Retired Oxford Don, researching book into the Paranormal. Have you had a strange, or unexplained experience? Got an interesting tale to tell? Contact Alexander Hamilton. Box 4913

Advertisement in The Times, May 1984

This chair here? Merci. My time with you tonight will, of necessity, be brief. I have not yet eaten, and-- No, no. Thank you, but I cannot eat what you may offer from your kitchen. I am here to speak with you about your advertisement in The Times. I have a tale that may be of interest.

It concerns a young couple, deeply in love, and their son. Or, rather, it concerns the husband and father of that small family. Their home is spartan, but full of joy. The son is intelligent, showing the signs of budding genius, but the parents insist that he plays as normal children do instead of studying at all hours.

They eat dinner together when the father arrives home from his job, and when the boy goes to bed his daddy reads him a bedtime story. All is bliss and happiness. What could possibly go wrong with such an idyllic life?

On the night of which I wish to speak, the boy was fast asleep and his parents partook of a late supper out on the patio. The night was autumn-cool; one of the last times they would be able to indulge in this favourite romantic pastime of theirs before winter set in.

The mother washed the dishes, tweaked a cushion here and there, and kissed her husband goodnight. From habit, she knew he would work late at his desk. It was no matter to her, for their mornings were the time for cuddles and sweet, lazy, sleepy sex; all before he got up and showered before leaving for work.

It was past the time when he normally closed his laptop, but he had an important presentation to finish for work, and there were only two slides remaining to do. So engrossed was he that he didn't sense the presence behind him.

No footfalls, no breath, not even a heartbeat. Nothing to alert him to the danger that crept up behind him until it stood right behind his chair, reading over his shoulder.

'It' was Tenebra. Relatively newborn, under my tutelage, and the bane of my enduring existence. Would that I had thought twice before offering my wrist to the little brat! Not for him the cold, calculating kill. Oh no, Tenebra likes to play with his meals before he--

My dear Professor Hamilton, you are most certainly not to my taste, so allow yourself to relax. I am not here to feed; merely to talk. My dinner tonight will come from the streets, not from your throat. Shall I continue?

Ah yes. Tenebra. The brat prince, or so he likes to call himself. Beautiful, and well-aware of that fact, he toys with his food like a kitten. Hm, no. Like a cat. It... interests him, I suppose. Nothing more.

On this night, though, he did not dine on the father. Not yet. No, his attention turned to the bedroom, where the sweet young wife lay fast asleep. Through the door he slithered, making no sound. Like smoke, he calls it. Trickery, to give it its proper term.

She was, no doubt, a tender meal. Her skin was soft, still scented from her evening bath and her husband's goodnight kiss. Perhaps Tenebra scented him on her; who knows? He fed deeply, taking every drop from her slender body until he let her fall with a thump to the floor.

The husband heard that sound, distracted from his work. Leaving the laptop open, he got to his feet to investigate. A draught ghosted past him as he opened the bedroom door - little did he know what had brushed so close - and he beheld a sight that no man should see.

Ah, but Tenebra was not done. He moved to the other bedroom, much smaller in size, where a much smaller meal awaited. And this, my good man, is where you cringe, I see.

For a mortal, blood is blood. But, for a vampire, there are as many flavours and tastes of blood as there are wines for the human palate. The blood of a child... ah! There is nothing more powerful.

Tenebra only saw what every other sanguisuge sees in a child: a body full of vitality and youth. It is the richest meal of all; champagne and caviar to our kind. Would he pass by such an opportunity? Would I?

I might, in truth. But the brat prince would not. To his credit, he left the boy undefiled, still looking for all the world as if he slumbered in the careless and trusting pose of sleepy young children the world over. A special treat, he later informed me, for the father to find.

We return to that man; the husband who found his beloved young wife dead on the bedroom floor. At first he thought she had fainted, but her skin was already cooling, bereft of the blood that kept it warm, and then he saw the two ragged marks on her throat.

He had heard whispers, as had everyone else in that town. He had read newspaper reports of vagrants found exsanguinated. The local police had urged people not to go out alone at night, and to keep their doors locked. But his door had been locked!

As he cradled her body, his tears falling into her hair, the utter silence of the house suddenly crept past his grief. There was no sound of wind or rain, no creaks from the old wooden floorboards; the house had no breath and no heartbeat.

He ran into his son's room, and a moment later the house had a sound: a visceral howl of anguish and pain as the father sank to his knees by his little boy's bed. His world, his life, his loves; torn from him in a matter of minutes.

Your cup of tea is getting cold, Professor Hamilton. Would you like to pause for a moment?

I saw it all. From the shadows of his garden trees I watched him. Tall and slender and pale as a silver birch tree, he stood by the pathetic mound of earth as if his vigil would bring his wife and child rising up through it and into his arms. His body sagged over the shovel as a harsh sob shook him. Such was the pain that Tenebra had inflicted on him that it made me recoil when he had gleefully recounted it to me.

And now, here in the chilly autumn night I was seeing it for myself. The man howled in anguish like a mortally wounded wolf, sinking onto his haunches. My preternatural vision caught a swift, blurred movement, as Tenebra fell upon him: an avenging angel, digging his fangs deep into that pale neck. The man cried out, raising his arms, welcoming sweet death.

Ah, but sweetness is not Tenebra's speciality. He released the man, watching him slump to the ground. I knew he would be feeling quite ill fairly soon; a surfeit of blood is to a vampire what overeating during the holidays is to a mortal. I could sense Tenebra's uneasiness as he crouched over the man, and then... he surprised me.

"Up with you," he hissed, hooking the man's arm around his shoulder and hauling him up. To my surprise, he hadn't finished his meal. The man was still alive! Well, for any given definition of the word, I suppose. 'Mostly dead' would probably be closer.

Our kind have, as you might assume, preternatural strength. However, Tenebra had over-indulged and was feeling as weak as he might had he not fed at all. It took him some considerable time to drag the man to the underground halls and passages that we call our home, and all the time the man's life was ebbing slowly away. It would have been kinder to have snatched him from Tenebra's grasp and finished him off, but I am afraid curiosity is what drives me. I wanted to see what the bratling had planned for his victim.

At last, he laid the man down, cradled in his lap in a cruel echo of the husband's earlier last loving touch for his wife. Then, with a tender smile I have rarely since seen grace his lips, he tore into his own wrist and held it over his victim's mouth.

One rich, red drop after another spattered the man's ashen lips until his eyes fluttered open. Tenebra sat quietly, his own lips parted in anticipation, and I realised that I was holding a breath that I no longer even had.

I could see the man's eyes clearly, his dark gaze fixed upon the steady trickle of blood. His tongue ventured a tentative sweep of his lips and… oh! How his eyes blazed as he tasted it! I was torn between watching him as he began to experience the hunger that would soon claim him every night of his eternal existence, and watching Tenebra.

Tenebra… my own newborn, sat on the cold stone and bringing his wrist lower, sliding a paternal hand beneath the man's neck, supporting him as his lips locked onto his new sire's wrist with a severity that made me groan softly.

The man's eyes were burning, raging with the thirst that only a vampire can understand. Tenebra was struggling. He was new-made himself, and risked all in making another. His inexperience almost finished him, and he cursed as he finally freed himself, scrambling backwards as the man lunged after him with a roar of need and then slumped back down, the last of his mortal energy spent.

I emerged, then, from my hiding place, and walked over to Tenebra. He was crouched on the floor, panting, fascinated by the man's mortal death. At my approach, he looked up at me, grinning like a maniac.

"And you made it sound so sacred!" he mocked.

I looked at the man, watched the last living breaths sigh from his body. "It is," I said, in despair, as he finally lay still. "You killed his wife and child, why could you not have dispatched him after them?"

"Because this way it's fun," he hissed.

He got to his feet, this small, wiry knot of petulance that I loved so much, and we watched the man, waiting for the bloom of silence that denoted his soul departing his body.

"You are newborn yourself," I murmured. "What can you teach him of our ways, you that know so little yourself? Have you listened to me about anything?"

"Oh, dear Valois," he purred. "I didn't do it for me. I got so sick of your whining that aaaall you ever waaaanted was a life compaaaanion. Because I am so not that, right? Made a big mistake with me, didn't you? Thought I'd be around for the rest of your eternal existence? Well think again."

I sighed. "You prove, with those words, how little you listen. You are tied to me, in ways you cannot even comprehend. You cannot simply walk away."

"You wanted a companion," he spat. "Now you have one. Let me go!"

And, with that, he turned on his heel and stomped off to his rooms, leaving me alone with his newest plaything: a man whose life he had torn away in every conceivable manner. I stood and watched Tenebra leave and then looked down at his fledge. A moment later, I sensed that soft implosion of silence. All spirit had flown. The man was truly dead; nothing left but his shell. Now the vampire could take over.

It would take time, but I have all eternity, so I sat down and waited. Maybe he would be worth it.