Seth Grahame-Smith: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

For Erin and Joshua.

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.