II
On August 3rd, 1846, Abe was elected to the United States House of Representatives. In December of 1847, well over a year after his election, Abe arrived in Washington with his family for the beginning of his term. They took a small room at Mrs. Sprigg’s boardinghouse * —a room made all the more cramped by the addition of a fourth family member.
We are doubly blessed with another boy, Edward Baker, born this 10th of March [1846]. He is every bit the laughing rascal Bob is, though I suspect he has a sweeter disposition. My love is not diminished slightly at his being the second. I am every bit the servant of Eddy’s smile—nibbling at his toes to make him laugh… smelling his hair when he sleeps… holding his sleeping chest to mine. What a simpleton these boys make of their father!
This time there was no fear of Edward falling ill or dying. No bargaining with God (at least none that Abe saw fit to record in his journal). Perhaps he’d grown more confident as a parent. Perhaps he was simply too busy to obsess over it. Busy keeping tabs on his thriving law practice back in Springfield. Busy adjusting to a new city and a new level of political intensity. Busy with everything but hunting vampires.
[Henry’s] letters arrive monthly. He begs I reconsider. Insists that it is crucial I take up my errands again. I answer each one with the same simple truths: that I will not risk leaving my wife a widow, or my children fatherless. If I am truly meant to free men from tyranny, I tell him, then I must do so in the spirit of that old adage concerning the pen and the sword. My sword has done its part. My pen must take me the rest of the way.
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?”