Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

health. I walked among them with my weapons hidden beneath my long coat (for it had occurred to me that the sight of a tall stranger with an ax might engender concern among the citizenry). I intruded upon the kindness of a passerby, and asked where I might find the local cobbler, for my shoes were very badly worn. Having been directed to a modest shop not more than fifty yards away, I entered and found a bearded, bespectacled man hard at work—his walls covered with worn and dismembered shoes. He was a meek creature of some five-and-thirty years, and he was alone. “Silas Williams?” I asked.
“Yes?”
I cut his head off with my ax and left.
When his head fell to the floor, his eyes were as black as the shoes he had been polishing. I have not the faintest idea what his crimes were, nor do I care. I care only that there is one less vampire today than there was yesterday. It is strange, I admit, to think that I owe this fact to a vampire. However, it has long been said that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.”
Fifteen more letters arrived in Little Pigeon Creek over the next three years, each with nothing more than a name, a place, and that unmistakable H.
There were times that two would arrive in as many months. There were times that none arrived for three months’ time. Regardless of when they came, I always set out as soon as my work would allow. Each hunt brought new lessons. New improvements to my skills and tools. Some were as effortless as the beheading of Silas Williams. Others saw me lying in wait for hours on end or posing as prey—only to turn the tables when the vampire attacked. Some required a day’s ride or less. Others took me as far as Fort Wayne and Nashville.
FIG. 12 - ABE STANDS AMONG HIS VAMPIRE VICTIMS IN A PAINTING TITLED ‘THE YOUNG HUNTER’ BY DIEGO SWANSON (OIL ON CANVAS, 1913).
No matter how long the journey, he always carried the same items with him.
In my bundle I carried whatever food I could, a pan for frying pork, and a pot for boiling water. These were wrapped in my long coat, which I had paid a seamstress to further alter by removing the inside pockets and sewing a thick leather lining in their place. The whole was tied to the handle of my ax, which I kept sharp enough to shave my whiskers. I added a crossbow to this little arsenal, too, one that I had fashioned myself using the drawings in a borrowed copy of Weapons of the Taborites as my guide. I continued to practice with it when time allowed, but dared not wield it in battle until my skills were much improved.
While hunting vampires offered a surplus of vengeance, it paid nothing in the way of real money. As a young man, Abe was expected to help provide for his family. And in keeping with customs of the time, any wages he earned belonged to his father until his twenty-first birthday. As one might imagine, this didn’t sit well.
The idea of handing my earnings to such a man! Of my labor rewarding his lack thereof. Of doing anything to benefit one so shiftless. So selfish and cowardly! It is no more than indentured servitude!
Abe was always looking for a job, whether clearing trees, hauling grain, or ferrying passengers from the banks of the Ohio to waiting steamboats on a scow of his own construction. * In early May 1828, when Abe was still reeling from his sister’s death, a job came looking for him for a change. One that would change his life.
James Gentry owned one of the largest and most prosperous farms around Little Pigeon Creek. He’d been an acquaintance of Thomas Lincoln for the better part of ten years and was unlike him in just about every imaginable way. Naturally, Abe had always looked up to him on account of this. For his part, Gentry had come to admire the tall, hardworking, and modest Lincoln boy. His own son Allen was a few years older than Abe, but a pinch less mature. The industrious farmer wanted to expand his reach (and his profits) by selling his corn and bacon downriver in Mississippi, where sugar and cotton were king, but where other goods were in great demand.
Mr. Gentry asked if I would join Allen in building and piloting a flatboat of his goods downriver—stopping in Mississippi and points south to sell quantities of corn, pork, and other sundries. For this he would pay me the sum of eight dollars each month, and purchase my steamboat ticket home from New Orleans.
It’s likely Abe would have accepted this job even if there’d been no promise of money. It was a chance to escape. A chance