Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

THREE

Henry

It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle.

—Abraham Lincoln, debating Stephen A. Douglas

October 15th, 1858

I

Southeastern Indiana was in the grip of fear during the summer of 1825. Three children had gone missing over a six-week period beginning in early April. The first, a seven-year-old boy named Samuel Greene, disappeared while playing in the woods near his family’s farm in Madison, a thriving town on the banks over the Ohio River. Search parties were sent out. Ponds dredged. But no trace of the boy was found. Less than two weeks later, before the people of Madison had abandoned all hope of finding him alive, six-year-old Gertrude Wilcox vanished from her bed in the middle of the night. Now alarm turned to panic. Parents refused to let their children outdoors. Neighbors leveled accusations at neighbors, all while three weeks passed without incident. Then, on May 20th, the third child was taken—not from Madison, but from the town of Jeffersonville twenty miles downriver. This time the body was found in a matter of days—along with two others. A hunter had made the gruesome discovery, following his dogs to a shallow wooded ditch where the three twisted corpses lay, hastily covered with brush. Their bodies were unnaturally decomposed—almost completely devoid of color. Each of their faces locked in an open-eyed mask of fear.

Abe Lincoln was sixteen years old that summer, and his resolution to “kill every vampire in America” was off to an inauspicious start. His father’s fears had proved needless. No vampires ever came to avenge Jack Barts. In fact, in the four years since he’d staked Barts, Abe hadn’t so much as seen another vampire, though not for lack of trying. He’d spent countless nights chasing distant screams on the wind and keeping watch over freshly dug graves just in case, as folklore suggested, a vampire came to feast on the corpse. But with nothing more than old books and old myths to guide him, and a father unwilling to help, Abe spent those four years in a constant state of frustration. There was little to do but keep up with his training. He’d reached his full height of six feet four inches, every square centimeter of him lean muscle. He could outwrestle and outrun most men twice his age. He could bury the head of an ax in a tree from over thirty yards. He could pull a plow every bit as fast as a draft horse, and lift a 250-pound log clean over his head.

What he couldn’t do was sew. After spending weeks trying to fashion himself a long “hunting coat” only to see it fall to pieces after one or two wearings, he’d broken down and paid a seamstress to do the job (he hadn’t asked his stepmother, for fear of raising the obvious question of what he needed such a coat for). The long black coat was lined with thick material over his chest and stomach, and inside pockets to store all manner of knives, cloves of garlic, and a flask of holy water, which he’d blessed himself. He wore his quiver of stakes on his back, and a thick leather collar, one that he’d commissioned from an Elizabethtown tanner, around his neck.

When word of those twisted corpses reached Little Pigeon Creek, Abe set off for the river at once.

I told Father that I had found work on a flatboat bound for New Orleans, and that I would return with $20 pay in six weeks’ time. I did so in spite of having received no such offer of work, and despite having no idea where I would find the money. I could think of no other way that Father would have permitted such a long absence.

Contrary to his infallibly “honest” image, Abe wasn’t above lying so long as it served a noble purpose. This was the chance he’d ached for those four long years. The chance to test his skills. His tools. The chance to feel the exhilaration of watching a vampire fade away at his feet. Seeing the fear in its eyes.

There were far better trackers than Abraham Lincoln. Men with far more knowledge of the Ohio River. But there was nary a human being in Kentucky or Indiana with a more extensive knowledge of mysterious disappearances and unsolved murders.

When I heard a description of the bodies at Jeffersonville, I knew at once that a vampire was responsible, and I had a very good notion of where it was going. I remembered reading about a similar case in Dugre’s On the History of the Mississippi River—one that had confounded settlers almost fifty years prior. Children had gone missing from their beds in small towns all along the river—beginning in Natchez, and continuing to Donaldsonville. North to south. The bodies had been found in groups along the river, badly decomposed. Unnaturally so—each with nothing more than small cuts on their appendages. Like that vampire, I was willing to bet that this one was heading south with the current. Furthermore, I was willing to bet that it was on a boat. And if it was on a boat, it would reach Evansville sooner or later.

That was where Abe lay in wait on the night of Thursday, June 30th, 1825, hiding behind brush on the wooded banks of the Ohio.

The moon was blessedly full, revealing every detail of the night… the light fog rolling over the river’s surface, the dewdrops on the leaves of my hiding place, the silhouettes of sleeping birds on a tree branch, and the flatboat tied up not thirty yards from where I hid. It looked no different from any of the small barges one saw up and down the river: forty feet by twelve; fashioned from rough wooden planks; all but a third of its deck taken up by covered living quarters—yet my eyes had been fixed on this particular boat for hours, for I was sure that there was a vampire inside.

Abe had spent days watching the occasional flatboat come ashore at Evansville. He’d scrutinized every man who had stepped onto land looking for the telltale signs he’d read so much about: pale skin, avoidance of sunlight, fear of crosses. He’d even followed a few “suspicious” boatmen as they went about their business in town. But none of this had yielded anything. In the end, it was the flatboat that didn’t stop that drew his suspicion.

I had been close to retiring. The sun had all but set, and any boats upriver would be tying up for the night. And then I saw it. The outline of a flatboat passed—barely visible in the darkness. It was curious that a boat would pass one of the busiest towns on this part of the river without tying up. Even more curious that it would do so at night.

Abe ran along the river, determined to follow this strange boat (which as far as he could see was being piloted by no one) for as long as he could.

Heavy rains had quickened the current, and I found it difficult to keep pace. The flatboat continued to slip away, and when it disappeared around a bend in the river, I feared I had lost it for good.

But after a half hour in a near flat-out sprint, Abe caught up. The boat had tied up on the same bank a few miles outside of town, a small plank leading from its deck to the shore. He set up a good distance away and began an all-night vigil. Hungry, exhausted hours passed, but Abe kept his post.

I had been still for so long that I feared my legs might betray me when I needed them. But I dared not strike until I saw him. Until I saw the creature emerge from his sleeping place. I looked down at the ax in my hands to ensure that it was still there. I shook from the anticipation of watching it fly into his chest. Of seeing the fear on his face as the last of him left this world.

There was a faint rustling of leaves and snapping of twigs from the north. Someone approached, walking through the woods along the bank. Abe steadied his breathing. He felt the handle of the ax in his right hand. Imagined the sound it would make as it tore through skin, and bone, and lung.

I had been waiting for the creature to emerge these long hours. It had never occurred to me that the vampire might already be about. It mattered not. I readied my ax and waited to get a look at him.

“Him” turned out to a small woman wearing a black dress and matching bonnet. The shape of her body suggested she was quite old, though she walked along the uneven riverbank with ease.

The possibility of it being a woman had never entered my mind, much less an old one. The madness of what I was doing suddenly rang clear. What evidence had I? What evidence beyond a suspicion that this was the boat of a vampire? Was I merely going to kill whomever it belonged to and hope that my theory proved correct? Was I prepared to take the head of this old woman without being absolutely certain?

Abe didn’t have to agonize for long, for as she drew closer, he could see something in her arms. Something white.

It was a child.

I watched as she carried him through the woods [and] toward the boat. He was no older than five years, wearing a white sleeping gown—his arms and legs hanging freely. I could see the blood on his collar. On his sleeves. I could not strike from such a distance, for fear that an errant ax blade might kill the boy (if indeed he lived).

Abe watched the vampire reach the flatboat and start up the small plank, then stop halfway up.

Her body became rigid. She smelled the air, as I had seen animals do when they caught the scent of danger. She looked across the darkness to the opposite bank, then toward me.

Abe froze. Not a breath. Not a twitch. Satisfied there was no danger, the old woman continued up the plank and onto the flatboat.

A sickness came over me. A rage—directed more at myself than she. How dare I sit idly and let this boy be taken? How dare I allow something as petty as fear—as insignificant as my own life—keep me from what must be done? No! No, I should sooner die at her hands than die from shame! I rose from hiding and ran toward the river. Toward the boat. She heard my footfalls at once—seized on my direction and dropped the boy to the deck. Here! Here was my chance! I raised my ax and let it fly. Watched it spin toward her. Despite all appearances to the contrary, she was quite nimble—moving from the path of my ax and condemning it to the bottom of the Ohio River. I kept running, convinced that my strength and practice would win the day yet. Convinced that there was no alternative. Reaching into my coat pockets, I found a hunting knife for each hand. She waited for me, those clawed fingers outstretched. Black eyes to match her bonnet. My feet hit the plank. I leapt at her, and she swatted me away as a horse’s tail swats a fly, sending me onto the deck and exorcising the air from my lungs. I rolled onto my back, every ounce of me aching, and held the knives in front of me to keep her at bay. These she grabbed by their blades and pulled from my hands—leaving me with nothing more than bare fists to defend myself. I sprang to my feet and lunged at the wretched old demon, my fists flying wildly. I may as well have been blindfolded—such was the ease with which she moved from the path of each strike. All at once I felt a searing pain in my middle—one that nearly knocked me from my feet and onto the sleeping boy below.

The force of the vampire’s fists had broken several of Abe’s ribs. He staggered as she hit him in the stomach again… again. He coughed, sending flecks of blood flying onto her face.

Here she paused, dragging a foul finger across her cheek and touching it to her tongue. “Rich,” she said with a smile. I struggled to keep my feet, knowing that if I fell again, it would be for the last time. I thought of my grandfather—how his face had been crushed by the fists of a vampire. How he had failed to land even one blow in return. I refused to meet the same fate. I used her pause to my advantage, finding the last of the weapons in my coat, a small knife. I threw myself at her with the last of my strength and thrust its blade into her belly. This only improved her good humor, for she grabbed my wrist and dragged it along her gut, cutting herself and laughing all the while. I felt my feet leave the deck; felt her hands on my throat. In what seemed an instant, I was drowning. She held my head beneath the river—my back pressed against the side of the boat. My feet kicking wildly. I could do nothing but look up into her face. Her wrinkles smoothed by the water. Then thoughts turned from struggle, and a strange joy infected me. It would all be over soon, and I would rest. Those black eyes changing shape above me as the water began to calm. As I began to calm. I would be with her soon. It was night.

Then he came.

Abe was barely conscious when the old woman disappeared—pulled backward onto the boat. Her hands no longer holding him down, he sank gently toward the bottom of the river.

I was pulled from the depths by the hand of God. Placed upon the deck of the tiny boat next to a sleeping boy in a white gown. From this lowly vantage I watched the rest play out—slipping in and out of sleep. I heard the woman scream: “Traitor!” I saw the outline of a man struggling with her. I saw her head fall to the deck in front of where I lay. Her body was not attached to it. And then I saw no more.

II

“And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray—” ^*

I woke in a windowless room to a man reading by oil light. He was perhaps five-and-twenty—slender, with dark, shoulder-length hair. Upon seeing me wake, he stopped reading and placed a marker in the pages of a thick leather volume. I asked the only question that mattered. The one that had troubled my dreams.

“The boy… is he—”

“Safe. Placed where he will be found.”

His accent betrayed no particular origin. Was he an Englishman? An American? A Scot? He sat beside me in an intricately carved high-back chair, one leg of his dark trousers folded neatly over the other, the sleeves of his blue shirt rolled to the elbows, and a small silver cross hanging around his neck. My eyes came around, and I traced the shape of the room by the light of his oil lamp. Its walls seemed made from stones piled one on top of the other—the space between them packed with clay. Each boasted no fewer than two gold-framed paintings; some as many as six. Scenes of bare-breasted native women carrying water from a stream. Sun-soaked landscapes. A portrait of a young lady hanging beside a portrait of an old one, their features remarkably similar. I saw my belongings carefully laid out on a chest in the far corner of the room. My coat. My knives. My ax—miraculously rescued from the bottom of the Ohio. Surrounding these, some of the most elegant furnishings I had ever seen. And books! Stacks and stacks of books of every conceivable thickness and binding.

“My name is Henry Sturges,” he said. “This is my home.”

“Abraham… Lincoln.”

“The ‘father of many.’ A pleasure, indeed.”

I tried to sit up, but met with such pain as to bring me to the edge of fainting. I lay on my back and looked down my chin. My chest and stomach were covered in wet bandages.

“You’ll forgive the intrusion on your modesty, but you were quite injured. Don’t be alarmed by the smell, either. Your dressings have been steeped in an assortment of oils—all very good for healing wounds, I assure you. Not as beneficial to the senses, I’m afraid.”

“How…”

“Two days and nights. I must say, the first dozen hours were rather tenuous. I wasn’t sure you would ever wake. It’s a compliment to your health that you sur—”

“No… how did you kill her?”

“Ah. It wasn’t difficult, really. She was quite frail, you know.”

It seemed an absurd thing to say to one whose body had been shattered by her “frailty.”

“And, I might add, quite preoccupied with drowning you. In that regard I suppose I owe you a debt of gratitude for distrac—may I ask you something?”

My silence proved a suitable substitute for “yes.”

“How many vampires have you slain?”

It was shocking to hear a stranger say the word. Until that day I had heard no one other than my father speak of them as real creatures. I thought briefly of boasting, but answered him honestly.

“One,” said Abe.

“Yes… yes, that seems about right.”

“And you, sir. How many have you slain?”

“One.”

I could make no sense of it. How could someone with such skill—who had so easily slain a vampire—have so little practice?

“Are you… not a vampire hunter?”

Henry laughed heartily at the idea.

“I can say with certainty that I am not. Though it would be an interesting choice of trade, to be sure.”

In my muddled state I was slow to get his meaning. As it dawned—as I felt the truth of it sink into my skin, I was at once terrified and furious. He had killed the vampire woman. Not to save me from death, but to save me for himself. Now there was no pain. Now there was only the fire in my chest. I struck at him with all my strength—all my rage. But my arms were abruptly stopped on their way to his throat. He had fashioned bindings around my wrists. I screamed wildly. Pulled at the restraints until my face turned red. A madman. Henry looked on without so much as a blink of consternation.

“Yes,” said Henry. “I thought that might be your reaction.”

III

For the next two days and nights, I refused to say a word. Refused to eat, or sleep, or look my host in the eye. How could I, knowing that my life might end at any moment? Knowing that a vampire (my sworn enemy! my mother’s murderer!) was never more than a few steps away? How much of my blood had he tasted while I slept? I heard his shoes climb up and down a wooden staircase. Heard the creaks and clangs of a delicate door being opened and shut. But I heard nothing of the outside world. No birdsong. No church bells. I knew not when it was day or night. My only measurement of time was the sound of the match striking. The woodstove burning. The kettle boiling. Every few hours, he entered the room with a steaming bowl of broth, sat by my bed, and offered to feed it to me. I promptly refused. My refusal being accepted with like promptness, Henry picked up a volume of The Selected Works of William Shakespeare and continued reading where he’d left off. Such was our little game. For two days, I refused to eat or listen. For two days, he continued to cook and speak. As he read, I tried to occupy my mind with trivial thoughts. With songs or stories of my own creation. Anything but give this vampire the satisfaction of my attention. But on the third day, momentarily bested by my hunger, I could not help but accept when Henry came offering a spoonful of broth. I swore that I would only accept the first. Just enough to quiet the pain in my stomach, nothing more.

Abe ate three bowlfuls without stopping. When he had finally eaten his fill, he and Henry sat in silence “for what seemed an hour’s time,” until Abe finally spoke:

“Why haven’t you killed me?”

It sickened me to look at him. I cared not for his kindness. I cared not that he had saved my life. Treated my wounds and fed me. I cared not who he was. Only what he was.

“And pray, what reason have I to kill you?”

“You are a vampire.”

“And so the rest of me is written? Have I not the mind of a man? Have I not the same needs? To be fed and clothed and comforted? Judge us not equally, Abraham.”

Now it was I who could not help but laugh.

“You speak as one who does not murder to be ‘fed’! Whose ‘needs’ do not take mothers from their children!”

“Ah,” said Henry. “And it was one of my kind who took her from you?”

All traces of reason left me. There was something about the ease with which he spoke of it. The callousness. The madman returned. I struck at him, knocking the soup bowl to the stone floor in the process. Shattering it. I would have torn his face off but for the bindings around my wrists.

“Never speak of her! NEVER!”

Henry waited until my outburst had passed, then knelt on the floor and collected the pieces of the shattered bowl.

“You must forgive me,” said Henry. “It has been quite a long time since I was your age. I forget the passions of youth. I shall endeavor to choose my words more carefully.”

The last of the pieces in his hands, he stood and made to leave, but paused in the doorway.

“Ask yourself… are we so unalike, you and I? Are we not both unwilling servants of my condition? Did we not both lose something significant to it? You a mother? I a life?”

With this he disappeared, leaving me to my anger. I shouted after him: “Why haven’t you killed me!” His answer came calmly from the next room. “Some people, Abraham, are just too interesting to kill.”

IV

Abe healed with each passing day. He took food willingly, and listened to Henry read Shakespeare with increasing interest.

Though the sight of him still held the power to incite anger or apprehension, this power grew weaker as my body grew stronger. He loosened my bindings so that I could feed myself. Left books by my bed so that I could read alone. The more I came to know of his mind, the more I began to consider the possibility that he had no murderous designs on me. We spoke of books. Of the great cities of the world. We even spoke of my mother. Mostly, we spoke of vampires. On this subject I had more questions than words to ask them with. I wanted to know everything. For four long years, I had stumbled in the dark—relying on assumptions, and hoping that Providence alone would bring me face-to-face with a vampire. Here, at last, was my chance to learn everything: How they could live on blood alone. Whether they had a soul. How they came to exist at all.

Unfortunately, Henry didn’t have the answers to any of these questions. Like most vampires, he had spent a good deal of time obsessing over his “lineage” in an attempt to uncover “the first vampire,” hoping the discovery would lead to some deeper truth, perhaps even a cure. And like all before him, he had failed. Even the most resourceful vampires are only able to go back two or three generations. “This,” explained Henry, “is a product of our solitary nature.”

In truth, vampires rarely socialize—and almost never with their own kind. The scarcity of easy blood breeds vicious competition, and their nomadic lifestyle makes it difficult to form lasting bonds. In rare cases, vampires might work in pairs or packs—but these alliances are usually born of desperation, and almost always temporary.

“As to our ancestry,” said Henry, “I am afraid that it shall forever remain shrouded in darkness. There are some who believe that we began as a wicked spirit or demon, passed from one unfortunate soul to the next. A curse propagated through the blood. Others believe that we owe our parentage to the devil himself. And there are more still, myself among them, who have come to believe that our ‘curse’ never began at all—that vampires and man are merely different animals. Two species that have existed side by side since Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise. One race gifted with superior ability and length of life; the other more fragile and fleeting, but gifted with superior numbers. The only certainty is that we shall never be certain.”

When it came to the experience of being a vampire, however, Henry was endlessly knowledgeable. He had a gift for explaining his condition in a way that I could grasp at such a young age. A gift for humanizing the notion of immortality.

“Living men are bound by time,” he said. “Thus, their lives have an urgency. This gives them ambition. Makes them choose those things that are most important; cling more tightly to that which they hold dear. Their lives have seasons, and rites of passage, and consequences. And ultimately, an end. But what of a life with no urgency? What then of ambition? What then of love?

“The first hundred years are exciting ones, yes. The world is one of infinite indulgence. We master the art of feeding—learning where to cast our net and how best to enjoy our catch. We travel the world, beholding the moonlit wonders of civilization; amassing small fortunes by stealing valuables from our countless victims. We fulfill every imaginable desire of the flesh… oh, it’s all great fun.

“After a hundred years of conquest, our bodies are full to the point of bursting—but our minds have been left to starve. By now, most of us have built a resistance to the ill effects of sunlight. The world of the living, therefore, is no longer beyond our reach—and we are free to experience all that darkness had kept from us in our first century. We pore through libraries, dissecting the classics; see the world’s great works of art with our own eyes. We take up music and painting, write poetry. We return to our most beloved cities to experience them anew. Our fortunes grow vaster. Our powers greater.

“By the third century, however, the intoxication of eternity has worn rather thin. Every imaginable desire has been fulfilled. The thrill of taking a life experienced again and again and again. And though we have all the comforts of the world, we find no comfort in them. It is in this century, Abraham, that most of us turn to suicide—either by starving ourselves, staking ourselves through the heart, devising some method of taking our own heads, or, in the most desperate cases, by burning ourselves alive. Only the very strongest of us—those possessing exceptional will, and driven by a timeless purpose—survive into our fourth or fifth centuries and beyond.”

That a man who had been freed from the inescapable fate of death would choose it for himself—this I did not understand, and I told Henry as much.

“Without death,” he answered, “life is meaningless. It is a story that can never be told. A song that can never be sung. For how would one finish it?”

Soon Abe was well enough to sit up in bed, and Henry was comfortable enough to do away with his restraints altogether. Having failed to get answers to his more general vampire questions, Abe turned to a bottomless well of specifics. On sunlight:

“When we are newly made, the slightest sunlight blisters our skin and renders us ill, much the same way an excess of sunlight can sicken a man. Over time we become resistant to these effects, and are able to walk freely during the day—so long as we stray from harsh light. Our eyes, however, never adjust.”

On garlic:

“I’m afraid it merely makes you easier to perceive from a distance.”

On sleeping in coffins:

“I cannot speak for others, but I am quite comfortable in a bed.”

When Abe reached the question of how one becomes a vampire, Henry paused.

“I shall tell you how I came to be one.”

V

Abe committed the following to his journal on August 30th, 1825, shortly after his return to Little Pigeon Creek.

What follows is the story exactly as Henry related it to me. I have neither embellished, nor withheld, nor verified any part of it. I merely duplicate it here so that some record of it exists. “On 22nd July, in the year 1587,” Henry began, “three ships carrying 117 English souls landed on northern Roanoke Island, in what is today called North Carolina.”

Among this teeming mass of men, women, and children was a twenty-three-year-old blacksmith’s apprentice named Henry O. Sturges, average in height and build, with long, dark hair to the middle of his back. He was joined by his new wife, Edeva.

“She was but a day younger and an inch shorter than I, with hair of the finest flaxen and eyes a strange shade of brown. There has never been a more delicate, a more fetching creature in all the annals of time.”

They had just experienced a harrowing voyage, one plagued by unseasonably bad weather and uncommonly bad luck. While there was nothing unusual about sickness and death on an Atlantic crossing (sixteenth-century ships were typically moldy, rat-infested breeding grounds for any number of air- or food-borne illnesses), the accidental demise of two people on two separate occasions was ominous enough to raise alarm.

Both deaths occurred aboard the Lyon, the largest of the three-vessel caravan, and the one personally captained by John White. White, a forty-seven-year-old artist, was handpicked by Sir Walter Raleigh for the job of establishing a permanent English presence in the New World. He’d been part of the first attempt to colonize Roanoke two years earlier—an attempt that failed when the colonists, all men, ran desperately short of supplies and hitched a ride back to England with Sir Francis Drake, who, as fate would have it, had decided to anchor nearby during a break from raiding Spanish ships.

“This time ’round,” Henry said, “Raleigh’s plan was more ambitious. Instead of brusque sailors, he sent young families. Families that would put down roots. Produce children. Build churches and schoolhouses. It was his opportunity to build ‘a new England in the New World.’ For Edeva and me, it was an opportunity to leave a home that held little in the way of happiness. All told we were ninety men, nine children, and seventeen women, including John White’s own daughter, Eleanor Dare.”

Eleanor, who was eight months pregnant, was joined by her husband, Ananias, aboard the Lyon. She was an “uncommonly pretty” twenty-four-year-old, with a shock of red hair and freckled face. One can only imagine the discomfort she felt as the 120-ton ship pitched about in the oppressive July heat—heat that turned the innards of the ships into giant steam ovens.

“Even some of the surest-footed sailors found themselves green-faced and bent over the railings when the seas kicked up and the sun beat down on us.”

The first of the two deaths occurred on Sunday, May 24th, a little more than two weeks after the colonists set sail from Plymouth. A ship’s mate named Blum (or Bloom; Henry never learned the correct spelling) had been in the crow’s nest at night, charged with keeping a sharp eye out for distant silhouettes on the star-filled horizon. Spanish carracks—with a reputation for attacking and pillaging English ships—were a very real threat. Shortly after midnight, the ship’s pilot, Simon Ferdinando (who’d already gained fame through previous expeditions to Maine and Virginia), recalled hearing a “crash” on the main deck. Moments later, he found himself standing over the lifeless body of Mr. Blum—whose neck was severely broken.

“Mr. Ferdinando thought it strange that an experienced sailor—particularly one who’d sworn off drink—could’ve taken such a fall in calm seas. But such was life on the Atlantic. Accidents happened. Other than a few prayers for the unfortunate man’s soul, little was said about Mr. Blum among the passengers and crew.”

Captain White recorded the matter rather succinctly and dispassionately in his log: Man fell from crowe’s nest. Deade. Throwne overboarde.

“Had that been the only incident during our crossing, we might have counted ourselves fortunate. But our nerves were tested again on Tuesday, June 30th—when Elizabeth Barrington vanished into the night forever.”

Elizabeth, an almost comically short, curly-haired girl of sixteen, had been literally dragged aboard by her father and several shipmates, kicking, screaming, and biting the whole way. To her, the Lyon was a prison ship.

Months earlier, she had fallen hard for a young clerk in her father’s law practice. Knowing that the match would never warrant approval, the two young lovers carried on a secret affair, the discovery of which caused a minor sensation in the Inns of Court and severely damaged the reputation of her father among his fellow solicitors. Embarrassed, Mr. Barrington seized the opportunity to start a new life across the Atlantic, and dragged his insolent daughter along for good measure.

“That Tuesday, the weather grew ever violent as our caravan sailed into a wall of storm clouds. By nightfall, all but a few deckhands had retreated below to escape the pounding wind and rain. The ship was tossed so severely that Captain White ordered all candles snuffed, for fear that the waves could knock one over and start a fire. With Edeva in my arms, I huddled in total darkness below deck—felt the dizzying motion of the ship; heard the groans of wooden planks and fellow passengers being sick. I know that Elizabeth Barrington had been there with us when the lights went out. I had seen her myself. But she was not there in the morning.”

The storm had passed, and the sun had returned to its oppressive perch. Because Elizabeth often kept to herself below, it wasn’t until midmorning that anyone noticed her absence. Passengers called her name but received no answer. A full search of the ship turned up nothing. A second search, which included bags of flour being emptied and barrels of gunpowder sifted through, was likewise fruitless. She was gone. Captain White made another succinct and dispassionate entry in his log: Girle fell overboarde in a storme. Deade.

“Privately, we all knew that the unhappy girl had taken her own life. That she had leapt into the sea and drowned. Prayers were said for her soul (though we knew it to be condemned to hell—suicide being an unforgivable sin in the eyes of God).”

The last three weeks of their voyage were free of further accidents and blessed with better weather. Even so, the sight of dry land was an especially welcome one. The colonists set about felling trees, rebuilding abandoned shelters, planting crops, and making contact with the natives—particularly the Croatoan, who’d welcomed the English in the past. But this time their truce proved short-lived. Exactly one week after the first of John White’s ships landed on Roanoke Island, one of his colonists, George Howe, was found facedown in the shallow waters of Albemarle Sound. He’d been fishing alone when a group of “savages” took him by surprise. White pieced the attack together based on the evidence at the scene. From his log:

These Savages being secretly hidden among high reedes, where oftentimes they find the Deere asleep, and so kill them, espied our man wading in the water alone, almost naked, without any weapon, save only a smal forked sticke, catching Crabs therewithal, and also being strayed two miles from his company, and shot at him in the water, where they gave him sixteen wounds with their arrowes: and after they had slaine him with their wooden swords, they beat his head in pieces, and fled over the water.

White concluded that Howe was shot with sixteen “arrowes” because the body had sixteen small puncture wounds in it.

“In truth, no arrows were found in or near Mr. Howe. Governor White also omitted an important detail from his record—that the body had already begun to decompose, even though Mr. Howe had only been dead several hours before being discovered.”

On August 18th, the colony turned its thoughts from the Croatoan and rejoiced at the arrival of its first baby, Virginia Dare—John White’s granddaughter. She was the first English baby born in the New World, and like her mother, possessed a shock of red hair. The birth was attended by the colony’s only doctor, Thomas Crowley.

“Crowley was a plump, balding man of fifty-six. Tall in stature, he had a kind, pockmarked face, and a well-known love of jokes. For this and his skill as a physician he was held in high regard, and few things gave him a greater thrill than making a patient forget his troubles in laughter.”

Satisfied that his colony was off to a strong start (the unpleasantness of Mr. Howe’s demise notwithstanding), John White sailed back to England to report on their progress and bring back supplies. He left behind 113 men, women, and children—including his infant grandchild, Virginia. If all went well, he would return in several months with food, building materials, and goods to trade with the natives.

“All did not go well.”

A series of events conspired to keep John White in England for the next three years.

First, his crew refused to sail back during the dangerous winter months. The summer crossing had been dangerous and deadly enough. Unable to find a replacement crew, White endured what must have been a maddening, worrisome winter. By the time spring finally arrived, England was at war with Spain, and Queen Elizabeth needed every worthy ship at her disposal. That included the vessels White had planned to take back to the New World. He scrambled and found a pair of smaller, older ships that Her Majesty didn’t require. But shortly into the voyage, both of these were captured and plundered by Spanish pirates. With no supplies left for his colonists, White turned around and headed back to England. The war with Spain raged on for two more years, leaving John White stranded in his home country, endlessly frustrated. In 1590 (having given up on bringing back supplies), he was finally able to secure passage on a merchant ship. On August 18th, his granddaughter Virginia’s third birthday, he set foot on Roanoke Island once again.

They were gone.

Every last man, woman, and child. His daughter. His baby granddaughter. The Barringtons. Gone. His colony had simply vanished into thin air. The buildings remained exactly as they had been (though weather-beaten and overgrown). Tools and supplies were exactly where they belonged. Surrounded by rich soil and abundant wildlife, how could they have starved? If there was some kind of pestilence, where were the mass graves? If there was a battle, where were signs? It didn’t make any sense.

There were only two clues of any note: the word “Croatoan” carved into one of the fence posts of the perimeter wall, and the letters “CRO” carved into the bark of a nearby tree. Had the Croatoan attacked the colony? It seemed unlikely. They would have burned it to the ground, for one thing. And there would be bodies. Evidence. Something. White guessed (or hoped, anyway) that the cryptic carvings meant the colonists, for whatever reason, had resettled on nearby Croatoan Island. But he wouldn’t get a chance to prove his theory. The weather was taking a turn for the worse, and the crew of his merchant ship refused to remain any longer. After three years spent trying to return, and only a few hours on dry land, he was given a choice: return to England and try to mount another expedition, or be left to fend for himself on a strange continent with no idea where his countrymen were—or if they were alive at all. White sailed away, never to set foot in the New World again. He spent the rest of his days haunted by grief, guilt, and above all, bewilderment over the disappearance of his 113 colonists.

“I think,” said Henry, “that it is better he never learned the truth.”

Shortly after Governor White’s first return to England, the people of Roanoke were beset by a strange illness, which produced an acute fever in its victims. This fever led to delusions, coma, and eventually death.

“Dr. Crowley thought the disease a native one. He was powerless to curb its effects. In the three months following Governor White’s departure, ten of us succumbed to this plague. In the three months after that, a dozen more. Their bodies were carried a distance into the woods and buried, lest the sickness contaminate the soil near our settlement. We grew ever more fearful that ours would be the next body carried off. A near-constant vigil was kept on the island’s eastern shore, in hopes that sails would soon be spotted there. But none were. It is likely that things would have continued thus, had not the hideous discovery been made.”

Eleanor Dare couldn’t sleep. Not while her husband fought for his life a mere fifty yards away. She dressed, wrapped sleeping baby Virginia in a blanket, and walked through the freezing air to Dr. Crowley’s building, resigned to spending a restless night by her husband’s side in prayer.

“Upon entering, Mrs. Dare was met with the ghastly sight of Crowley with his mouth around her husband’s neck. He withdrew and presented his fangs, drawing screams from her. Thus alerted, several of our men ran into Crowley’s building with their swords and crossbows, only to find the woman slaughtered, and the infant Virginia in the vampire’s claws. Crowley warned the men to retreat. They refused. Having no knowledge of vampires, the men perished at once.”

Their screams woke the rest of the colonists, including Henry.

“I dressed and told Edeva to do the same, thinking it an attack by the natives. I charged into the night with my pistol determined to protect my home to the last. But on reaching the clearing in the center of our village, I was met with an incredible sight. A terrifying sight. Thomas Crowley—his eyes black, a pair of white razors in his mouth—tearing Jack Barrington in half, spilling his innards everywhere. I saw friends scattered on the ground. Some with limbs missing. Some with heads missing. Crowley took notice of me and advanced. I leveled my pistol and fired. The ball found its mark, piercing the center of his chest. But this failed to slow him in the least. He continued to advance. I am not ashamed to admit that all courage left me. I could think only of escape. Only of Edeva, and the unborn child in her belly.”

Henry turned and ran the fifty yards home as fast as he could. Edeva was already waiting in the doorway, and he hardly slowed as he grabbed her hand and continued toward the tree line. The coast. Let us make haste to the coas—

“I could hear him running behind us. Each step breaking the earth. Each one closer than the last. We ran into the trees. Ran until our lungs burned—until Edeva began to slow, and I felt his steps behind us.”

We will never see the coast.

“I remember none of it. Only that I woke on my stomach and knew at once that my wounds were mortal. My body lay shattered—my limbs all but useless. Dried blood over my eyes rendering me half blind. By the sound of Edeva’s labored breath, I knew that she was even closer to the end than I. She lay on her side, her yellow dress stained with blood. Her yellow hair matted with it. I dragged myself to her with two broken arms. Dragged my eyes close to hers—open and distant. I ran my hand through her hair and simply looked at her. Simply watched her breathing slow, all the while whispering, ‘Don’t be afraid, love.’ And then she stopped.”

By sunrise, Crowley had dragged most of his fellow settlers into the woods. He’d been left no alternative. Explaining a plague was easy. Almost as easy as explaining a man falling from a crow’s nest, or a girl jumping overboard, or a fisherman being attacked by savages. But screams in the night, followed by the disappearance of four men, a woman, and an infant? That he couldn’t explain. They would question him. Discover him. And that, he couldn’t have. One by one, he dragged their battered bodies away. Of his 112 fellow settlers, only one had been spared his wrath.

Crowley had hesitated to kill Virginia Dare. A baby that he had personally delivered? The first English soul born in the New World? These things had sentimental value. Besides, she would have no memory of what had happened here, and a young female companion might prove useful in the lonely years to come.

“He returned from the woods with the baby in his arms. I daresay he was surprised to see me alive—though barely so—struggling to keep my feet while I carved the letters ‘CRO’ into a tree with a knife. My dying effort to expose the identity of my murderer. Of my wife and child’s murderer. His shock subsided, Crowley could not help his laughter, for I had unwittingly given him a brilliant idea. Setting the baby down and taking my knife, he carved the word “Croatoan” onto a nearby post, all the while smiling at the thought of John White massacring scores of unsuspecting natives in retaliation.”

Crowley prepared to take Henry’s head. But here he hesitated again.

“He was suddenly struck by the realization that he would then be the only English-speaking man for three thousand miles in any direction—a lonely prospect for one with such a love of jokes. Who, then, to laugh at them? I watched him kneel over me and cut his wrist with a fingernail, letting the blood spill over my face and into my mouth.”

Crowley buried the last of the colonists and headed south toward the Spanish territories, carrying a crying baby in one arm and the half-dead body of a young Henry in the other. Soon, after the sickness and the hallucinations passed—after his bones mended themselves—his companion would open his eyes to a new life in a New World. But first, Thomas Crowley would celebrate by feasting on the first English blood born to it.

He had decided to feast on Virginia Dare.

VI

Twenty-one days after Henry carried him into the house unconscious, Abe was well enough to leave his room and take a tour.

I was astonished to find that my windowless room was, in fact, part of a windowless house. A house dug entirely out of the earth—its walls and floors meticulously lined with stone and clay. A kitchen where he had prepared my food on the woodstove. A library where he had replenished my supply of books. A second bedchamber. All lit by oil light, and all decorated with elegant furnishings and gold-framed paintings, as if Henry thought these his windows to the outside world.

“This,” said Henry, “this has been my purpose these past seven years. Building this home, one shovelful of dirt at a time.”

All four rooms centered on a small stairwell. Here was the only place lit in part by the sun, its soft light streaming down from above. Here were the wooden stairs that I had heard Henry climb up and down, up and down, countless times. We followed them up to a flimsy wooden door—sunlight squeaking through the cracks. Opening it and stepping through, I was surprised to find myself standing in a small log cabin. This was modestly furnished, complete with a working woodstove, rug, and bed. Henry donned a pair of spectacles with dark lenses as we stepped into the day. Now I could see the genius of his design, for from the outside, his home looked nothing more than a modest cabin on a lonely wooded hillside. “Shall we, then?” asked Henry.

So began the only real schooling Abraham Lincoln ever had.

Every morning for the next four weeks, Abe and Henry climbed the stairs to the false cabin. Every day, Henry taught him something more about finding and fighting vampires.

Every night, theory was put into practice as Henry challenged Abe to hunt him in the dark.

Gone were my cloves of garlic and flasks of holy water. Gone were my knives. What remained were my stakes, my ax, and my mind. It was this last weapon which Henry spent the majority of his time improving—teaching me how to hide from a vampire’s animal senses. How to use its quickness to my advantage. How to drive it from hiding, and how to kill it without putting my limbs (and neck) at risk. But for all of Henry’s lessons, nothing was more valuable than the time we spent trying to kill each other. At first I had been astonished by his speed and strength—convinced there was no way I would ever be its equal. Over time, however, I noticed that it took him longer and longer to subdue me. I even found myself landing the occasional strike. Soon, it was not uncommon for me to best him three times out of ten.

“I find myself in a curious position,” said Henry after Abe had managed to pin him one night. “I feel rather like a rabbit that has taken a fox for its pupil.”

Abe smiled.

“And I like a mouse who has taken a cat for its tutor.”

Early autumn came, and with it an end to Abe’s stay. He and Henry stood outside the false cabin in the morning sun—Henry with his dark glasses, Abe carrying a few belongings and food for his journey. He was already weeks overdue at Little Pigeon Creek, and likely to get a thrashing from his father for coming home without the money he’d promised to earn.

Henry, however, saw fit to remedy this with a gift of twenty-five dollars—five more than I’d promised my father. Naturally, pride demanded I refuse this gift as too generous. Naturally, Henry’s pride demanded I accept it. I did, and thanked him profusely. There was much I had thought of saying at this moment: Thanking him for his kindness and hospitality. Thanking him for saving my life. For teaching me how to preserve it in the future. I thought of apologizing for the harshness with which I had first judged him. However, none of this proved necessary, for Henry quickly extended a hand and said, “Let us say good-bye, then say no more.” We shook hands, and I was off. But there was something I had forgotten to ask. Something I had wondered since we first met. I turned back to him: “Henry… what were you doing at the river that night?” He looked strangely stern upon hearing this. More so than I had seen him the whole of my stay.

“There is no honor in taking sleeping children from their beds,” he said, “or feasting upon the innocent. I have given you the means of delivering punishment to those who do… in time, I shall give you their names.”

With that, he turned and walked back toward the cabin.

“Judge us not equally, Abraham. We may all deserve hell, but some of us deserve it sooner than others.”