Every morning, Matthew sat on an ornate chest looking out of the bay window to watch pedestrians pass by his Georgian house, and as he watched, he stroked a gold key that hung from a red velvet ribbon around his neck.

Sometimes, if a passer by glanced up, they’d meet Matthew’s gaze. Though they were unable to see the colour of those dead grey eyes, they shivered as if sensing a primeval presence.

Over countless years Matthew, who lived at No. 6, The Parade, had never seemed to age. Past and present residents, living in that quiet road, considered Matthew a mystery, but for some odd reason that was how they wished it to remain.

Every night, as Matthew paced his home, not a solitary soul could imagine his terrible compulsion to sate a raging thirst. At its peak, once a month, during the hours of darkness, he left his home moving like a black wraith through silent streets towards the park.

There under the shelter of a bandstand, a few homeless people slept. There he watched those sleeping bodies before selecting the youngest and healthiest. What gender he selected made no difference to him.

Thankful they’d been offered food, warmth and shelter, the victim followed Matthew back to his home anxious for the promised reward of an ample meal and a fine bottle of Chablis.

After the victim had relaxed in a hot, fragrant bath, been fed and had drunk the wine, they were shown to a bedroom. Overcome with inexplicable weariness, they tumbled onto a four poster bed, instantly falling into a drug induced sleep that numbed both their minds and bodies.

Once insensible, Matthew, with expertise, sliced into his comatose victim’s main artery to gorge on delicious blood, and as he did so, a life preserving force surged through his marrow, sinews and veins; a life force that kept him from ageing.

Once his victims bodies were drained, Matthew cut out their hearts, and placed them inside the chest, turning the gold key in its lock with a shuddering sigh of orgasmic elation. Down in the cellar, he buried his victims bodies in dank, evil smelling earth that writhed fat, pink worms.

Now eight days after his latest bloody frenzy, he was plagued, not by a growing, life-giving thirst, but debilitating cramps, nausea and lethargy. Frightened, Matthew dared to look in a mirror and was met with the terrible gaze of an ancient man.

Reeling away from the vision, he was struck with an awful knowledge; a knowledge that brought a wolf-like howl from his mouth.

That sweet blonde youth, his last victim, he realised in terror, had been infected by some new, destructive virus.