Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Washington turned out to be a disappointment on nearly every level. Abe had come expecting a gleaming metropolis filled with men of the “finest minds, and dedicated to the service of their constituents.” What he found were “a few brilliant beacons in a fog of fools.” As for his dreams of life in a big city, Washington, D.C., felt more like Louisville or Lexington—albeit with a handful of gleaming architectural wonders. “A few palaces on a prairie,” as Abe liked to say. The cornerstone of the Washington Monument had yet to be laid. Neither it nor the Capitol would be completed in his lifetime.

  One of Washington’s greatest disappointments was its abundance of slaves. They worked at Mrs. Sprigg’s boardinghouse where Abe stayed with his family. They were auctioned off on the streets he took to work. They were kept caged on the future site of the National Mall, where Abe’s giant likeness would one day keep watch for all eternity.

  [There is] in view from the windows of the Capitol a sort of livery stable, where droves of Negroes are collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses. Men—chained together and sold! Here, in the shadow of an institution founded on the promise that “All men are created equal”! Founded with cries of “give me liberty, or give me death!” It is more than any honorable man can bear.

  In one of the few highlights of his congressional career, Abe introduced a bill to outlaw slavery in the District of Columbia. He’d been careful to write it in such a way that “it seemed neither severe to slave owners, nor feeble to abolitionists.” But there was only so much a first-term Congressman could do, brilliant or not. The bill never came to a vote.

  His legislative failures notwithstanding, Abraham Lincoln made quite an impression in the halls of Congress—and not just because of his towering height. His contemporaries described him as “awkward and gangly,” with pantaloons that “scarcely came to within six inches of his ankles.” Though he was not yet forty, many Democrats (and a few of his fellow Whigs) took to calling him “Old Abe” on account of his “rough, ragged appearance and tired eyes.”

  I related this to Mary one night while she bathed our boys, and confessed that it annoyed me. “Abe,” she said with nary an upward glance or moment’s hesitation, “one might find men in Congress who possess twice your good looks, but not one who possesses half your good sense.”

  I am a fortunate man.

  But unflattering nicknames were the least of his concerns, as he wrote only days after taking office:

  A man cannot walk from one end of the chamber to the other without hearing talk of vampires! Never have I heard the subject so often discussed, and by so many! These long years I have thought myself privy to some dark secret—a secret I have kept hidden from my wife and kin. Yet here, in the halls of power, it is the secret everyone seems to know. Many in our delegation are rife with whispers about “those damned Southerners” and their “black-eyed” friends. Jokes are told over meals. Even [Senator Henry] Clay * participates! “Why does Jeff Davis wear his collar so high? To hide the bite marks on his neck.” There must be some truth in their jests, however, for I have yet to hear of a Southern congressman who isn’t beholden to vampire interests, sympathetic to their cause, or fearful of their reprisal. As to my own experiences with [vampires], I shall remain silent. It is a part of my life that I do not wish to visit again—whether in practice or conversation.

  Abe was startled awake by shattering glass.

  A pair of men had broken through the windows of our second-floor room. There was no pistol under my pillow. No ax beside my bed. Before I had time enough to stand, one of them struck my face with such force that the back of my skull splintered our headboard.

  Vampires.

  I struggled to regain my senses as one of the devils grabbed Mary, covering her mouth to stifle the screams. The other took Bob from his small bed, and the creatures made off the way they came—out the windows and onto the street below. I willed myself upright and gave chase, leaping from the window without hesitation, tearing my flesh on shards of glass as I did. On the dark, scarcely peopled streets of Washington now. I could hear Bob’s screams ahead of me in the dark. I ran after them with a panic I had never known. A rage.

  I’ll tear you to goddamned pieces when I catch you….

  The tears in my eyes… the uncontrollable grunts… the torn muscles of my legs. Block after block, turning onto this street, that street, as Bob’s voice changed direction. But his screams grew ever fainter on the wind, and my legs ever weaker. I collapsed… weeping at the thought of my son—my helpless little boy carried off into that darkness—that darkness where not even his daddy could reach him.

  Abe lifted his trembling head, astonished to find himself in front of Mrs. Sprigg’s boardinghouse.

  And now… now a terrible thought came over me, and the panic returned.

  Eddy…

  I bounded up the stairs and into our room. Silence… empty beds… broken windows… curtains fluttering—and Eddy’s crib against the far wall. I could not see its contents from here. I could not bear to look. What if he was gone?

  I beg you, Lord….

  How could I have left him? How could I have abandoned my ax? No… no, I could not look—I could only stand in the doorway, weeping—for I knew in my heart he was dead like the others.

  And then his cries rang out, thank God, and I hurried across the room, eager to feel his warmth in my arms. But upon reaching his crib and looking down into it, I saw his white sheets awash in blood. Not Eddy’s blood—no, for there was a demon lying there in his place. Lying atop those soaked sheets with a stake through his heart and a hole in the back of his skull. Lying motionless in the crib, the blood pouring from his familiar body… at once a child and a man. His weary eyes open, yet empty. Staring into mine. I knew him.

  It was me.

  Abe woke—his heart pounding. He turned to his left and saw Mary sleeping peacefully beside him. Checked his sleeping boys and found them unharmed.

  He scribbled four words in his journal that night before trying (unsuccessfully) to go back to sleep.

  This city is death.

  III

  Abe shared the warmth of Mrs. Sprigg’s fireplace with an old acquaintance on a February night in 1849.

  [Edgar Allan] Poe has been in Baltimore these few weeks, and with Mary and the boys departed for Lexington, I thought it time for a reunion.

  They’d kept up a sporadic correspondence over the years: occasional praise for Poe’s stories and poems; congratulations on Lincoln’s election victories. But tonight, face-to-face for the first time in twenty years, they spoke only of vampires.

  I told Poe of Henry; of my hunts and the terrible truths they have led me to. He told me of his abiding obsession with vampires—that he has befriended an immortal named Reynolds, and is close to uncovering a “sinister plot” of some sort. He speaks with great enthusiasm and assuredness, yet it is difficult to believe most of what he says, for it is said through the mask of drunkenness. He looks weary. Aged by whiskey and bad luck. The years since our last meeting have not been kind. His dear wife has departed this earth, and success has not rewarded him with riches.

  “Men kept on the edge of death!” said Lincoln. “Stored as living barrels in a cellar—their precious blood kept warm by gas flames. Are there no limits to a vampire’s evil?”

  Poe smiled and took another drink.

  “You have heard of the Blood Countess, I presume?” he asked.

  Abe’s face made it clear that he hadn’t.

  “You?” asked Poe. “With all of your gallivanting around chasing vampires? Then I beg you indulge me a moment, for she is a favorite of mine—and an important piece of our country’s history.

  “Elizabeth Báthory was the jewel of Hungarian nobility,” said Poe. “Beautiful; wealthy beyond compare. Her only burden was sharing a bed with a man she did not love—a man to whom she had been promised since her twelfth year: Count Ferenc Nádasdy. He was a generous husband, however, and allowed Elizabeth
to indulge her every whim. Unbeknownst to him, her favorite indulgence was a dark-haired, fair-skinned woman named Anna Darvulia. The two became lovers. It is unclear when—”

  “Two women… lovers?”

  “A trivial detail. It is unclear when Elizabeth learned that Anna was a vampire, or when she became one herself, but the pair were nonetheless eager to begin eternity together. Upon the count’s mysterious death in 1604, the lovers began to lure young peasant girls to Cˇachtice Castle * with promises of employment; with money for their starving families. In truth, these girls were meant to be the playthings of lesser gods… to be robbed of their blood and their lives. In all, Elizabeth and Anna would kill more than six hundred girls in three years’ time.”

  “My God…”

  “Ah, but it is worse, for the pair seemed to pride themselves on crafting the most gruesome, the most degrading, the most painful methods of murder. Girls were tortured. Ravaged. Consumed for days at a time. Some were suspended above the floor by hooks through their arms and legs. Elizabeth and Anna would lie beneath, using knives to make tiny cuts in the girl’s skin, letting her blood drip slowly over their bodies as they made love below. Some girls were partially crucified, their hands nailed to wooden—”

  “I beg you be done with this, Poe. It is too much.”

  “At last, the peasants would tolerate no more, and the castle was stormed. Inside, the mob found a dungeon filled with iron cages. Half-dead victims with bites taken from their arms and stomachs. Girls whose hands and faces had been held over flames until they were blackened to the bone. But no trace of the vampires. A trial was staged, and a pair of innocent women cast into a pit of fire to appease the peasantry. But the real Elizabeth Báthory and Anna Darvulia had escaped.

  “The horrors, Lincoln… the horrors that these women were able to inflict in such a short time… the efficiency and imagination with which they murdered… there is a beauty in it. One cannot help but admire them.”

  “It is vile,” said Lincoln.

  “Surely life has taught you that a thing can be both beautiful and vile.”

  “I was promised ‘an important piece of our country’s history.’ Pray, is there some lesson in this unpleasantness, or do you merely take pleasure in tormenting an old friend?”

  “The lesson, old friend, is this: Elizabeth Báthory is, in some measure, to blame for the many vampires we enjoy here in America.”

  Now Poe had Abe’s attention.

  “Word of her atrocities spread through Europe,” he said. “Rumors of a vampire Blood Countess and the hundreds of girls she slaughtered. In the space of ten years, centuries of whispered superstitions turned to open hatred. Never had a story caused such fervor! Gone forever were the days of accepting vampires as a cost of life, and gone was the fear of challenging them. Vampire hunters began to appear from England to Croatia, learning from one another, chasing the undead across the continent. Chasing them into the stinking sewers and diseased slums of Paris. Chasing them down the dark alleys of London. Vampires, reduced to sleeping in crypts. Reduced to drinking the blood of stray dogs. Lions hunted by sheep! It had become intolerable to be a vampire in Europe. They wanted freedom. Freedom from persecution. From fear. And where could such freedoms be found?”

  “In America.”

  “In America, Lincoln! America was a paradise where vampires could exist without fierce competition over blood. A place where it was common for families to have five, or eight, or a dozen children. They loved its lawlessness. Its vastness. They loved its remote villages and its ports brimming with the newly arrived. But more than anything, Lincoln, they loved its slaves. For here, unlike any other country fit for civilized men—here was a place they could feed on the intoxicating blood of man without fear of reprisal!

  “When the English came to our shores, charged with bringing us back under the control of the Old World, America’s vampires took up the fight. They were there at Lexington and Concord. They were there at Ticonderoga and Moore’s Creek. Some returned to their native France, where they persuaded King Louis to lend us his navy. They are as American as you or I, Lincoln. True patriots—for America’s survival is their survival.”

  “I have heard them discussed in the Capitol,” Abe whispered. “Even there, one sees their influence.”

  “It is everywhere, Lincoln! And it shall only deepen, as it did for so many centuries in Europe. How long can it endure? How many vampires can cross our shores before the common man takes note of them? And what then? Do you think the good people of Boston or New York would be content to live with vampires for their neighbors? Do you believe that all vampires possess the same agreeable disposition as your Henry or my Reynolds?

  “Imagine, Lincoln. Imagine what might have happened in Europe had there been no America for vampires to flee to. How long would the lions have allowed the sheep to hunt them? How long before they began to behave like lions again?”

  Abe didn’t like the picture forming in his mind.

  “I tell you,” said Poe, “some great calamity awaits us.”

  For Poe, at least, it proved an ominous prediction.

  On October 3rd, 1849, less than eight months after his reunion with Abe, Poe was discovered wandering the streets of Baltimore, half dead, confused, and wearing clothes that weren’t his own. He was hurried to the Washington College Hospital, where doctors tried to diagnose his worsening illness.

  Patient suffers from high fever and delusions. Calls out for a “Reynolds” when he is conscious. Symptoms similar to typhoid, though the rapid progression suggests some other underlying cause. His case is hopeless.

  On Sunday, October 7th, at five o’clock in the morning, Poe woke with a start. He uttered the words “Lord help my poor soul” and passed away.

  FIG. 7-C - EDGAR ALLAN POE POSES WITH ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN MATHEW BRADY’S WASHINGTON, D.C. STUDIO - FEBRUARY 4TH, 1849.

  IV

  March 5th, 1849, brought an end to Abe’s brief, unmemorable congressional career. He’d chosen not to run for a second term.

  Being elected to Congress… has not pleased me as much as I expected. I have neglected my dear wife and rascals terribly these two years, and there is nothing in Washington to tempt me from returning to Illinois.

  He returned to Springfield and dove headfirst into his law practice, apprenticed by a thirty-year-old lawyer named William H. Herndon (who would go on to write a comprehensive, controversial biography of Lincoln after his assassination). Abe took great care to keep the truth of his dark past away from his young partner.

  He wrote letters of recommendation for friends seeking appointments. He argued cases across Illinois. He wrestled with his boys and took long walks with his wife.

  He lived.

  No more talk of men with fangs,

  Or lives that never cease.

  I only long for simple things,

  I only long for peace.

  He wouldn’t get it.

  Eddy Lincoln was three years, ten months, and eighteen days old when he died.

  From an entry dated February 1st, 1850, only hours after his son’s passing:

  I lost my little boy… I miss him very much.

  There is no joy in this life….

  There’s no reason to suspect that Eddy’s death had anything to do with vampires. He’d been sick since December (probably with tuberculosis) and wasted away gradually, his mother keeping a vigil by his bed, rubbing balm on his little chest to no avail.

  Mary could not bear to let Eddy die in his bed alone. She held his unconscious body to her own, cradling our little boy against her chest, rocking him through the night… until he was gone.

  Mary would never be the same. Though she would bury two more sons, nothing would ever match the grief of losing her beloved “Angel Boy.” Three days after his death, she hadn’t eaten, or slept, or stopped crying.

  [Mary] is inconsolable. It is just as well, for I am of no mind to console. Sent word to Speed and Armstrong requesting they come. Received a lett
er from Henry expressing his condolences, and his promise to arrive [in Springfield] no later than tomorrow midday. How he learned of Eddy’s passing, I do not know.

  Eddy was laid to rest in Hutchinson’s Cemetery, just a few blocks away from Abe and Mary’s house.

  I held on to Bob and Mary for the whole of the service, the three of us weeping. Armstrong and Speed stood at our side, as did many friends and well-wishers. Henry watched from a distance, not wanting to cause me any added grief by raising Mary’s suspicions. * However, he saw to it that I received a note before the service. In it were his further condolences… and a reminder that there was another way.

  A way to see my boy again.

  Despite what must have been a maddening temptation to see his little boy again, Abe surrendered to reason.

  He would be small forever. An angelic murderer. I could not bear the thought of keeping him locked away in the dark. Of teaching him to kill so that he might live. I could not condemn my son to hell.