Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

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.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
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