Seth Grahame-Smith - Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter

Judge us not equally, Abraham.

They turned onto Dauphine Street and were gone. But the feeling of invading eyes remained. This time the source was plain as day. I spotted a pale little fellow across the street, half hidden in an alley, his eyes unquestionably fixed on me. He was dressed entirely in black, with a mess of hair to match, and a small mustache beneath his dark glasses. Unmistakably a vampire. Seeing that he had been discovered, the figure turned and disappeared into the alley. This I could not leave uninvestigated! Aching head be damned! I left my friend to his own stumbling and hastened after the stranger—chasing him down the alley to Conti Street, then across Basin Street, where the devil sought refuge behind the cemetery *walls. I had been no more than ten paces behind him, but on reaching the gates I perceived him not. He had vanished. Lost in a maze of crypts. I wondered if he had simply slipped into one of them; wondered how many vampires were—

“And what mean you by chasing me so, sir?”

I spun around and raised my fists. He was behind me—his back against the inside of the cemetery wall, clever devil. Staring at me, his dark glasses in his fingers. His tired eyes and high forehead.

“ ‘Chasing’ you, sir?” I said. “What meant you by running?”

“Well, sir, the manner in which you shielded your eyes from the light… the familiar glance you shared with the gentleman in the coach… I thought you a vampire.”

I could scarcely believe what I had heard.

“You thought me a vampire?” he asked. “But I…”

A smile grew over the little man’s lips. He looked at the dark glasses in his fingers; at the look on this tall stranger’s face. He began to laugh.

“I believe us both guilty of grave misjudgments.”

“Forgive me, sir, but… am I to understand that you are not a vampire?”

“Regrettably, no,” he said, laughing, “or I should still have my breath.”

I offered my apology and extended my hand. “Abe Lincoln.” The little man took it.

“Edgar Poe.”

III

Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Allan Poe were born within weeks of each other. Both lost their mothers as children. Otherwise, their upbringings couldn’t have been more different.

After his mother’s death, Poe had been taken in by a wealthy merchant, John Allan (who dealt in slaves, among other commodities). Whisked away from his native Boston, he’d been thoroughly educated in some of England’s finest schools. He’d seen the wonders of Europe that Abe could only read about in books. Around the time Abe swore his vengeance against vampires and staked Jack Barts through the heart, Edgar Allan Poe returned to America, settling with his adoptive father in Virginia and enjoying all the luxuries associated with belonging to one of its wealthiest families. Poe had everything Abe could ever want: The finest education. The finest homes. More books than he could count. A father with no want of ambition.

But he and Abe were equally miserable creatures.

As a first-year student at the University of Virginia, Poe drank and gambled away every penny his foster father sent him, until John Allan finally cut him off. Enraged and abandoned, he fled Virginia for Boston and enlisted in the army under the name Edgar A. Perry, loading artillery shells by day, and writing ever-darker stories and poems by candlelight. It was here, while stationed in the city of his birth, that Edgar Allan Poe met his first vampire.

Using his own money, Poe published a short collection of poems, identifying himself only as “A Bostonian” on its cover (for fear of being mocked by his fellow enlisted men). Of the fifty he paid to have printed, fewer than twenty sold. Notwithstanding this poor reception, one reader saw a particular genius in Poe’s collection, and bribed its printer to learn the author’s true identity. “It was shortly [after this] that I was visited upon by a Mr. Guy de Vere—a widower of considerable means. He explained how he had come to learn my name, and that he had been much affected by my work. He then demanded to know what a vampire was doing serving in the army.”

Guy de Vere was convinced that only a vampire could have written poems with such an outlook on death and grief. Poems of such darkness and beauty.

“He was surprised, then, to find a living man their creator. I was likewise surprised to find myself speaking to a man who was no longer living.”

Poe was endlessly fascinated by the stately, bloodsucking de Vere, and de Vere by the gloomy, brilliant Poe. The two struck up a tenuous friendship, much as Henry and Abe had done. But Poe wasn’t interested in learning about vampires to better hunt them—he wanted to know about the experience of living in darkness, of moving beyond death, so that he could better write about it. De Vere was all too happy to oblige (with the understanding that Poe would never reveal his identity in print). *

Several months after making de Vere’s acquaintance, Poe’s regiment was assigned to Fort Moultrie in South Carolina. With no city to satisfy his appetite for culture, and no means of satisfying his thirst for further vampire knowledge, the army suddenly seemed a prison.

Therefore he had decided to grant himself an “unofficial leave” and come to New Orleans for the stated purpose of “studying vampires”—for de Vere had insisted there was “not a better place in America to do so.” Judging by the number of times he filled and emptied his whiskey glass, he had also come to drink himself to death. We sat that evening in the saloon near Mrs. Laveau’s. Allen Gentry had gone off to “consort with ladies of a certain character,” leaving us free to talk on that subject we enjoyed most, but dared not discuss freely. We spoke well into the night, sharing everything we had read, and heard, and witnessed firsthand regarding vampires.

“How then do they learn to feed?” asked Abe as the barkeep swept the empty tavern around them. “How do they know to shy away from the su—”

“How does a calf know to stand? A honeybee to… to build a hive?”

Poe took another drink.

“It is their nature, beautiful and simple. That you would destroy such beings, Mr. Lincoln, such superior creatures, seems madness to me.”

“That you speak of them with such reverence, Mr. Poe, seems madness to me .”

“Can you imagine it? Can you imagine seeing the universe through such eyes? Laughing in the face of time and death—the world your Garden of Eden? Your library? Your harem?”

“Yes. I can also imagine a want of companionship, and a want of peace.”

“Well, I can imagine a want of nothing! Think of the fortune one could amass, the comforts one could afford, the wonders of the world one could see at his leisure!”

“And when this intoxication has worn away… when every desire is fulfilled and every language learned—when there are no more distant cities to explore; no classics to be studied; not another coin to be stuffed into one’s coffers—what then? One can have all the comforts of the world, but what use are they if there is no comfort in them?”

Abe shared a folktale, one that he had first heard from a traveler on the Old Cumberland Road.

There was once a man who yearned to live forever. Beginning in his youth, he prayed for God to grant him immortality. He was charitable and earnest, honest in his business dealings, true to his wife, and kind to his children. He humbled himself before God, and preached His laws to all who would listen. And yet, he continued to age with every passing year, until he finally died a frail old man. When he reached heaven, he asked, “Lord, why did You refuse to answer my prayer? Did I not live my life according to Your word? Did I not praise Your name to all who would listen?” To which God replied, “You did all of these things. And that is why I did not curse you by answering your prayer.”