tasked with demolishing old buildings and cleaning up contaminated soil and unexploded ordnance.
Harper was of two minds when it came to the college’s architecture: As much as she adored the stately, ivy-covered Gothic towers of the universities back East, she had to admit that working in a clean new building with numerous electrical outlets and reliable internet access had its charms.
“ ’Scuse me, Doctor…I mean, Professor Grae?”
Two students, Blanca and Jenny, fell in step beside her. Blanca was young, no doubt unable to get into a bar without a fake ID, with long gleaming dark hair and big brown eyes framed by sooty caterpillar-like false lashes. Like most of the student body, she was dressed in jeans and a red and black Monterey College sweatshirt, and carried a bulky backpack slung over one shoulder. But her makeup suggested her next stop might well be a dance club. Jenny was short and plump, and dressed exactly like Blanca but with no apparent makeup.
Not that either young woman needed it. Most of Harper’s students exuded the raw beauty of youth and good health. Harper wished she had understood that about herself when she was their age. How much happier she would have beenhad she not focused incessantly on whatever flaws she could find: Her hair was limp and boring, her face was too broad and square, her body was healthy but not slender enough to be fashionable. Once Harper started avoiding mirrors altogether, she was much happier.
“Your first name’s Harper, right, Professor?” Jenny said. “That’s a cool name.”
“Thanks. My mother was a fan ofTo Kill a Mockingbird. My sister’s name is Scout.”
