Abraham Lincoln_ Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith [106]
The first family was now guarded exclusively by living men, and the president guarded less and less at his own insistence. Each day brought new restrictions on his guards; each day fewer rooms he welcomed them in. Over Ward Hill Lamon’s objections, Abe insisted on riding out in an open carriage when the weather was agreeable, and on walking between the mansion and the War Department alone after dark. As Lamon recalled in his memoirs years later: “I believe that it was more than an absence of fear. I believe that it was an invitation of death.”
A journal entry from April 20th, 1862, sums up Abe’s growing fatalism.
In the course of a week, I greet a thousand strange faces in the White House. Should I treat each as the face of my assassin? Indeed, any man willing to give his life to take mine would have little trouble doing it. Am I therefore to lock myself in an iron box and wait for this war to end? If God wants my soul, He knows where He may collect it—and He may do so at the hour and in the manner of His choosing.
In time, through sheer force of will, he would pull himself out of this depression, just as he had all the ones before it. Not long after Willie’s death, when his longtime friend William McCullough was killed fighting for the Union, Abe sent a letter to the grieving daughter McCullough had left behind. The comfort and advice he offered was meant as much for himself as for the girl.
Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.
But while Abe was picking himself up and soldiering on, Mary was only getting worse.
She cannot bring herself to leave her bed for more than an hour’s time. Nor can she attend to Tad, who grieves not only for a brother, but a mother as well. I am ashamed to admit that there are moments when the very sight of her angers me. Ashamed because it is no fault of hers that she suffers fits of rage, or believes the charlatans who “commune” with our beloved sons for money. She has borne more than any mother ought to bear. I fear that her mind has gone, and that it shall never return.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
II
Though Abe refused to have any direct contact with Henry or the Union, he was pragmatic enough to accept their help in winning the war. In New York, the grand ballroom (where Abe first learned of the Union and its plans for him) had been transformed into a war room, complete with maps, chalkboards, and a telegraph. They acted as envoys to the sympathetic vampires of Europe. They fought where they were able, and supplemented the White House’s intelligence with that collected by their own spies. This intelligence was delivered to Seward, who—after reading and burning the messages—related their contents to the president. From an entry dated June 10th, 1862:
Today comes word that the Confederates are handing Union prisoners over to Southern vampires for the purpose of torture and execution. “We hear of men,” said Seward, “hung upside down and stretched between posts. Using a logger’s saw, two vampires slowly cut the prisoner in half beginning at his [groin]. As they do, a third vampire lies on his back beneath the poor wretch—catching the blood that runs down his body. Because the prisoner’s head is nearest the ground, his brain remains nourished, and he remains conscious until the blade tears slowly back and forth through his stomach, then chest. The other prisoners are made to