“The Tower” takes place near Florence, Italy in the 1950s. Caroline—a young, recently married Englishwoman—is driving around the Italian countryside. This is her first solo trip, as she is usually accompanied by her husband Neville. As a member of the British Council, Neville has a keen interest in Italian art and culture, and Caroline is hoping to impress him with her tale of today’s cultural excursion. Using an Italian guidebook, Caroline has managed to see several cultural landmarks and is hoping to add one more to the list. In the present, she reads an entry about the Tower of Sacrifice, built in 1535 by Niccolo di Ferramano, which houses 470 steps. The village surrounding the tower was destroyed in 1549, leaving it the sole building in a desolate landscape.
While debating whether she has time to see the tower, Caroline is struck by the name Niccolo di Ferramano. It brings to mind a portrait of a man with dark eyes set in a thin white face. After a moment, she remembers where she has seen this portrait, and slips into a flashback. Since coming to Florence, Neville has taken Caroline to many obscure private galleries, wanting to show off his knowledge of Italian culture. In one such gallery, Caroline is feigning interest in Neville’s latest “dissertation” when a portrait of a young woman catches her eye. The woman is Giovanna di Ferramano, who—Caroline is shocked to discover—was married and dead by the age of 18. The portrait beside hers contains the pale, dark-eyed man that triggered this memory; it is labeled Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman. Neville tells Caroline this is Giovanna’s husband, Niccolo, whose family will no longer speak his name due to his alleged dealings with the occult. Caroline says she does not like him; moving back to Giovanna’s portrait, Neville remarks that the young dead woman looks a bit like Caroline.
Back in the present, Caroline decides she has enough time to visit the tower. An urgent voice in her head tells her to return to Florence for the sake of safety, but she disregards it. The tower is built of red brick, with narrow slits for windows and a platform encircling the top. She enters the tower and begins to climb the staircase, counting the steps as she goes. The staircase spirals up toward a circle of sky, protected on the inside by only a rusty railing that eventually disappears altogether. Several times, Caroline debates going down, but she convinces herself each time to keep climbing. Reaching the top, Caroline steps out onto the narrow platform that surrounds the tower, where she has the sudden impulse to hurl herself toward the ground. She steps back inside the tower to find the steps leading down into utter darkness; she screams that she cannot go down.
For some time, Caroline remains immobile, the voice in her head repeatedly telling her that the only way down is to jump. When she finally steels herself and begins the descent, she only makes it two steps before collapsing back into terrified paralysis. She sits down and makes it down several more stairs before trying to stand again. Something brushes against her face—likely a bat—and frightens her into movement. Quickly, she descends the dark tower, scraping her hand bloody along the wall, counting steps all the while, “knowing nothing but fear.” The story ends as she counts the 504th step.
