Riding on the road to town today, I saw a dozen Negroes chained together like so many fish upon a trotline. It causes me no small discomfort to be among them. To be surrounded by them. Not only because I think their servitude a sin, but because they remind me of all that I wish to forget.
Abe and Joshua Speed talked the days away. They spoke of Britain’s might; of the steam engine. And they spoke of vampires.
“My own father dealt with the devils, I am ashamed to say,” said Speed. “They were hardly a secret among men of his stature, and a poorly kept one in our home, my older brothers having been enlisted in his efforts to win their favor.”
“So he sold Negroes to them?”
“The old and the lame, as a rule. He believed it a double blessing—a way to be rid of a useless slave and make a profit doing so. Once or twice he sold off a healthy buck, or a wench with child. Those fetched a higher price as they had more bl—”
“Enough! How can you speak of them so? Speak of men as cattle led to slaughter?”
“If I have given the impression that I take their murders lightly, I apologize. I do not, Abe. Nor have I ever. To the contrary, vampires are chief among the reasons that I never sought the warmth of my father’s esteem, or mourned his passing with more than a few tears. How could I accept it, when I have heard the screams of men and women feasted upon to line his pockets? When I have seen the faces of those demons through the spaces between wooden planks? If I could banish it from my memory… if I could atone for what was done here, I would do so.”
“Then atone for it.”
Speed needed little convincing. He needed only be told that hunting vampires was both dangerous and thrilling, much like the wild frontier of his imagination. As I had with Jack, * I shared the whole of my knowledge—teaching him how and when to strike; sparring with him to build his poise. Like Jack, he was impatient, too eager to run headlong into the fight. But where Jack could rely on his strength to carry the day, the slender Speed could not. I tried to impress upon him the immense force and quickness possessed by vampires; how very close he would be to death. I feared he did not fully understand. Yet such was his eager spirit that I found myself once again excited at the prospect of hunting.
Abe came up with an audacious plan, one that would put his inexperienced friend at minimal risk and kill six birds with one stone. In late August, Joshua Speed wrote a letter to six of his father’s former associates, each a frequent buyer of unwanted slaves. Each a vampire.
The day having arrived, I found myself filled with apprehension. How could I have been so rash? Six vampires! And with a novice as my partner! How I wished we had more time! How I wished we had Jack by our side!
But it was too late to turn back. Six men joined Joshua Speed on the shaded porch of the overseer’s ** —one a gray-bearded man of seventy; one boyish and barely in his twenties; the other four in between. All of them wore dark glasses and carried folded parasols.
Speed had arranged for several Negroes to gather near the house, and instructed them to “make merry with their gospel.” Such was their singing and clapping that one could hear little else while waiting on the porch outside. As we had planned, Speed invited the vampires in one by one, taking their money and leading them to the waiting feast inside.
But it was I who waited with my ax—and on their rounding the corner from the hall to the parlor, I swung it at their throats with the whole of my strength (which, in those days, was considerable). Of the first five vampires, all but one had his head taken on the first try. Only the third required a second effort, the blade having lodged in his face instead of his neck.
The last vampire was the youngest in appearance, but elderly in spirit. He grew annoyed at being made to wait on the porch alone, and helped himself inside the house. Unfortunately he did so just as the head of his colleague rolled into the hall.
The boyish vampire ran to his waiting horse, jumped on its back without breaking stride, and galloped off.
Speed was first through the door. He jumped on the second horse, dug his heels in, and gave chase before I could even mount the third. It was an old-fashioned horse race now, and Speed rode reckless, standing on his stirrups and beating his foot against the animal’s belly. The vampire saw him gaining and did the same, but his horse was a good ten years slower. Speed pulled up alongside without so much as a pocketknife to stab him with or a pebble to throw.
Speed pulled his feet from the stirrups one at a time, held the horn of his saddle with two hands, and stood. With both horses in a full gallop, he jumped, grabbing the vampire and dragging him to the ground. Both men tumbled in the dirt as their horses sped on. Speed struggled to his feet, dizzy—the sun blinding. Before he’d had time to shake the dust from his ears, a fist knocked him ten yards through the air and onto his back. He gasped for breath and brought a hand to his face, where a gash had been opened on his left cheek. The sun was suddenly eclipsed by the shape of a vampire standing over him. “You ungrateful little cur,” he said. Speed felt his innards rattle as the vampire delivered a kick to his gut.
“Who do you suppose paid for all this land?”
Another kick. Another. Speed saw flashes of color with the pain; felt his mouth fill with a strange taste. He couldn’t help but be sick.
The vampire grabbed him by the collar. “Your father would be ashamed,” he said.
“I… c-certainly hope s-so… ,” muttered Speed.
The vampire raised a clawed hand and prepared to bring it down on Speed’s throat.
Fortunately the head of an ax burst through his chest before he had the chance.
As the vampire fell to his knees, grabbing helplessly at the blade, blood pouring from his mouth, Abe pulled up on his reins and dismounted. Quickly placing two hands on the handle and one foot on the vampire’s back, he freed the ax, then delivered a fatal blow to the creature’s skull.
“Speed,” he said, rushing to his friend’s side. “My God…”
“Well,” said Speed, “I believe that’s enough atonement for one day.”
Abe found Springfield “lonesome and lifeless” upon his return. His time at Farmington had done wonders for his melancholy, “but with no friend to share my lonely hours, what difference if I be in the happiest or worst of moods?”
I care not that [Mary’s father] is a scoundrel, only that I love his daughter unconditionally. Speed is right— what is there in the world but our own small happiness? I have given the matter my serious consideration. Let Henry protest. Let the consequences come. I have resolved to pledge myself anew if she will have me.
“And why should I marry the man who left me to suffer alone?” asked Mary as Abe stood in the doorway of her cousin’s house. “The man who left me without so much as an explanation!”
Abe looked down at the hat in his hands. “I do not—”
“Who made a mockery of my name in this city!”
“My dearest Mary, I have only my humble—”
“Pray, what sort of husband would such a man make? A man who, at any moment, might suffer a change of heart and leave me to suffer anew? Tell me, Mr. Lincoln, what enticement have I to pledge myself to such a man?”
Abe looked up from his hat. “Mary,” he said, “if it is my faults you wish to address, then we shall find ourselves standing here a week’s time. I do not come to torment you further. I come to merely lay myself at your
