Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

by Grahame-Smith, Seth

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2010 by Seth Grahame-Smith

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First eBook Edition: March 2010

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-446-57185-2

  For Erin and Joshua.

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Facts

  Introduction

  PART I: Boy

  1. Exceptional Child

  2. Two Stories

  3. Henry

  4. A Truth Too Terrible

  PART II: Vampire Hunter

  5. New Salem

  6. Ann

  7. The Fatal First

  8. “Some Great Calamity”

  9. At Last, Peace

  PART III: President

  10. A House Divided

  11. Casualties

  12. “Starve the Devils”

  13. Thus Always to Tyrants

  14. Home

  Acknowledgments

  The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best

  shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends,

  and where the other begins?

  —Edgar Allan Poe

  FACTS

  1. For over 250 years, between 1607 and 1865, vampires thrived in the shadows of America. Few humans believed in them.

  2. Abraham Lincoln was one of the gifted vampire hunters of his day, and kept a secret journal about his lifelong war against them.

  3. Rumors of the journal’s existence have long been a favorite topic among historians and Lincoln biographers. Most dismiss it as myth.

  Introduction

  I cannot speak of the things I have seen, nor seek comfort for the pain I feel. If I did, this nation would descend into a deeper kind of madness, or think its president mad. The truth, I am afraid, must live as paper and ink. Hidden and forgotten until every man named here has passed to dust.

  —Abraham Lincoln, in a journal entry

  December 3rd, 1863

  I

  I was still bleeding… my hands shaking. As far as I knew, he was still here—watching me. Somewhere, across a vast gulf of space, a television was on. A man was speaking about unity.

  None of it mattered.

  The books laid out in front of me were the only things now. The ten leather-bound books of varying size—each one a different shade of black or brown. Some merely old and worn. Others barely held together by their cracked covers, with pages that seemed like they’d crumble if turned by anything stronger than a breath. Beside them was a bundle of letters held tightly by a red rubber band. Some with burnt edges. Others as yellowed as the cigarette filters scattered on the basement floor below. The only standout from these antiques was a single sheet of gleaming white paper. On one side, the names of eleven people I didn’t know. No phone numbers. No e-mail. Just the addresses of nine men and two women, and a message scrawled at the bottom of the page:

  Expecting you.

  Somewhere that man was still speaking. Colonists… hope… Selma.

  The book in my hands was the smallest of the ten, and easily the most fragile. Its faded brown cover had been scraped and stained and worn away. The brass buckle that once kept its secrets safe had long since broken off. Inside, every square inch of paper was covered with ink—some of it as dark as the day it dried; some of it so faded that I could barely make it out. In all, there were 118 double-sided, handwritten pages clinging to its spine. They were filled with private longings; theories; strategies; crude drawings of men with strange faces. They were filled with secondhand histories and detailed lists. As I read them, I saw the author’s penmanship evolve from the overcautious script of a child to the tightly packed scribbling of a young man.

  I finished reading the last page, looked over my shoulder to make sure I was still alone, and turned back to the first. I had to read it again. Right now, before reason turned its dogs on the dangerous beliefs that were beginning to march through my mind.

  The little book began with these seven absurd, fascinating words:

  This is the Journal of Abraham Lincoln.

  Rhinebeck is one of those upstate towns that time forgot. A town where family-owned shops and familiar faces line the streets, and the oldest inn in America (where, as any townie will proudly tell you, General Washington himself once laid his wigless head) still offers its comforts at reasonable prices. It’s a town where people give each other homemade quilts and use woodstoves to heat their homes; and where I have witnessed, on more than one occasion, an apple pie cooling on a windowsill. The place belongs in a snow globe.

  Like most of Rhinebeck, the five-and-dime on East Market Street is a living piece of a dying past. Since 1946, the locals have depended on it for everything from egg timers to hem tape to pencils to Christmas toys. If we don’t sell it, you don’t need it, boasts the sun-beaten sign in the front window. And if you need it anyway, we’ll order it. Inside, between checkered linoleum and unflattering fluorescents, you’ll find all the sundries of earth bursting, organized by bin. Prices written in grease pencil. Debit cards begrudgingly accepted. This was my home, from eight-thirty in the morning to five-thirty at night. Six days a week. Every week.

  I’d always known I’d end up in the store after graduation, just like I had every summer since I was fifteen. I wasn’t family in the strictest sense, but Jan and Al had always treated me like one of their kids—giving me a job when I needed it most; throwing me a little pocket money while I was away at school. The way I saw it, I owed them six solid months, June through Christmas. That was the plan. Six months of working in the store by day, and working on my novel nights and weekends. Plenty of time to finish the first draft and give it a good polish. Manhattan was only an hour and a half by train, and that’s where I’d go when I was done, with four or five pounds of unsolicited, proofread opportunity under my arm. Goodbye, Hudson Valley. Hello, lecture circuit.

  Nine years later I was still in the store.

  Somewhere in the middle of getting married, surviving a car accident, having a baby, abandoning my novel, starting and abandoning half a dozen others, having another baby, and trying to stay on top of the bills, something wholly unexpected and depressingly typical happened: I stopped caring about my writing, and started caring about everything else: The kids. The marriage. The mortgage. The store. I seethed at the sight of locals shopping at the CVS down the street. I bought a computer to help track inventory. Mostly, I looked for new ways to bring people through the door. When the used bookstore in Red Hook closed, I bought some of their stock and put a lending shelf in the back. Raffles. Clearance sales. Wi-Fi. Anything to get them through that door. Every year I tried something new. And every year, we barely scraped by.

  Henry * had been coming for a year or so before we got around to talking. We’d exchanged the expected pleasantries; nothing more. “Have a good one.” “See you next time.” I only knew his name because I’d heard it through the Market Street grapevine. The story was he’d bought one of the bigger places off of Route 9G, and had an army of local handymen sprucing it up. He was a little younger than me�
��maybe twenty-seven or so, with messy dark hair, a year-round tan, and a different pair of sunglasses for every occasion. I could tell he was money. His clothes screamed it: vintage T-shirts, wool blazers, jeans that cost more than my car. But he wasn’t like the other money that came in. The asshole weekenders who liked to gush about our “cute” little town and our “adorable” little store, walking right past our No Food or Drink Please sign with their oversize cups of hazelnut coffee, and never spending a dime. Henry was courteous. Quiet. Best of all, he never left without dropping less than fifty bucks—most of it on the throwbacks you can only pick up in specialty stores these days—bars of Lifebuoy, tins of Angelus Shoe Wax. He came in, paid cash, and left. Have a good one. See you next time. And then, one day in the fall of 2007, I looked up from my spiral notebook and there he was. Standing on the other side of the counter—staring at me like I’d just said something revolting.

  “Why did you abandon it?”

  “I… I’m sorry?”

  Henry motioned to the notebook in front of me. I always kept one by the register, in the event that any brilliant ideas or observations popped in (they never did, but semper fi, you know?). Over the last four hours, I’d jotted half a page of one-line story ideas, none of which warranted a second line. The bottom half of the page had descended into a doodle of a tiny man giving the middle finger to a giant, angry eagle with razor-sharp talons. Beneath it, the caption: To Mock a Killing Bird. Sadly, this was the best idea I’d had in weeks.

  “Your writing. I was curious as to why you abandoned it.”

  Now it was me staring at him. For whatever reason, I was suddenly struck by the thought of a man carrying a flashlight—rifling through the cobwebbed shelves of a dark warehouse. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

  “Sorry, but I don’t—”

  “Understand, no. No, I apologize. It was rude of me to interrupt you.”

  Jesus… now I felt compelled to apologize for his apology.

  “Not at all. It’s just… what gave you—”

  “You seemed like someone who writes.”

  He pointed to the lending shelf in the back.

  “You obviously have an appreciation for books. I see you writing here from time to time… I assumed it was a passion. I was just curious as to why you hadn’t pursued it.”

  Reasonable. A little pompous (what, just because I’m working in a five-and-dime, I’m not pursuing my passion?), but reasonable enough to let some of the air back into the room. I gave him the honest, depressingly typical answer, which amounted to “life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” That led to a discussion about John Lennon, which led to a discussion about The Beatles, which led to a discussion about Yoko Ono, which led nowhere. We talked. I asked him how he liked the area. How his house was coming. What kind of work he did. He gave me satisfactory answers to all of these. But even as he did—even as we stood there chatting politely, just a couple of young guys shooting the breeze—I couldn’t avoid the feeling that there was another conversation going on. A conversation that I wasn’t participating in. I could feel Henry’s questions becoming increasingly personal. I could feel my answers doing the same. He asked about my wife. My kids. My writing. He asked about my parents. My regrets. I answered them all. I knew it was strange. I didn’t care. I wanted to tell him. This young, rich guy with messy hair and overpriced jeans and dark glasses. This guy whose eyes I’d never seen. Whom I hardly knew. I wanted to tell him everything. It just came out, like he’d dislodged a stone that had been stuck in my mouth for years—a stone that kept all of my secrets held back in a reservoir. Losing my mom when I was a kid. The problems with my dad. Running away. My writing. My doubts. The annoying certainty that there was more than this. Our struggles with money. My struggles with depression. The times I thought about running away. The times I thought about killing myself.

  I hardly remember saying half of it. Maybe I didn’t.

  At some point, I asked Henry to read my unfinished novel. I was appalled by the thought of him or anyone reading it. I was even appalled by the idea of reading it myself. But I asked him anyway.

  “No need,” he answered.

  It was (to that point) the strangest conversation of my life. By the time Henry excused himself and left, I felt like I’d covered ten miles in a flat-out sprint.

  It was never that way again. The next time he came in, we exchanged the expected pleasantries; nothing more. Have a good one. See you next time. He bought his soap and shoe polish. He paid cash. This went on. He came in less and less.

  When Henry came in for the last time, in January of 2008, he carried a small package—wrapped in brown paper and tied up with twine. Without a word, he set it next to the register. His gray sweater and crimson scarf were lightly dusted with snow, and his sunglasses speckled with tiny water droplets. He didn’t bother taking them off. This didn’t surprise me. There was a white envelope on top of the package with my name written on it—some of the ink had mixed with melting snow and begun to bleed.

  I reached under the counter and killed the volume on the little TV I kept there for Yankees games. Today it was tuned to the news. It was the morning of the Iowa primary, and Barack Obama was running neck and neck with Hillary Clinton. Anything to pass the time.

  “I would like you to have this.”

  For a moment, I looked at him like he’d said that in Norwegian.

  “Wait, this is for me? What’s the—”

  “I’m sorry, but I have a car waiting. Read the note first. I’ll be in touch.”

  And that was it. I watched him walk out the door and into the cold, wondering if he ever let anyone finish a sentence, or if it was just me.

  II

  The package sat under the counter for the rest of the day. I was dying to open the damned thing, but since I had no idea who this guy really was, I wasn’t about to risk unwrapping a blow-up doll or kilo of black tar heroin at the same moment some Girl Scout decided to walk in. I let my curiosity burn until the streets turned dark and Mrs. Kallop finally settled on the darker of the green yarns (after an excruciating ninety minutes of debate), then locked the doors a few minutes early. To hell with the stragglers tonight. Christmas was over, and it was deadly slow anyway. Besides, everybody was home watching the Obama-Hillary drama play out in Iowa. I decided to sneak a cigarette in the basement before heading home to catch the results. I picked up Henry’s gift, killed the fluorescents, and cranked up the TV’s speaker. If there was any election news, I’d hear it echoing down the staircase.

  There wasn’t much to the basement. Other than a few boxes of overflow inventory against the walls, it was a mostly empty room with a filthy concrete floor and a single hanging forty-watt bulb. There was an old metal “tanker” desk against one wall with the inventory computer on it, a two-drawer file cabinet where we kept some records, and a couple of folding chairs. A water heater. A fuse panel. Two small windows that peeked into the alley above. More than anything, it was where I smoked during the cold winter months. I pulled a folding chair up to the desk, lit one, and began to untie the twine at the top of the neatly wrapped—

  The letter.

  The thought just popped in there, like one of those brilliant ideas or observations I kept the notebook around for. I was supposed to read the letter first. I found the Swiss Army key chain in my pants pocket ($7.20 plus tax—cheaper than you’ll find anywhere else in Dutchess County, guaranteed) and opened the envelope with a flick of the wrist. Inside was a single folded piece of gleaming white paper with a list of names and addresses typed out on one side. On the other, a handwritten note:

  There are some conditions I must ask you to agree to before opening this package:

  First, understand that it is not a gift, but a loan. I will, at a time of my choosing, ask you to return these items. On that point, I need your solemn promise that you will protect them at all cost, and treat them with the same care and respect you would afford any item of tremendous value.

  Second
, the contents of this package are of an extremely sensitive nature. I must ask that you not share or discuss them with anyone other than myself and the eleven individuals listed opposite until you have received my permission to do so.

  Third, these items are being lent to you with the expectation that you will write a manuscript about them, of, let us say, substantial length, and subject to my approval. You may take as much time as you wish. Upon the satisfactory completion of this manuscript, you will be fairly compensated.

  If you cannot meet any of these conditions for any reason, please stop and wait to be contacted by me. However, if you agree, then you may proceed.

  I believe it is your purpose to do so.

  —H

  Well, shit… there was no way I wasn’t opening it now.

  I tore the paper off, uncovering a bundle of letters held tightly by a red rubber band, and ten leather-bound books. I opened the book at the top of the pile. As I did, a lock of blonde hair fell onto the desk. I picked it up, studied it, and twirled it in my fingers as I read a random sliver from the pages it’d been pressed between:

  … wish I could but vanish from this earth, for there is no love left in it. She has been taken from me, and with her, all hope of a…

  I skimmed through the rest of the first book, spellbound. Somewhere upstairs, a woman was listing off the names of counties. Pages and pages—every inch filled with tightly packed handwriting. With dates like November 6th, 1835; June 3rd, 1841. With drawings and lists. With names like Speed, Berry, and Salem. With a word that kept showing up, over and over: