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You know the picture: the draped, pallid figure with blazing eyes and crimson lips posing majestically on an ancient, crumbling stairway that somehow represents all human possibilities, our deepest hopes and fears. Capable of bestowing death or granting eternal life, the vampire can lead us up the stairs to a transcendent superhuman reality, or (as Poe might have put it) down, down, inexorably down to our basest instincts and animal desires. In the mirror the vampire reflects nothing, yet in reality it reflects everything. Sometimes the creature spreads its cape in a reflexive gesture, assuming a stance that is both savior and destroyer. It is on staircases that vampires condescend to mingle with mortals, on staircases that they greet and seduce their victims, dispatch their enemies, descend to commune with the lower realms, the better to entice us with the promise of a higher consciousness and destiny.