Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

ELEVEN

Casualties

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

—Abraham Lincoln, in a message to Congress

December 1st, 1862

I

On June 3rd, 1861, Stephen A. Douglas was found dead in a stairwell of his Chicago home.

I have just this hour heard the shocking news. Though the full facts have not yet come to light, I have no doubt that it is the work of vampires—and that I bear some of the responsibility for his murder.

Publicly, the cause of death was reported as typhoid fever, even though none of Douglas’s friends remembered him feeling unwell the night before he was discovered. The body was taken by coach to Mercy Hospital, where it was examined by a young Chicago physician, Dr. Bradley Milliner. From the autopsy report:

Four small, circular puncture wounds on deceased’s body—two on left shoulder directly over axillary [artery]; two the neck directly over right common carotid [artery].

Both sets surrounded by significant bruising; uniformly spaced one and one-half inches apart.

Whole of deceased’s body badly decayed and gray-blue in color; face is sunken; skin brittle, suggesting death occurred weeks or months before examination.

Stomach contains brightly colored, whole pieces of undigested food, suggesting deceased ate shortly before death, and that death occurred less than twenty-four hours before examination.

Along with his observations, Dr. Milliner scribbled a single word in the report’s margin:

“Incredible.”

The report itself was deemed “inconclusive” and suppressed by Milliner’s superiors, who thought that releasing such information would only add to the “climate of conjecture and suspicion” surrounding the senator’s death. ^*

Lincoln and Douglas had been the most famous rivals in America. For two decades, they’d competed over everything from a woman’s love to the highest office in the land. But for all their political antipathy, the two had grown to respect, even like, each other over the years. Douglas was, after all, one of Abe’s “brilliant beacons” in Washington’s “fog of fools.” And while the so-called Little Giant spent years appealing to Southern passions, he was, in his heart, no son of the South. In fact, Douglas loathed the idea of disunion, going so far as to call secessionists “criminals,” and declaring: “We must fight for our country and forget our differences. There can be but two parties: the party of patriots and the party of traitors. We belong to the first.”

When the Union began to tear itself apart in the wake of his failed 1860 campaign, it was Stephen Douglas who first reached out to his old rival—the new president elect.

He wishes to join me in the cause of opposing secession. To that end I have asked him to make a speaking tour of the Border States and the Northwest (those places where the flame of unity might yet be fanned by our efforts, or snuffed out by a lack of them). I can think of no better messenger, no ally more symbolic of the need for unity. I will admit that his offer took me quite by surprise. I suppose it possible that he has come to regret his association with the vampire South, and is looking for some means of redemption. Whatever his reasons, I welcome his help.

Douglas made pro-Union speeches in three states before returning to Washington. At Abe’s inauguration, with the threat of assassination hanging in the air, he placed himself near the podium and declared, “If any man attacks Lincoln, he attacks me!” And on Sunday, April 14th, 1861, as Fort Sumter was being surrendered to the Confederates, Stephen Douglas was among the first to race to the White House.

He came today with no appointment, only to find that I was meeting with the Cabinet, and would be thus engaged for quite some time. [Presidential secretary John] Nicolay asked him to call again, but Judge Douglas flatly refused. When I had grown weary of hearing his familiar baritone shouting profanities in the hall, I swung my office door open and exclaimed, “By God, let the man in or we shall have two wars to fight!”

We met privately for an hour or more. I had never seen him in such a panicked state! “They will march headlong into Washington and kill me!” he cried. “Kill the lot of us! I demand to know what plans you have to combat this menace, sir!” I told him, in the calmest voice I could muster, the truth—that I was to call for 75,000 militia the next morning; that I was to suppress this rebellion with every power of my office and weapon in my arsenal. These reassurances, however, only seemed to deepen his panic. He urged me to call for three times that number. “Mr. President,” he said, “you do not know the dishonest purposes of those men as I do. You do not, and I say this with the deepest respect, sir, know the real enemy you face.”

“Oh, but I assure you, Mr. Douglas—I know them too well.”

Thanks to Henry, Abe had known about Douglas’s connection to Southern vampires since their Senate race three years earlier. Douglas, however, never suspected that the gangly, graying man before him had once been the mightiest vampire hunter on the Mississippi.

I can scarcely describe his astonishment at hearing the word “vampires” pass my lips. Now, with the truth out at last, each of us told the other his story: I of my mother’s death; of my years spent hunting vampires. Douglas of the fateful day when—as a young, ambitious Democrat in the Illinois State Legislature—he was approached by a pair of “sallow” men from the South. “It was then that I first learned of [vampires],” he said. “It was then that I first became intoxicated by their money and influence.”

Douglas repaid their support by railing against abolitionists in the Senate and by using his natural talent for speechmaking to rally proslavery forces across the country. But he’d begun to question his vampire patrons in recent years.

“Why do they reject compromise with the North?” he asked. “Why do they seem intent on war at any cost? And why, by God, do they care so fervently for the institution [of slavery] at all? I could see no logic in it, and I could not, in good conscience, continue down the path to disunion.”

It became clear that Douglas did not know the whole truth; clear that—while guilty of some small treachery—he could not be judged with the likes of the traitorous [Jefferson] Davis. Moved by his remorse, I determined to tell him all: the marriage of slavery and Southern vampires. Their plan to enslave all but the fortunate few of our kind; to keep us in cages and chains as we had kept the Negro. I told him of their plan to create a new America; a nation of vampires—free from oppression, free from darkness, and blessed with an abundance of living men to feast upon.

By the time I finished speaking, Douglas wept.

That night, Abe sat at the head of a long table in his office, with Secretary of State William Seward to his left. They were joined by the rest of the Cabinet, all of them anxious to hear why they’d been summoned from their supper tables and rushed back to the White House.

“Gentlemen,” I said at last, “I wish to speak to you this evening about vampires.”

Abe had met with his Cabinet on a near daily basis since the inauguration. They’d discussed every detail of the coming war: uniforms, supply lines, commanders, horses, provisions—everything but the truth of what they were really fighting for, and who they were really fighting against.

And yet I had asked these men to plan me a war! Was it not akin to asking a group of blind men to pilot a steamboat?

The encounter with Douglas had changed Abe’s mind. When they parted company that evening, he had ordered Nicolay to reconvene the Cabinet at once.

I thought it crucial that these men—these men who were to be my counsel through untold miseries—knew exactly what they faced. There would be no more revelations in this office. No more half-truths or omissions. Now, just as I had with Douglas, I would tell them the whole truth—with Seward there to endorse every word of it. My history. My hunting. My alliance with a small band of vampires called the Union, and the unthinkable consequences of the coming war.

Some were shocked to hear vampires spoken of at all. [Secretary of the Navy Gideon] Wells and [Secretary of the Treasury Salmon] Chase, it seemed, had managed to go the whole of their lives thinking them nothing more than myth. Wells sat in ashen silence. Chase, however, grew indignant. “I will not stand for folly in the face of war!” he declared. “I will not be summoned from my home to be made a fool for the president’s amusement!” Seward rose to my defense, insisting that every word was true, and admitting his own complicity in keeping it from the rest of the Cabinet. Chase remained unconvinced.

He was not alone in his doubts. [Secretary of War Edwin] Stanton—who had long believed vampires real, but confined to the shadows—was the next to speak. “What sense can it make?” he asked. “Why would [Jefferson] Davis… why would any man conspire against himself? Why would any man hasten his own enslavement?”

“Davis has only his own survival in mind,” I said. “He and his allies are pilot fish—cleaning the teeth of sharks to avoid being themselves bitten. Perhaps they have been promised power and riches in this new America, exemption from chains. But know this—whatever they have been promised is a lie.”

Chase could bear it no longer. He rose from his seat and left the room. I waited for others to join him. Satisfied that none would, I continued.

“Even now,” I said, “there is a part of me that finds it all impossible to believe. A part of me that expects to wake from a half-century’s dream. Even after all these years, and all of the things I have witnessed. And why not? After all, to believe in vampires is to reject reason! To acknowledge a darkness that is not supposed to exist anymore. Not here, in this great age, where science has illuminated all but a few mysteries. No… no, that darkness belongs in the Old Testament; in the tragedies of Shakespeare. But not here.

“That, gentlemen… that is why they thrive. That belief—that we live beyond the reach of darkness—is one that vampires have worked tirelessly to instill through the centuries. I submit to you that it is nothing less than the greatest lie ever sold to mankind.”

II

Three days after the fall of Fort Sumter, Virginia seceded from the Union, and the Confederate capital was relocated to its industrial heart, Richmond. Over the next few weeks, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina followed. There were now eleven states in the Confederacy, with a combined population of nine million people (four million of which were slaves). Even so, most Northerners were convinced that the war would be a short one, and that the “sechers” (secessionists) would be stamped out by summer’s end.

They had reason to be confident. The North, after all, had more than twice the population of the South. It had railroads that could speed troops and provisions to the battlefield in a fraction of the time; superior factories to supply boots and ammunition; warships to blockade ports and pound coastal cities. Pro-Union newspapers urged the president to bring about a “swift end to this unpleasantness.” Cries of “Forward to Richmond!” were heard across the North. Henry Sturges agreed. In a telegram dated July 15th, he used a quote from Shakespeare to send Abe a coded message ^* : strike Richmond now.

Abraham,

“In God’s name, cheerly on, courageous friends, to reap the harvest of perpetual peace, by this one bloody trial of sharp war.” ^**

—H

Abe followed the advice. The day after receiving the letter, he ordered the largest fighting force ever assembled on North American soil—35,000 men—to march from Washington to Richmond under the command of Brigadier General Irvin McDowell. Most of McDowell’s soldiers came from the 75,000 militiamen hurriedly called up in the wake of Fort Sumter. They were, for the most part, farmers and tradesmen. Baby-faced teenagers and frail old men. Some had never fired a shot in their lives.

McDowell complains that his men are inexperienced. “You are green,” I told him, “but [the Confederates] are green also. You are all green alike! We must not wait for the enemy to come marching into Washington. We must meet him where he lives! To Richmond, by God!”

To get there, McDowell and his men would have to march twenty-five miles south into Virginia, where General Pierre Beauregard and 20,000 Confederates were waiting for them. In the sweltering heat of Monday, July 21st, 1861, the two armies met near the town of Manassas. It would be remembered as the First Battle of Bull Run—so named for the little creek that would soon run red.

Two days after the battle, a Union private named Andrew Merrow wrote home to his new bride in Massachusetts. ^* His letter paints a gruesome picture of the day’s events, and offers some of the earliest evidence that the Confederate Army had vampires in its ranks.

We had [the Confederates] whipped at the start. Blessed with greater numbers, we drove the devils south up Henry House Hill, and into a group of trees at its peak. What a sight to see them scatter like mice! To see our ranks spread half a mile wide! To hear the cracking of gunpowder from all directions! “Let us chase them all the way to Georgia!” cried Colonel Hunter, to the delight of the men.

As we neared the top of the hill, the rebels covered their retreat by firing on us. The gun smoke grew so thick that one could scarcely see ten yards into the trees where they hid. From behind this curtain of smoke suddenly came a chorus of wild yells. The voices of twenty or thirty men, growing louder by the moment. “First ranks! Fix bayonets!” ordered the colonel. As they did, a small band of Confederates emerged from the smoke, running toward us as fast as any men have ever run. Even from a distance, I could see their strange, wild eyes. There was not a rifle, or a pistol, or a sword among them.

Our first ranks began to fire, yet their rifles seemed to have no effect. Melissa, I shall swear until my grave that I saw bullets strike these men in their chests. In their limbs and faces. Yet they continued to charge as if they had not been hit at all! The rebels smashed into our ranks and tore men apart in front of my eyes. I do not mean to suggest that they ran them through with bayonets, or fired on them with revolvers. I mean to say that these rebels—these thirty unarmed men—tore one hundred men to pieces with nothing more than their bare hands. I saw arms pulled off. Heads twisted backward. I saw blood pour from the throats and bellies of men gutted by mere fingertips; a boy grasping at the holes where his eyes had been a moment before. A private three yards in front of me had his rifle plucked away. I was close enough to feel his blood on my face as its stock was used to smash his skull in. Close enough to taste his death on my tongue.

Our lines broke. I am not ashamed to say that I dropped my rifle and ran with the others, Melissa. The rebels gave chase, overtaking and savaging men on either side of me as we retreated. Their screams following me down the hill.

Reports of similar “rebel charges” poured in from McDowell’s commanders. “Well,” he is rumored to have said (on learning that the Union was in full retreat), “we brought the superior army, but it seems they brought the superior men.” McDowell had no idea that those “superior men” weren’t men at all.

The fighting lasted a matter of hours. When the gun smoke gave way, more than a thousand men were dead, another three thousand severely or mortally wounded. From the diary of Union Major General Ambrose Burnside:

I rode past a small pond at dusk and saw men washing their wounds in it. The water had turned quite red as a result—but this did not deter the desperate from drinking it when they crawled to its edge. Near this, I saw the body of a rebel boy who had been hit by a shell. Only his arms, shoulders and head remained—his eyes open and face expressionless. A group of buzzards was gathered around him, picking at his entrails. Pecking at the bits of his brain that had spilled onto the ground. It is a sight that shall never leave me.

And yet I have seen a hundred such horrors this day. A man could walk a mile in any direction without his feet touching the ground—such are the number of bodies. Even as I write this, I hear the screams of the wounded on the air. Begging for help. For water. In some cases, begging for death.

I have no more fear of hell, for I have this day seen it with my own eyes.

The North was in a state of shock and mourning after Bull Run.

Had I only listened to Douglas! To McDowell! Had I only called for more men and given them more time to train—this war might be over, and the suffering and death of thousands avoided. It is clear, now, that the South means to compensate for her smaller numbers by sending vampires to the fields of battle. So be it. I have spent a lifetime hunting vampires with my ax. I shall now spend a little while longer hunting them with my army. If this is to be a long and costly struggle, then let us redouble our resolve to win it.

Once its shock subsided, the North took a cue from its president and dug its heels in. Men turned out in droves to enlist, and states pledged new regiments and provisions. On July 22nd, 1861, the day he signed a bill calling for 500,000 new troops, Abraham Lincoln scribbled a prescient thought in his journal.

Let us pray now for the future dead. Though we do not yet know their names, we know that there shall be far too many of them.

III

It had been a bitter, frustrating winter for the president and his Cabinet. With rivers frozen and roads covered with mud and snow, there was little either army could do but tend its fires and wait for the thaw. On February 9th, 1862, his 53rd birthday, Abe was in his office when the first sign of spring came at last.

I have just received word of [General Ulysses S.] Grant’s success at Fort Henry in Tennessee. It is a crucial victory for us in the west, and a welcome change from these long months of waiting. Together with the sound of my rascals playing outside, it is a fine Sunday indeed!

“Rascals” Tad and Willie Lincoln—seven and ten years old, respectively—were the unquestioned life (some would say scourge) of the White House. The boys spent countless hours running rampant over the mansion and its grounds during the first year of their father’s presidency, a fact that aggravated some of Abe’s associates to no end, but offered the president a much-needed distraction from the stresses of running a country and a war.

The sound of my boys at play is (too often, I confess) the only joy between sunrise and sleep. I am therefore too happy to wrestle and chase them about whenever the opportunity presents itself—and regardless of who looks on. Not one week ago, [Iowa Senator James W.] Grimes walked into my office for an appointment, only to find me pinned to the floor by four boys: Tad and Willie holding my legs, Bud and Holly ^* my arms. “Senator,” I said, “if you would be kind enough to negotiate the terms of my surrender.” Mary thinks it beneath the dignity of a president to gambol so, but were it not for these moments—these tender little pieces of life—I should go mad in a month’s time.

Abe was a doting, loving father to all three of his boys, but with Robert off at Harvard (where he was guarded by a handful of local men and vampires) and Tad “too young and wild to be still,” he grew especially fond of Willie.

He has an insatiable appetite for books; a love of solving riddles. If there is a fight, he can be counted on to step in and make the peace. Some are eager to point to the similarities between us, but I do not see us as so very similar—for Willie has a kinder heart than I, and a quicker mind.

As he celebrated the good news that Sunday afternoon, Abe happened to catch a glimpse of his boys playing on the frost-covered South Lawn below his office window.

Tad and Willie were busy holding a court-martial for Jack ^* as they often did—accusing him of this offense or that. Not ten yards from where they played, two young soldiers (not much more than boys themselves) looked after them—both of them shivering, no doubt wondering what they had done to deserve such an assignment.

They were just two of the dozen living guards who patrolled the White House and its grounds around the clock. At Abe’s insistence, his wife and children were accompanied by no fewer than two men (or one vampire) whenever they ventured outdoors. There were no fences between the street and the mansion in 1862. The public was free to roam the grounds—even enter the mansion’s first floor. As journalist Noah Brooks wrote, “the multitude, washed or unwashed, always has free egress and ingress.” The multitude was not, however, permitted to carry firearms onto the property.

At half-past three o’clock, a small, bearded man with a rifle was spotted approaching the White House from the direction of Lafayette Square. The sentry assigned to the North Entrance leveled his weapon and ordered the man to stop—yelling at the top of his lungs.

FIG. 3A-1. - SOUTH LAWN OF THE WHITE HOUSE UNDER HEAVY GUARD, CIRCA 1862. THE MAN ON THE PORTICO IS BELIEVED TO BE A MEMBER OF ABE̱S TRINITY.

The commotion drew me to the north windows, where I watched the little man continue his approach, a rifle held across his body. Guards came running now from every corner of the grounds, alerted, as we had been, by the repeated shouts of “stop at once or be shot!”

Three of these guards came running quite a bit faster than the others, and made straight for the intruder with no fear of being shot. At the sight of their advance (and, I suspect, their fangs), the little man at last dropped his rifle and raised his hands in the air. He was nonetheless brought violently to the ground, and his pockets searched by Lamon while the trinity held his limbs. I was later told that he seemed frightened; confused. “He gave me ten dollars,” he supposedly said with tears in his eyes. “He gave me ten dollars.”

Only now, with the immediate danger passed, did my eyes find two of the several soldiers now forming a circle around the intruder.

Abe’s heart stopped. They were the same young soldiers who’d been looking after Willie and Tad.

His children were alone.

The boys had been too engrossed to pay any mind to the shouting, or notice their shivering guards running off to investigate it. In this vulnerable moment, they were set upon by a stranger.

He, too, might have escaped their notice, had the heel of his boot not come down on their doll and brought an end to their game. Willie and Tad looked up to see a man of average height and build standing over them, wearing a long black coat, with a scarf and top hat to match. His eyes were obscured by dark glasses, and his lip obscured by a thick brown mustache. “Hello, Willie,” he said. “I have a message for your father. I would very much like you to give it to him.”

Now it was Tad’s screams that brought the guards running.

The vampires were the first to arrive, with Lamon and several soldiers on their heels. I came bounding down the steps of the South Portico next, and found Tad frightened and crying, but seemingly unharmed. Willie, however, was rubbing his tongue with his coat sleeve and spitting repeatedly. I took him in my arms and looked him over—turning his face and neck this way, that way—all the while praying there were no wounds on his body.

“There!” Lamon cried, pointing to a figure running south. He and the trinity gave chase, while the others hastened us into the house. “Alive!” I cried after them. “Alive!”

Lamon and the trinity chased the figure across Pennsylvania Avenue and through the Ellipse. ^* When it became clear that he couldn’t keep pace, the breathless Lamon drew his revolver and, with no regard for the innocent bystanders he might have hit, fired at the distant figure until his cartridges were spent.

The trinity was gaining on its target. The four vampires ran south toward the unfinished Washington Monument, into the field of grazing cattle that surrounded it. Construction of the massive marble obelisk (at 150 feet, it was only one-third its eventual height) had been halted, and a temporary slaughterhouse erected in its shadow to help meet the needs of a hungry army. It was into this long, wooden building that the stranger now disappeared, desperate to lose the killers who were only fifty yards behind him. Perhaps there would be knives to fight with inside… blood to throw them off his scent… anything.

But there were no carcasses in the slaughterhouse that Sunday afternoon. No workers cutting the throats of cattle. Only dozens of metal hooks hanging from rafters overhead, each reflecting the late-day sun that squeezed through the open doors at both ends of the long building. The stranger ran across the bloodstained wooden floor looking for a place to hide, a weapon to wield. He found neither.

The river… I can lose them in the river…

He sprinted toward an open door at the far end, determined to head south to the Potomac. Once there, he would dive beneath its surface and slip away. But his exit was blocked by the silhouette of a man.

The other door…

The stranger stopped and turned back—there were two more silhouettes behind him.

There would be no escape.

He stood near the center of the long building as his pursuers advanced from either end, slowly, cautiously. They meant to capture him. Torture him. Demand to know who’d sent him, and what he’d done to the boy. And, if captured, chances were that he would tell them everything. This he could not allow.

The stranger smiled as his pursuers neared. “Know this,” he said. “That you are the slaves of slaves.” He took a breath, closed his eyes, and leapt onto one of the hanging hooks, stabbing himself through the heart.

I like to think that in his final moments, as his body convulsed and blood poured from his nose and mouth—joining that of the animals’ below—that he saw the flames of hell beneath his feet, and felt the first of an eternity’s agony. I like to think that he was afraid.

As guards sealed the White House and searched the grounds, Willie sat in his father’s office, calmly relating what had happened, while a doctor looked him over.

The stranger had grabbed his face, he said, pried his mouth open, and poured something “bitter” into it. My thoughts turned at once to my mother’s death from a fool’s dose of vampire blood, and I fell into silent despair at the thought of seeing my beloved little boy suffer her fate. The doctor found no signs of injury or symptoms of poisoning, but made Willie swallow several spoonfuls of powdered charcoal ^* as a precaution (an experience he found far worse than the assault itself).

That night, as Mary tended to Tad (who had been quite shaken by the day’s events), I sat by Willie’s bedside, watching him sleep; watching him for the slightest sign of sickness. To my great relief, he seemed well the next morning, and I began to entertain the faint hope that it had all been nothing more than a scare.

But as Monday wore on, Willie grew increasingly tired and sore—and by the second night, he was running a fever. All business ground to a halt as Willie grew worse, and the best doctors in Washington were summoned to treat him.

They did all they could to treat his symptoms, but could find no cure for them. For three days and nights, Mary and I kept a vigil at his bedside, praying for his recovery, fervent in our belief that youth and Providence would see him through. I read him passages from his favorite books as he slept; ran my fingers though his soft brown hair and wiped the sweat from his brow. On the fourth day, our prayers seemed answered. Willie began to mend on his own, and my faint hopes returned. It could not be a fool’s dose, I told myself—for he would surely be dead by now.

But after a few hours’ reprieve, Willie’s health began to worsen again. He couldn’t eat or drink without being sick to his stomach. His body withered and weakened, and his fever refused to subside. On the ninth day, he could not be roused from sleep. And on the tenth, despite the best efforts of the best physicians available, it became clear that Willie was going to die.

Mary could not bring herself to hold another of our little boys as he left this earth. It fell to me to cradle our sleeping son against my chest and gently rock him through the night… through the next morning… and through the day that followed. I refused to let him go; refused to let go of that faintest hope that God would not be so cruel.

On Thursday, February 20th, 1862, at five p.m., Willie Lincoln died in his father’s arms.

FIG. 19-1. - MARY TODD LINCOLN POSES WITH TWO OF THE THREE SONS OF SHE WOULD LIVE TO BURY - WILLIE (LEFT) AND TAD (RIGHT).

Elizabeth Keckley was a freed slave who worked mainly as Mary Lincoln’s dressmaker. Years later, she recalled the sight of Lincoln weeping openly, his tall frame convulsing with emotion. “Genius and greatness,” she said, “weeping over love’s idol lost.” John Nicolay remembered the tough, towering president walking to his office door “as if in some trance.” “Well, Nicolay,” he said, staring off into space, “my boy is gone… he is actually gone.” Abe barely made it into his office before bursting into tears.

For the next four days, Abe conducted little government business. He did, however, fill nearly two dozen pages in his journal. Some of them with lamentations…

[Willie] will never know the tender touch of a woman, or experience those particular joys of a first love. He will never know the complete peace of holding his own tiny son in his arms. He will never read the great works of literature, or see the great cities of the world. He will never see another sunrise, or feel another drop of rain against his sweet face…

Others with thoughts of suicide…

I have come to believe that the only peace in this life is the end of it. Let me wake at last from this nightmare… this brief, meaningless nightmare of loss and struggle. Of endless sacrifice. All that I love waits on the other side of death. Let me find the courage to open my eyes at last.

And sometimes, with blind rage…

I wish to see the face of the cowardly God who delights in these miseries! Who delights in striking down children! In stealing innocent sons from their mothers and fathers! Oh, let me see his face and rip out his black heart! Let me strike him down as I have so many of his demons!

Arrangements were made to transport Willie’s body to Springfield, where it would be buried near the Lincolns’ permanent home. But Abe couldn’t bear the idea of having his little boy so far away, and at the last minute it was decided that Willie would lie in a Washington crypt until the end of his father’s presidency. Two days after the funeral (which Mary, overcome with grief, could not attend), Abe returned to the crypt and ordered his son’s casket opened.

I sat beside him, as I had on so many nights during his brief life; half expecting him to wake and embrace me—for such was the skill of his embalmer, that he seemed merely asleep. I stayed with him an hour or more, speaking to him tenderly. Laughing as I told him stories of his earliest mischief… his first steps… his peculiar laugh. Telling him how very loved he would always be. When our time was through, and the lid again affixed to his coffin, I began to weep. I could not bear the thought of his being alone in that cold, dark box. Alone where I could not comfort him.

With Mary confined to bed, Abe sought refuge behind his closed office door in the week after Willie’s death. Fearing for his health, Nicolay and Hay canceled all of his meetings indefinitely, and Lamon and the trinity guarded his door at all hours. Dozens of well-wishers came to offer the president their sympathies that week. All were thanked and politely turned away—until the night of February 28th, when one man was ushered directly into his office.

He’d given the name that could never be refused.

IV

“I cannot imagine the burden you bear,” said Henry. “The weight of a nation on your shoulders… of a war. And now, the weight of another son buried.”

Abe sat in the light of the fireplace, his old ax hanging above its mantle. “Is this why you come, Henry? To remind me of my miseries? If that be the case, then I assure you—I am too aware of them already.”

“I come to offer my sympathies to an old friend… and to offer you a choi—”

“No!” Abe choked up at once. “I will not hear it! I will not be tormented with this again!”

“It is not my wish to torment.”

“Then what is it, Henry? Tell me—what is your wish? To see me suffer? To see the tears run freely down my cheeks? Here—does this face satisfy you?”

“Abraham…”

Abe rose from his chair. “The whole of my life has been spent on your errands, Henry! The whole of my life! And to what end? To what happiness of my own? All that I have ever loved has fallen prey to your kind! I have given you everything. What have you given me in return?”

“I have given you my everlasting loyalty; my protection from the—”

“Death!” said Abe. “You have given me death!”

Abe looked at the ax over his mantle.

All that I have ever loved…

“Abraham… do not give in to this despair. Remember your mother—remember what she whispered with her dying breath.”

“Do not try to manipulate me, Henry! And do not pretend to care that I suffer! You care only for your own gains! For your war! You know nothing of loss!”

Now Henry rose to his feet. “I have spent these three hundred years mourning a wife and child, Abraham! Mourning the life that was stolen from me; a thousand loves lost to time! You know nothing of the lengths I have gone to protect you! Nothing of that which I have suff—”

Henry composed himself.

“No,” he said. “No… it mustn’t be this way. We have come too far for this.” He grabbed his coat and hat. “You have my respects, and you have my offer. If you choose to leave Willie buried, so be it.”

The sound of Willie’s name roused such wildness in me—Henry’s callous tone such rage that I grabbed the ax from its perch and swung at his head with a scream, missing him by less than an inch, and shattering the clock on the mantle. I recovered and swung again, but Henry leapt over my blade. The office door now flew open behind us, and two of the trinity rushed in. On seeing us, they froze—unsure of where their loyalties lay. Lamon, however, was plagued by no such uncertainty. On entering, he drew his revolver and aimed it at Henry—only to have it taken by one of the vampires before he could fire.

Henry stood in the center of the room, arms at his sides. I charged again—raising my ax as I ran. Henry didn’t so much as blink as I came. Rather, he grabbed the handle as I brought it down on his head, took it from me, and snapped it in two, throwing the pieces on the floor. I came at him with my fists, but these he caught as well, twisting them around and forcing me to my knees. Holding me thus, he knelt behind me and brought his fangs to my neck. “No!” cried Lamon, rushing forward. The others held him back. I felt the tips of those twin razors against my flesh.

“Do it!” I cried.

The only peace in this life is the end of it…

“Do it, I beg you!”

I felt the tiny trickles of blood run down my neck as his fangs broke through my skin. I closed my eyes and prepared to meet the unknown; to see my beloved boys once more… but it was not to be.

Henry withdrew his fangs and let me go.

“Some people are just too interesting to kill, Abraham,” he said, rising to his feet. He gathered his coat and hat again and walked to the door, toward the three anxious guards whose hearts were racing faster than my own.

“Henry…”

He turned back.

“I will see this war to its end… but I do not care to see another vampire so long as I live.”

Henry offered a slight bow. “Mr. President…”

With that, he disappeared.

Abe wouldn’t see him for the rest of his life.