Speed felt his way to the knob and pulled it quietly, quietly open…
Sunlight.
Here was a long, tall room with smooth walls. High above our heads, a row of small windows let in the soft light of late day, and framed the feet of passersby. To our right, a long table of caged rats, glass vessels, and silver instruments. Ahead, what appeared to be a body on a stone slab, covered by a white sheet. And to our left, Abe… to our left… naked corpses ran the length of the room, each on a narrow shelf, stacked one atop the other to a height of seven or eight feet.
We were in a morgue.
I’d expected to find the doctor waiting for us. To be attacked at once. But there was no trace of him. Armstrong and I moved slowly toward the slab, our weapons at the ready. Only now did I see the dark glass tubes running over our heads, running from the bodies on our left to the vessels on our right. Only now did I see the blood running into those vessels, kept warm by a row of tiny gas flames beneath.
Only now did I see the chests of these “corpses” moving with each shallow breath.
And here the whole horror of it struck me, Abe. For now I realized that these were all living men. Packed onto shelves as books in a library. Each given barely enough room for his chest to rise. Each kept fed through holes in their stomachs… drained. Too weak to move, too nourished to die. Each imprisoned by the creature whose whistling we suddenly heard from an adjoining room. Whistling… washing his hands in a water basin. Preparing, no doubt, to butcher the poor soul whose chest still rose and fell beneath that white sheet.
And at once our plan became clear.
McDowell returned wearing an apron and carrying his surgical instruments on a tray. He set these down, whistling all the while, and peeled back the white sheet.
This isn’t the man I remember.
Armstrong sat bolt upright and fired his crossbow into the bastard’s heart—his heart, Abe! I needn’t tell you that the arrow merely bounced off with a clang, for the big, dumb ox had forgotten about the breastplate!
It was a costly mistake, Abe, for McDowell now revealed his true self and struck with his claws. Jack heard something clang against the stone floor. He looked down at where his crossbow had been a moment before. Neither it nor his right hand remained. His face went pale at the sight of blood running from his wrist—and his severed hand upon the floor.
Jack’s cries were loud enough to wake some of the barely living on the opposite shelves.
I had no choice but to remove from hiding and fire my pistol at the vampire’s head. But my shaking hands could not be trusted. The bullet sailed past him and into his precious glass vessels! Imagine the noise, Abe! Imagine the volume of blood that ran onto the stone floor! One might have drowned! Such was the delicacy of his creation that all of the overhead tubes now shattered in unison, the effect being a shower of blood from above.
“No!” screamed McDowell. “You’ve ruined it!”
I do not remember being struck. I only know that I was thrown into the shelves of bodies with enough force to break the bones of my right leg. The pain was more severe than any I had ever known—more severe even than the thrashing I’d received at Farmington. The whole of my body felt suddenly cold. I remember McDowell (a pair of him, actually, for I had been rendered rather senseless by the blow) coming toward me as I lay helpless, the entire floor covered by an inch or more of blood. I remember the strange, amusing thought that a mortuary was as good a place to die as any… the warmth pouring down on all of us… the taste of it. And I remember McDowell suddenly grabbing at his face.
The tip of an arrow had broken through the flesh beneath his right eye! The rest protruded from the back of his skull. Behind him, the big, dumb ox held a shaking crossbow in his remaining hand.
With an unnatural volume of blood rushing down his face (adding to the already grizzly scene), the paranoid McDowell panicked and fled. *
God be praised, we were but steps from the finest hospital in St. Louis. Armstrong and I helped each other up the stairs (I struggling along on my good leg, and carrying his severed hand in one of mine), both of us soaked from head to toe in the blood of two dozen men.
The surgeons were able to save Jack’s life. His hand is gone forever, Abe. He was quite close to death. Closer than he will likely admit. It was his strength that saw him through. His strength, and the prayers you doubtless said for our safety. I shall stay on long enough to see him well (though he refuses to speak to me). I am just now told that my leg shall heal, and that I shall walk with only the slightest limp, if any. Grieve not for your dear Speed, friend—for he counts himself the most fortunate fool alive.
II
On August 3rd, 1846, Abe was elected to the United States House of Representatives. In December of 1847, well over a year after his election, Abe arrived in Washington with his family for the beginning of his term. They took a small room at Mrs. Sprigg’s boardinghouse * —a room made all the more cramped by the addition of a fourth family member.
We are doubly blessed with another boy, Edward Baker, born this 10th of March [1846]. He is every bit the laughing rascal Bob is, though I suspect he has a sweeter disposition. My love is not diminished slightly at his being the second. I am every bit the servant of Eddy’s smile—nibbling at his toes to make him laugh… smelling his hair when he sleeps… holding his sleeping chest to mine. What a simpleton these boys make of their father!
This time there was no fear of Edward falling ill or dying. No bargaining with God (at least none that Abe saw fit to record in his journal). Perhaps he’d grown more confident as a parent. Perhaps he was simply too busy to obsess over it. Busy keeping tabs on his thriving law practice back in Springfield. Busy adjusting to a new city and a new level of political intensity. Busy with everything but hunting vampires.
[Henry’s] letters arrive monthly. He begs I reconsider. Insists that it is crucial I take up my errands again. I answer each one with the same simple truths: that I will not risk leaving my wife a widow, or my children fatherless. If I am truly meant to free men from tyranny, I tell him, then I must do so in the spirit of that old adage concerning the pen and the sword. My sword has done its part. My pen must take me the rest of the way.
Washington turned out to be a disappointment on nearly every level. Abe had come expecting a gleaming metropolis filled with men of the “finest minds, and dedicated to the service of their constituents.” What he found were “a few brilliant beacons in a fog of fools.” As for his dreams of life in a big city, Washington, D.C., felt more like Louisville or Lexington—albeit with a handful of gleaming architectural wonders. “A few palaces on a prairie,” as Abe liked to say. The cornerstone of the Washington Monument had yet to be laid. Neither it nor the Capitol would be completed in his lifetime.
One of Washington’s greatest disappointments was its abundance of slaves. They worked at Mrs. Sprigg’s boardinghouse where Abe stayed with his family. They were auctioned off on the streets he took to work. They were kept caged on the future site of the National Mall, where Abe’s giant likeness would one day keep watch for all eternity.
[There is] in view from the windows of the Capitol a sort of livery stable, where droves of Negroes are collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses. Men—chained together and sold! Here, in the shadow of an institution founded on the promise that “All men are created equal”! Founded with cries of “give me liberty, or give me death!” It is more than any honorable man can bear.