Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

  John Wilkes Booth would “make a bad end.”

  Seven years later, the first part of her grim fortune came true.

  Of the six young women Booth took back to his Richmond boardinghouse that night, only one remained by morning. He’d sent the others scurrying out the door before sunrise, their hair a mess, clothing bundled in their arms. After the fog of whiskey had lifted, he’d found them to be nothing more than the same silly, chatty, opportunistic girls who greeted him at every stage door in every city. He had no use for them beyond what had already transpired.

  The girl in bed with him, however, was something entirely different. She was a small, dark-haired, ivory-skinned beauty of twenty or so, but carried herself with the calm confidence of a much older woman. There was a slyness to her, and though she seldom spoke, when she did it was with humor and wisdom. They made love for hours at a time. No woman—not Mary Surratt or his countless stage door conquests—had ever made Booth feel like this. He was drawn to her in a way he’d only been drawn to the theater.

  Every woman before her has been a promise unfulfilled.

  In moments of rest, Booth filled the silences with stories of his youth: the word “country” in the fire… the gypsy… the inescapable feeling that he was destined for greatness—something more than fame or money could provide. The ivory-skinned girl placed her lips against his ear and told him of a way that he could achieve that greatness. Perhaps he believed her; perhaps he was merely humoring his young lover—but at some point during that second night, John Wilkes Booth willingly drank her blood.

  For the next two days, he suffered through the worst, and last, sickness of his life. He drenched his sheets in sweat; suffered horrific visions; convulsed so violently that the legs of his bed clattered against the floor.

  Three days after he’d last been seen in public, Booth awoke. He rose and stood in the center of the room—alone. The ivory-skinned girl was gone. He would never learn her name; never see her again. He didn’t care. He’d never felt more alive than he did at this moment; never seen or heard with such clarity.

  She spoke the truth.

  Booth had craved immortality since he was a child. Now it was his. He’d always known that some special fate awaited him. Here it was. He would be the greatest actor of his generation… of every generation. His name would be renowned in ways that Edwin and Junius could only imagine. He would grace the theaters of the world; watch empires crumble to dust; commit every word of Shakespeare to memory. He was the master of time and space. Booth couldn’t help but smile as another thought crossed his mind. The old gypsy was right. He’d died young, just as she said he would. And now he would live forever.

  I am a vampire, he thought. God be praised.

  Immortality, however, proved somewhat disappointing at first. Like so many vampires, Booth had been left to learn the hard lessons of death on his own. There was no mentor to explain the thousand whispers that now filled his head when he faced an audience. No shopkeeper to suggest the right pair of dark glasses, or the proper means of removing blood from the sleeve of an overcoat. When his first cravings came, crashing against his mind in waves, he’d wandered the dark streets of Richmond for hours, following endless wobbling drunks down endless winding alleys, never quite working up the nerve to strike.

  When the cravings became so severe that he felt himself slipping into madness, Booth found his nerve—but not in Richmond. Twenty days after being made immortal, he mounted his horse after dark and set off for a plantation in nearby Charles City. A wealthy tobacco farmer named Harrison had been to see his Hamlet and invited the actor to dine the following week. Booth meant to take him up on that offer a bit earlier.

  He tied his horse to a tree in an orchard about eighty yards from the slave quarters—comprised of ten uniformly built, tightly packed brick shelters. Their chimneys were smokeless. Their tiny windows dark. Booth settled on the building nearest him (merely a matter of convenience) and peered through one of its windows. No fire burned inside, and there was hardly any moon in the sky above—yet he saw everything as if it had been illuminated by the gas footlights that blinded him nightly.

  A dozen Negroes of varying sex and age slept soundly inside, some on beds, others on woven floor mats. Nearest him, directly below the window, a little girl of seven or eight slept on her stomach in a tattered white nightgown.

  Minutes later, Booth was in the orchard, sobbing, her lifeless body in his arms, her blood running down his fangs and chin. He dropped to his knees and held her tightly against his chest.

  He was the devil.

  Booth felt his fangs puncture the thick muscle of her throat. He began to drink again.

  V

  After a full day of respectful rejections, the Lincolns finally had a couple willing to accompany them to the theater. Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancé, Clara Harris, daughter of New York senator Ira Harris, rode backward facing Abe and Mary as the president’s carriage cut through a light mist. Mary could feel the cool air in her black silk dress and matching bonnet. Abe was perfectly warm in his black wool overcoat and white gloves. The party pulled up to Ford’s Theater just before eight-thirty, by which time the play, Our American Cousin, was already underway. Abe, who detested being late, gave his apologies to the doorman and greeted his relief bodyguard, John F. Parker.

  Parker, a Washington policeman, had shown up for his shift at the White House three hours late with no explanation. William H. Crook, Lincoln’s daytime bodyguard, angrily sent him ahead to Ford’s and told him to wait for the president’s party. In time, the nation would learn that Parker was a notorious drinker who’d been disciplined for falling asleep on duty more than once.

  Tonight, he was solely responsible for protecting Abraham Lincoln’s life.

  The Lincolns and their guests were led up a narrow staircase to the double box, where four seats had been arranged. Farthest left was a black walnut rocking chair for the president. Mary was seated beside him, followed by Clara and the major at the far end. No sooner had the four of them taken their seats than the play was halted and the president’s arrival announced. Abe stood, somewhat embarrassed, as the orchestra played “Hail to the Chief,” and the audience of more than a thousand rose to its feet in polite applause. As the play resumed, John Parker took his seat outside the door. Here, he’d be able to see anyone approaching the president’s seats.

  Backstage, no one paid much attention to John Wilkes Booth when he arrived an hour after Abe’s party. He was a regular at Ford’s, free to come and go as he pleased, and he often took in performances from the wings. But Booth had no interest in the play tonight; no time for small talk with impressionable young actresses. Using his knowledge of the theater’s layout, he wound his way through a labyrinth of hallways and crawl spaces until he reached the staircase that led to the stage left boxes. Here, he was shocked to discover that there were no guards posted. Booth had expected at least one, and had planned on using his fame to gain access to the president. A great actor paying his respects to a great man. He was carrying a calling card in his coat pocket for this very purpose.

  There was nothing but an empty chair.

  John Parker had grown frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t see the stage. Incredibly, during the second act, he’d simply left his post to find another seat. By the beginning of Act III, Parker had left the theater altogether, going for a drink at the Star Saloon next door. Now, all that stood between Booth and Lincoln was a narrow staircase.

  Upstairs, Mary Lincoln held her husband’s hand. She stole a glance at Clara Harris, whose hands were resting modestly in her lap, and whispered in Abe’s ear, “What will Ms. Harris think of my hanging on to you so?”

  “She won’t think anything of it.”

  Most historians agree that these are Abraham Lincoln’s last words.

  Booth quietly climbed the staircase and stood outside the box, waiting for the one line that he knew would get a huge laugh.

  A laugh big enough to muffle the so
und of a pistol.

  Onstage, Harry Hawk stood alone, delivering a spirited soliloquy to the crowd. Booth held steady, waiting, as Hawk’s voice boomed through the theater. He crept forward, leveled the pistol at the back of Lincoln’s head, and carefully… carefully pulled the hammer back. If Abe had been ten years younger, he might have heard the click—might’ve reacted with the speed and strength that had saved his life so many times before. But he was old. Tired. All he felt was Mary’s hand upon his. All he heard was Harry Hawk’s booming voice: “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal; you sockdologizing old man-trap!”

  The audience roared. Booth fired.

  The ball entered Abe’s skull, and he slumped forward in his rocking chair, unconscious. Mary’s screams joined the deafening laughter as Booth produced a hunting knife and turned to his next target—but instead of General Grant, he was met by the young Major Rathbone, who leapt from his chair and came at him. Booth plunged the knife into Rathbone’s bicep and made for the railing. Clara’s screams joined Mary’s as laughter gave way to murmuring and people turned their heads toward the commotion. Rathbone grabbed Booth’s coat with his good arm, but couldn’t hold on. Booth leapt over the railing. But as he did, one of his riding spurs snagged the Treasury flag that Edmund Spangler had put up earlier in the day. Booth fell awkwardly to the stage, breaking his left leg, twisting it grotesquely at the knee.

  FIG. 6E. - A BLACK-EYED JOHN WILKES BOOTH FIRES THE FATAL SHOT AS MAJOR HENDRY RATHBONE REACTS

  Though injured, the consummate actor couldn’t resist a flourish. He pulled himself to his feet, faced the audience, which had begun to panic, and yelled, “Sic semper tyrannis!” The state motto of Virginia. Thus always to tyrants! With that, John Wilkes Booth left the stage for the last time.

  Like the speech to his conspirators, it was a moment he’d probably rehearsed.

  VI

  At roughly the same moment, Lewis Powell ran out of Secretary Seward’s front door, screaming, “I’m mad! I’m mad!” Although he didn’t know it yet, his mission had been a failure.

  Herold, the nervous pharmacist, had done his part. He’d led Powell to Seward’s mansion. Now he watched from a safe distance as Powell knocked on the front door just after ten o’clock. When a butler answered, Powell delivered his own carefully rehearsed line: “Good evening. I have medicine for the secretary. I alone am to administer it.” Moments later, he was on the second floor, only a few yards from where his ailing target slept. But before he could slip into Seward’s room alone, the secretary’s son Frederick approached.

  “What cause have you to see my father?”

  Powell repeated his carefully rehearsed line, word for word. But the younger Seward wasn’t convinced. Something was amiss. He told Powell that his father was asleep, and to call again in the morning.

  Lewis Powell had no choice. He drew his revolver, pointed it at Frederick’s head, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing. The gun had misfired.

  I’m mad! I’m mad!

  There was no time. Powell bashed Frederick’s skull with the gun instead, sending him to the floor, blood pouring from his nose and ears. Powell then ran into his target’s room, where he encountered a screaming Fanny Seward, the secretary’s daughter. Ignoring her for the moment, he drew his knife and brought it down on the old man’s face and neck, again and again and again, until he rolled onto the floor—dead.

  Or so Powell thought. Seward was wearing a metal neck brace as a result of his carriage accident. Despite deep gashes to his face, the blade failed to find his jugular.

  Powell stabbed Fanny Seward in the hands and arms as he ran past her and into the hallway. Continuing down the staircase, another of the secretary’s children, Augustus, and an overnight guest, Sergeant Robinson, tried to stop him. Both were stabbed for their efforts, as was Emerick Hansell, a telegram messenger who’d had the misfortune to arrive at the front door just as Powell was running out of it.

  Incredibly, none of the victims died.

  Outside, the nervous pharmacist was nowhere to be found. The sound of Fanny Seward’s screams had frightened him off. Powell, who knew little of the area, was left to fend for himself. He threw the bloody knife into a nearby gutter, untied his horse, and galloped off into the night.

  As disastrous as the attack on Seward had been, Powell could have consoled himself in the knowledge that he’d fared far better than George Atzerodt. The reluctant German had lost his nerve, gotten drunk in the bar at the vice president’s boardinghouse, and then wandered the streets of Washington until sunrise.

  VII

  Charles Leale, twenty-three, helped his fellow soldiers lower the president onto a bed on the first floor of Petersen’s Boarding House—directly across the street from Ford’s Theater. They were forced to lay him diagonally, as he was too tall to lie straight. Leale, an army surgeon who’d been in the audience, had been the first to attend to the president. He’d shoved his way through the crowd, up the narrow stairs, and into the box, where he’d found Lincoln slumped over in his chair. Upon lowering the president and examining him, he’d detected no pulse; no breath. Moving quickly, the young doctor had felt around the back of Lincoln’s head until he’d found a hole just behind the left ear. After a blood clot was removed from the wound, Lincoln had begun to breathe again.

  Leale was young, but he wasn’t naive. He’d seen enough of these injuries in the field to know the outcome. Minutes after the president had been shot, he’d delivered his bleak, accurate medical opinion: “His wound is mortal. It is impossible for him to recover.”

  Mary couldn’t bear to be in the room with her dying husband. She remained in the parlor of Petersen’s Boarding House all night, weeping. Robert and Tad arrived sometime after midnight and took their place at Abe’s bedside, just as Abe had knelt at his dying mother’s side almost fifty years earlier. They were joined by Gideon Welles, Edwin Stanton, and an endless parade of Washington’s best doctors, all of whom came to offer their advice. But nothing could be done. Dr. Robert King Stone, the Lincolns’ family physician, examined the president during the night and concluded that his case was “hopeless.”

  It was only a matter of time.

  By sunrise, a large crowd had gathered outside. The president’s breathing had become increasingly faint through the night, his heartbeat erratic. He was cool to the touch. Many of the doctors remarked that a wound of this type would have killed most men in two hours; maybe less. Abe had lasted nine. But then, Abe Lincoln had always been different. Abe Lincoln had always lived.

  The infant a mother attended and loved;

  The mother that infant’s affection who proved;

  The husband that mother and infant who blessed,

  Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest. *

  Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 in the morning, on the Ides of April 1865.

  The men at his bedside lowered their heads in prayer. When they were finished, Edwin Stanton declared, “Now he belongs to the ages.” With that, he returned to his telegrams. John Wilkes Booth was on the run, and Stanton meant to catch him.

  VIII

  Booth and Herold had managed to elude the Union Army for eleven days, escaping first to Maryland, then to Virginia. They’d hidden in swamps for days on end; slept on beds of cold earth. Booth had expected to be embraced as a hero, the Savior of the South. Instead, he’d been cast out into the cold. “Ya gone too far,” they’d said. “The Yanks’ll burn every farm from Baltimore to Birmingham lookin’ fer ya.”

  The second of the gypsy’s predictions had come true. Booth had amassed a “thundering crowd of enemies.”

  On April 26th, Booth woke to shouting, and knew at once.

  Goddamned double-crossing son of a bitch…

  Richard Garrett had been one of the few Virginians who hadn’t turned them away. He’d given them food to eat and a warm tobacco barn to sleep in. Judging by the Union soldiers outside, he’d sold them out for the rew
ard money, too.

  Herold was nowhere to be found. The coward gave himself up. It didn’t matter. He would be faster on his own, anyway. Night had fallen, and the night belonged to Booth’s kind. Let them wait, he thought. Let them wait and see what I am. His leg had long since healed, and even though he was weak with hunger, they would be no match for him. Not in the dark.

  “Give yerself up, Booth! We ain’t gonna warn ya again!”

  Booth stayed put. True to their word, the Union soldiers issued no further warnings. They simply set fire to the barn. Boards were set alight; torches thrown onto the roof. The dry old barn was engulfed in a matter of seconds. The blinding flames made the barn’s dark corners seem deeper. Booth put his dark glasses on as ancient beams began to creak overhead, and fingers of gray smoke crawled up the walls. He stood center stage and tugged on the bottom of his coat—an old actor’s habit. He wanted to look his best for this. He wanted the Yankee devils to see exactly who it was before they…

  Someone is in here with me… someone who means me harm….

  Booth turned in circles, ready for an attack that might come from any direction, at any moment. His fangs descended; his pupils swelled until his eyes were nothing more than black marbles. He was ready for anything….

  But there was nothing. Nothing but smoke, and flame, and shadow.

  What sort of trickery is this? Why could I not sense him until…

  “Because you are weak…”

  Booth spun in the direction of the man’s voice.