A Night of Horrors: A Historical Thriller about the 24 Hours of Lincoln's Assassination Read Online Free

over-sized feet made padding noises on the wooden floors. The big man scratched his head and rumpled his hair as he went into the library and took a seat in his favorite rocking chair. His long legs jetted out at awkward angles from the chair that was too small for him, but so was all of the furniture he owned. As on every morning, Lincoln began his day by reading two chapters from the Bible. He had spent many a day reading and rereading the brooding warnings of the prophet Jeremiah as he dispensed God’s judgment on the nation of Israel. Lincoln had taken these judgments to heart as he struggled to grasp the magnitude and endurance of the great war he had wanted to end so dearly. Lincoln had taken to heart those passages that said, “The fierce anger of the LORD shall not return, until He hath done it, and until He hath performed the intents of His heart.” Now he read those passages where God reminded Israel, through Jeremiah, there would be an end to the pain and desolation. Though He would “correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished,” a time for rescue would come. He flipped back to the 29th chapter that had given him much encouragement of late and read, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
    Lincoln closed the book over his long bony finger and he held it to his chest and put his head back on the chair and rocked back and forth. He pondered this passage and its promise of a new future—an expected end. He drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled. It was a deep sigh from the depths of his soul. The war was indeed over—though there still might be some fighting since Jefferson Davis, the President of the so-called Confederate States, had not been captured and there remained some 175,000 Confederate troops in various armies still in the field because they had not yet surrendered. But Sherman had Johnston and his men pinned down in Greensboro, North Carolina, and they were the largest of the armies. He hoped for good news from Sherman today. The family library had a couch and a stuffed chair, but Lincoln invariably sat in the rocking chair. He often rocked slowly forward and back as he read and pondered the passages of scripture. Or he would take up Shakespeare or one of the satirists that he so enjoyed reading and laughing about. The man didn’t simply read these works of literature and holy creeds, he consumed them. Lincoln was famous for his ability to quote long passages of Shakespeare to those who came to visit him.
    Lincoln’s dark hair sprouted up from his head in a variety of directions. He referred to his unruly hair as bristles. His ears, like the rest of his body, were enormous and stuck out from the side of his head like flaps. His face, never handsome, was now more creased and lined from the years of worry with the war. The seemingly endless nights of huddling with the Secretary of War, the reams of paper used to write letters prodding and pushing reluctant generals into attacking, the hours waiting for word of the outcomes of the great and bloody battles had sucked the very life out of the him. The president had become a shrunken man. Lincoln was so thin that his face and head resembled the skull beneath his skin rather than the face of the leader of a nation. His cheeks, always thin, now appeared to have been sucked into his mouth. His skin was now pallid and his lips tight and drawn. Lincoln had devoted every day and night to the cause in which he believed so dearly these past four years and his vital energies seemed to be waning. His nose, another over-sized feature of his face, protruded so far out it made his eyes look smaller and more closely set together than they were. The mole that was evident on his right cheek only added to the man’s awkward looks. He kept his beard closely trimmed to his chin. With the streaks of gray that had grown into it over the past few years,