Caroline is visiting the Tuscan countryside whilst her husband is working in Florence. It’s the end of the day, and she comes to a tower. Her guidebook says that this is the “Tower of Sacrifice” and that it was left intact after the destruction of the village because of superstition. She decides to climb the tower, 470 steps. At the top is a small platform. She suddenly feels that the only way down is to drop from the platform. She is able to get back in the tower, sits on the steps and slides down them. One, two, three and on. The story ends when Caroline is counting… five hundred and one, five hundred and two, … Spooky
“She was on a narrow stone platform about a yard wide. It seemed to encircle the tower. The platform sloped downwards away from the tower and its stones were smooth and very shiny. And this was all she noticed before she looked beyond the stones and down. She was immeasurably, unbelievably high and alone. And the ground below was a world away. It was not credible, not possible, that she should be so far from the ground.
All her being was suddenly absorbed in the single impulse to hurl herself from the sloping platform. ‘I cannot go down any other way,’ she said and then she heard what she said and stepped back, frenziedly clutching the soft rotten wood of the doorway with hands sodden with sweat.
“There is no other way,’ said the voice in her brain, ‘there is no other way.”