The Last American Vampire

by Seth Grahame-Smith

  8. Roosevelt would himself be shot by a would-be assassin while campaigning in 1912. The bullet entered his chest but failed to puncture any vital organs. Roosevelt, in typical fashion, refused to be taken to the hospital until he delivered his speech. He proceeded to speak for ninety minutes, blood dripping down his shirt.

  9. In Cuba, the site of the Rough Riders’ greatest victory in battle.

  10. Dr. William Crawford Gorgas (1854–1920) was one of the first medical professionals to accept the fact that malaria was spread by mosquitoes. His sanitary programs during the construction of the Panama Canal are credited with saving thousands of lives. He would later be appointed surgeon general of the United States Army.

  1. Tsar Nicholas II (1868–1918).

  2. Prime Minister David Lloyd George (1863–1945).

  3. This signature belonged to Captain Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the founding director of what is known today as MI6. He abbreviated his long name by simply signing “C” on documents in green ink. The abbreviation evolved into a code name for “chief,” and all subsequent directors of MI6 have since signed documents in this manner.

  4. Present-day St. Petersburg.

  5. In 1909, Twain said, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’ ” His prediction was accurate—Twain died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut, one day after the comet’s closest approach, as if there to carry him off into eternity.

  6. In the summer of 1914, a woman named Khioniya Guseva, follower of one of Rasputin’s faith-healing rivals, attacked him with a knife, slicing him across the belly so severely that his entrails spilled out. Guseva is said to have exclaimed, “I have killed the Antichrist!” as Rasputin fell to the ground, bleeding profusely. He was rushed away to receive medical attention, but there is no record of his ever having seen a doctor. He was seen by few people for nearly two months. When he reemerged in Petrograd, he bore no signs that he had ever been injured. Rasputin told others that he had “healed himself, as he had healed others.”

  7. Rasputin.

  8. An offshoot of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, founded by Vladimir Lenin and others to represent the country’s revolutionary working class. It would later become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, following the October Revolution the following year.

  9. Toward the end of his life, Tesla spoke publicly of a “teleforce” weapon, which could be used to wipe out entire fleets or battalions over great distances. The press dubbed it “Tesla’s Death Ray,” and wild stories were written imagining all of its uses. In many ways, it was the forerunner of the “ray guns” that became popular in the science fiction of the 1940s and ’50s. In describing it, Tesla said, “[It would] send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 200 miles from a defending nation’s border and will cause armies to drop dead in their tracks.” When asked how long it would take before such a weapon was practical, he answered, “But it is not an experiment… I have built, demonstrated and used it. Only a little time will pass before I can give it to the world.”

  10. A transmitter.

  11. This was, in fact, an early version of a split-anode magnetron tube—a device used to produce microwaves.

  12. Popularly known as “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” the song hails from the 1904 Broadway show Little Johnny Jones, the first musical written by legendary composer George M. Cohan—considered one of the founding fathers of American musical theater.

  13. The plates used by photographers of the day often required long exposures to absorb enough light for an image. This meant that the camera shutter would have to remain open for several seconds or more. If anyone in the picture moved during that time, they would become blurred in the final image. To be in perfect, sharp focus in dozens of known images was almost unheard of and possible only if the subject (Rasputin) was able to keep himself perfectly—unnaturally—still.

  14. These were likely Henry’s claw marks.

  15. Rasputin was reportedly so well-endowed that he caused women to faint upon orgasm.

  1. Abbreviation for “hot stuff,” a common nickname for mustard gas among World War I soldiers.

  2. Common term for the 5.9-inch (150-millimeter) shells, each weighing more than one hundred pounds.

  3. Rockefeller is generally considered to be the wealthiest person in history.

  4. The League of Nations lasted until 1946, when it was replaced by the United Nations, which inherited numerous agencies, organizations, and philosophies founded by the League.

  5. Jay Gould (1836–1892), railroads; Marshall Field (1834–1906), retail; J. P. Morgan (1837–1913), finance; Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), steel.

  6. At the northernmost tip of present-day Virginia Beach.

  7. Later Jamestown.

  8. These became the first battles in what would be known as the Anglo-Powhatan Wars, a series of conflicts that would continue on and off for the next seventy years, until the Treaty of Middle Plantation (1677) established the first Indian reservations in America.

  9. Though Pocahontas did, in fact, become infatuated with John Smith later, there is no evidence that the two ever consummated their relationship. In fact, after Smith returned to England in 1609, Pocahontas married a different white settler, John Rolfe, after converting to Christianity and taking the name “Rebecca.” Theirs was the first interracial marriage in American history, and their son, Thomas Rolfe, would go on to sire countless descendants. Pocahontas, therefore, is the ancestor of some of the oldest families in America.

  10. Henry IV, Part 2, act 1, scene 3.

  1. Between 1921 and 1925, upward of sixty Osage Indians were murdered in Oklahoma. The murders went unsolved for years. Later, it came to light that the Osage had been murdered by neighboring white men who wanted to reclaim oil-rich land that had been granted to the Indians under the terms of a 1907 deal.

  2. World-famous aviator Charles Lindbergh’s twenty-month-old son was taken from his crib on March 1st, 1932. A letter was left at the scene demanding $50,000 in ransom. The story became an instant worldwide sensation, prompting offers of help from everyone from Wall Street titans to mobsters like Al Capone. On hearing of the kidnapping, President Herbert Hoover vowed to “move heaven and earth” to find the child. Abe and Henry were dispatched to New Jersey to investigate any possible vampire involvement, as Lindbergh was something of an American symbol. They failed to find any vampire connection, but an idea of Abe’s (to pay the ransom in gold certificates rather than cash) eventually led to the arrest and execution of Richard Hauptmann, a German immigrant and resident of the Bronx.

  3. Tesla would die alone in his room at the New Yorker Hotel in 1943.

  4. Henry prefers to keep the name of the town off the record, citing the potential of civil and criminal consequences.

  5. From a popular hymn of the time, “That Old Rugged Cross,” by George Bennard (1873–1958).

  6. Psycho (1960).

  7. On the northwest corner of the second floor, this room was known as the Lincoln Bedroom from 1929 to 1948, when it was remodeled and renamed the President’s Dining Room. The present-day Lincoln Bedroom (and its iconic rosewood bed) occupies the southeast corner of the second floor.

  8. Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were fifth cousins. Not only were the two men only loosely acquainted with each other, but FDR, a lifelong Democrat, actually campaigned against his Republican cousin in the election of 1908.

  9. Written while Hitler was imprisoned for an attempted coup in 1923.

  10. There have been countless books and research papers into the Nazis’ obsession with all things occult. Pope Pius XII even tried to perfo
rm a long-distance exorcism on Hitler from Rome, believing he was possessed by the devil.

  11. Built for the 1936 Summer Games, which are most remembered for the four gold medals won by African American athlete Jesse Owens. Hitler was said to be furious that a black American stole the spotlight away from his so-called superior German Olympians. Owens returned to the United States a hero, though FDR never invited him to the White House or so much as sent him a telegram. The year 1936 was an election year, and the president was worried about seeming too friendly with the black track star. Owens would later work as a gas station attendant and declare bankruptcy.

  1. “Hedgehogs,” or “Czech hedgehogs,” were angled iron obstacles used as antitank defenses.

  2. A Sherman tank modified with a DD, or “dual drive,” system (tank treads for land use and a rear-mounted propeller for water use) and a floatation curtain, transforming it into an amphibious assault vehicle. Twenty-nine tanks were launched at Omaha Beach, two miles off the coast. Only two made it ashore, leaving the landing forces exposed and vulnerable to German machine-gun fire.

  3. Designated the “Special Operations Executive” in 1940, but often referred to as “the Baker Street Irregulars,” a name borrowed, ironically, from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.

  4. The letter is currently housed in the collection in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York—just a stone’s throw from Henry’s estate in Rhinebeck. The letter is addressed from “A. Lansing,” an alias Lincoln was using for correspondence at the time.

  5. Matthew 10:34.

  6. The Egg and I, by Betty MacDonald (1945).

  7. While a vampire can survive on animal blood, many liken it to putting cheap gas in a sports car. The vampire typically experiences mild exhaustion, consistent with how a human feels when fighting a cold. For this reason, animal blood is usually used as a last resort or by those, like Lincoln, who choose not to feed on humans for moral reasons.

  8. Henry was approached by Secretary of War Robert Patterson on July 8th, 1946, and asked to fly to California to revive Hughes. He refused, telling the secretary he could not in good conscience make another vampire. Patterson was so furious that he tried to have Henry dishonorably discharged (only the intervention of Army Chief of Staff Eisenhower prevented him from doing so). All the same, Henry and Patterson never spoke again, and Harry Truman never asked Henry to the White House (it’s unclear if this was related to the Hughes affair). There is no record of who Patterson ultimately got to do the job.

  9. Though not yet widely available, experimental dialysis machines were in use at several hospitals in the United States. In 1949, Hughes purchased one from Mount Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and had it moved to his home in Hancock Park.

  10. Founded in 1953, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute is still in operation today, spending more than $800 million annually in biomedical research, though it is unclear how much of that money remains dedicated to the study of vampires.

  11. Project MKULTRA was launched in 1953, the same year as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, approved by CIA director Allen Welsh Dulles, and headed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb—known in the agency as “the dirty trickster” for his use of LSD and other psychotropic drugs on unwilling participants, and for his plots to “chemically assassinate” America’s enemies, like Fidel Castro. While long rumored to be a covert program researching drug-based mind control and telepathy, the real goals of the program were the study of vampire biology.

  12. The official autopsy listed kidney failure as the cause of death. X-rays revealed five broken hypodermic needles in the flesh of his arm. Doctors assumed these were to administer codeine into his muscles.

  1. Between 1953 and 1963, Swiss manufacturer Nagra sold more reel-to-reel tape recorders to the FBI than it did in all of Switzerland.

  2. A vampire’s hair continues to grow throughout its life, though due to metabolic differences, it grows at roughly half the rate of a human’s.

  3. The exact quote is: “I think politicians and poets share at least one thing, and that is their greatness depends upon the courage with which they face the challenges of life.”

  4. Kennedy and his speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, had studied the Gettysburg Address in crafting the main ideas of the speech. The draft they sent Lincoln for notes contained the line “And so my fellow citizens, the question is not what America can do for us, but what we can do for America.” Lincoln crossed it out and wrote a now immortal line in its place: “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” He then added a second line, expanding on the idea: “My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

  5. Colossians 1:16, 17: “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”

  6. Charles J. Guiteau (1841–1882) shot President James Garfield on July 2, 1881. Garfield died eleven weeks later, after just 199 days in office.

  7. President Zachary Taylor (1784–1850), who had committed himself to preserving the Union a full ten years before Abraham Lincoln took office, fell ill suddenly on July 4, 1850. He died five days later. Assassination theories have hung over his death ever since.

  8. J. D. Tippit (1924–1963) was a married father of three young children, and an army veteran of World War II. In addition to serving on the Dallas police force, he also worked at a local barbecue restaurant at the time of his murder.

  9. The Lockheed Jetstar, which entered service in 1957, is regarded as the first private or executive jet aircraft. Henry purchased his 1962 model for just under $1 million—the equivalent of roughly $8 million in 2015 dollars.

  1. More recently, Henry has taken to using a helicopter to transport him when weather permits, cutting the travel time from an hour to fifteen minutes.

  2. Henry sold his JetStar in 1972. He’s continually upgraded his private aircraft since the 1960s.

  Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Hachette Digital.

  To receive special offers, bonus content, and news about our latest ebooks and apps, sign up for our newsletters.

  Sign Up

  Or visit us at hachettebookgroup.com/newsletters

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Facts

  Introduction

  Chapter One: May 8th, 1865

  Chapter Two: Five Heads, 1888

  Chapter Three: The Actor’s Assistant, 1563/1888

  Chapter Four: The Tall Man, 1888

  Chapter Five: Good Devil

  Chapter Six: Electric Company

  Chapter Seven: Diplomacy

  Chapter Eight: The Mystic

  Chapter Nine: The Maker

  Chapter Ten: Burning

  Chapter Eleven: ’53

  Chapter Twelve: Two Presidents

  Epilogue: The Last American Vampire

  Acknowledgments

  Newsletters

  Copyright

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Seth Grahame-Smith

  Cover design by Elizabeth Connor

  Digital compositing by Scott Nobles

  Cover photo of couple © Scott Nobles

  Background photos courtesy NYC Municipal Archives

  Military figures courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-DIG-fsa-8d21794 and LC-DIG-fsa-8d21837)

  Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordan
ce with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.