“Abraham,” said Henry, “allow me to introduce Mr. John MacNamar.”
He writhed at the sight of us—his skin covered in blisters and boils. “He is quite new,” said Henry. “Still sensitive to light.” I felt the pine torch as it was placed in my hand… felt the heat on my face as it was lit. But my eyes never left John MacNamar’s. “I expect he shall be even more sensitive to flame,” said Henry. I could think of nothing to say. I could only look at him as I approached. He shook as I did, trying to free himself. I could not help but pity him. His fear. His helplessness.
This is madness.
Still, I longed to see him burn. I dropped the torch on the woodpile. He struggled against his bonds to no avail. Screamed until his lungs bled with nary a sound. The flames grew waist-high almost at once, forcing me back as his feet and legs began to blacken and burn. So great was the heat that his blond hair blew continually upward, as if he stood in a gale. Henry remained close to the flames—nearer than I was able. With the jug in hand, he repeatedly poured water over MacNamar’s head, chest, and back, keeping him alive as his legs were burned to the bone. Prolonging his agony. I felt tears on my face.
I am dead.
This went on for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes until—at my insistence—he was finally allowed to die. Henry doused the flames and waited for the charred corpse to cool.
Henry placed a gentle hand on Abe’s shoulder. Abe brushed it away.
“Why do you kill your own, Henry? And do me the honor of the truth, for I deserve as much.”
“I have never given you otherwise.”
“Then say it now and be done with it. Why do you kill your own? And why do—”
“Why do I send you in my stead, yes, yes I know. My God, I forget how young you are.”
Henry ran a hand over his face. This was a conversation he had hoped to avoid.
“Why do I kill my own? I have given you my answer: because it is one thing to feed on the blood of the old and the sick and the treacherous, but quite another to take sleeping children from their beds; quite another to march men and women to their deaths in chains, as you have seen with your own eyes.”
“Then why me? Why not kill them yourself?”
Henry paused to collect his thoughts.
“When I rode here from St. Louis,” he said at last, “I knew that you would not be dead when I arrived. I knew it with all my heart… because I know your purpose.”
Abe lifted his eyes to meet Henry’s.
“Most men have no purpose but to exist, Abraham; to pass quietly through history as minor characters upon a stage they cannot even see. To be the playthings of tyrants. But you… you were born to fight tyranny. It is your purpose, Abraham. To free men from the tyranny of vampires. It has always been your purpose, since you first sprang from your mother’s womb. And I have seen it emanating from your every pore since the night we first met. Shining from you as brightly as the sun. Do you think that it was some accident that brought us together? Do you think it was mere chance that the first vampire I sought to kill in more than a hundred years was the one who led me to you?
“I can see a man’s purpose, Abraham. It is my gift. I can see it as clearly as I see you standing before me now. Your purpose is to fight tyranny…
“… and mine is to see that you win.”
SEVEN
The Fatal First
I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason; I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.
—Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Mrs. Orville H. Browning
April 1st, 1838
I
Abe was on the second floor of a plantation house. He’d seen so many of them on his trips down the Mississippi—the oversize, four-columned wonders built by the hands of slaves. But he’d never been inside. Not until tonight.
I held Jack in my arms, his innards visible through the slit that ran across his belly. I saw the color leave his face… saw the fear in his eyes. And then the nothingness. My brave, sturdy friend. The roughest man in Clary’s Grove. Gone. And yet I could not grieve him now—for I too remained perilously close to death.
It had been another simple errand, another name on Henry’s list. But this place was different. Extraordinary. Abe was on his knees, certain he’d stumbled into some kind of vampire hive.
How many there were I did not know. I set Jack’s body down and entered a long second-floor hallway, ax in hand, my long coat torn by the very claws that had taken my friend’s life. Open doors ran the length of this corridor, and as I walked cautiously forward, each revealed a scene more horrid than the last. In one, the tiny bodies of three children hung from ropes by their ankles—their throats cut. Pails placed beneath them to catch their blood. In another, the withered, white-eyed corpse of a woman in a rocking chair. One of her skeletal hands rested atop the head of a child in her lap, not quite as decayed as she. Down the corridor… the remains of a woman lying in bed. Farther… a squat vampire with a stake through his heart. All the while I heard the sounds of the floors creaking around me. Above and below. I crept down the corridor… closer to the grand staircase at its end. On reaching its railing, I turned back to perceive the whole of the hallway. Suddenly there was a vampire before me—though I could not see his face against the light. He took the ax from my hand and threw it aside… lifted me clear off the ground by my collar. Now I saw his face.
It was Henry.
“It is your purpose to free men from tyranny, Abraham,” he said. “And to do so, you must die.” Upon this, he threw me over the railing. My body fell toward the foyer’s marble floor. And fell. For all time.
It was the last nightmare Abe would ever have in New Salem.
It had taken him months to emerge from the crippling depression brought on by Ann’s death—and while it had renewed his hatred of vampires, he found himself without the energy and passion to hunt them. Now, when a letter from St. Louis arrived in Henry’s handwriting, it might go unopened for days (and once opened, it might be weeks before Abe attended to the name inside). Sometimes, if the errand required too much travel, he sent Jack Armstrong in his stead. His despondency is clear in an entry dated November 18th, 1836.
I have given too much of myself already. Henceforth, I shall hunt only when it is convenient for me to do so, and only because it honors the memory of my angel mother… only because it honors Ann’s memory. I care not for the unsuspecting gentleman on the darkened city street. I care not for the Negro sold at auction, or the child taken from its bed. Protecting them has not profited me in the least. On the contrary, it has left me even poorer, for the items my errands require are furnished at my own expense. And the days and weeks spent hunting are days and weeks without a wage. If what Henry says is the truth—if I am truly meant to free men from tyranny—then I must begin by freeing myself. There is nothing for me here [in New Salem]. The store is failed, and I fear the village is not far behind. Henceforth my life shall be my own.
Abe had been encouraged to pursue law by his old Blackhawk War friend John T. Stuart, who had a small practice in Springfield. After studying entirely on his own (and only in his spare time), Abe obtained a law license in the fall of 1836. Shortly thereafter, Stuart asked him to partner up. On April 12th, 1837, the two men ran an advertisement in The Sangamon Journal announcing their new venture, located in Springfield at “Number Four Hoffman’s Row, Upstairs.” Three days later, Abe rode solemnly into Springfield on a borrowed horse, carrying everything he owned in a pair of saddlebags. He was twenty-eight years old, and he was penniless—“the whole of my money going toward my debts, and the requisite books of my new profession.” He tied up outside A. Y. Ellis & Co., a general store on the west side of the square, “and moseyed in with not so much as an acorn in my pocket.” The clerk was a slender man named Joshua Fry Speed, twenty-four years old, with jet-black hair and a “graceful” face that framed two “unnervingly” blue eyes.
I found him at once odd and bothersome. “Are you new to Springfield, sir? May I interest you in a hat, sir? What news from the county, sir? Must you routinely stoop to fit through doorways, sir?” Never had I been asked so many questions! Never had I been so unwillingly dragged into conversation! I would not have dreamt of treating my customers in such a way during my own tenure as a clerk. I could not go from one shelf to the next without him buzzing about like a horsefly asking questions, when all I cared to do was conclude my business and be on my way. To this end, I handed him a list of goods—including the chemicals I required for my hunts.
“You will forgive my saying so,” said Speed, “but these are strange requests indeed.”
“They are what I require. I shall be glad to furnish you with the names of the—”
“Strange indeed—sir, are you certain we have not met?”
“Sir, are you able you order them or not?”
“Yes, I am sure of it! Yes… yes, I saw you give a speech July last at Salisbury! On the need for improving the Sangamon? Do you not remember, sir? Joshua Speed? A fellow Kentuckian?”
“I really must be on my—”
“A fine speech indeed! Of course, I believe you quite mistaken on the subject—every dollar spent on that miserable creek is a dollar wasted. But what a speech!”
He pledged to order the whole of my list at once, and (much to the relief of my weary ears) busied himself copying its contents. Before taking my leave, I inquired as to whether he knew of any rooms for rent—preferably cheap ones, as I had no money to pay at the moment.
“Well, sir… if you have no money, am I to take your meaning as ‘cheap,’ or ‘free’?”
“On credit.”
“Ah, ‘credit,’ yes… you will forgive my saying so, but I have learned that ‘credit’ is a French word meaning ‘I shall never pay you.’ ”
“I square my debts.”
“Oh, I doubt it not, I doubt it not. All the same, sir—you shall not find such a room in Springfield. People here are strangely accustomed to trading their wares for money.”
“I see… well, thank you for your time. Good day.”
Perhaps he pitied my circumstances or my weary countenance. Perhaps he was merely as friendless as I. In any case, he stopped me and offered to share his own room above the store “on credit—until such time as you are able to strike out on your own.” I will admit that I considered refusing him. The idea of sharing a room with such a pestering fly! I should rather take my chances in a stable loft! But, having no better option, I thanked him and accepted.
“You will, of course, require time to move,” said Speed.
Abe walked outside. A moment later, he returned with his saddlebags and set them on the floor.
“I am moved.”
II
Springfield was booming. Wooden shacks and oxcarts were giving way to brick buildings and carriages, and there seemed to be two politicians for every farmer. It was a long way from New Salem—and even farther from the frontier hardship of Little Pigeon Creek. But for all the excitement and advantage of urban life, there also came a cruelty that Abe was unaccustomed to. His description of one incident is a window into the growing violence of a growing city, and further evidence of Lincoln’s lingering melancholy.
I witnessed a woman and her husband shot and killed today—the latter being the responsible party in both deaths. I was on the street in front of our office, talking with a client, Mr. John S. Wilbourn, when I heard a scream and saw a woman of perhaps five-and-thirty years running out of Thompsons’. * A man came running after her with a pepperbox, ** leveled it, and shot her square in the back. She fell face forward in the street, grabbing at her gut, then rolled onto her back and made an effort to sit upright. She could not. Wilbourn and I raced toward her at once, caring not that her husband stood over her, pistol in hand. Others came into the street, alerted by the noise, and as they did they were met with the sound of a second shot. This one left a hole in the husband’s head. He, too, fell—blood pouring from the wound with every beat of his heart.
It is a strange thing how quickly the body dies. How fragile a force our presence is. In an instant the soul is gone—leaving an empty, insignificant vessel in its stead. I have read of those sent to the gallows and gillotines [sic] of Europe. I have read of the great wars of ages past, and men slaughtered by the tens of thousands. And we give but fleeting consideration to their deaths, for it is our nature to banish such thoughts. But in doing so we forget that they were each as alive as we, and that one length of rope—one bullet or blade—took the whole of their lives in that last, fragile instant. Took their earliest days as swaddled infants, and their grayest unfulfilled futures. When one thinks of how many souls have suffered this fate in all of history—of the untold murders of untold men, women, and children… it is too much to bear.