Clicking red heels — Context and Discussion

The Two Kinds of Fear as Structural Frame

The story's opening paragraph establishes a taxonomy of fear that the plot systematically tests. Ernst writes of fear of the known—'terror of death or disease or accident'—and then of the unknown, 'the horror that freezes your brain.' This framework is not merely rhetorical; it maps directly onto Gruin's arc. Initially he fears exposure for murder, a known consequence. But as the clicking persists and his grandfather hears it too, Gruin crosses into the second category: 'fear of the unknown.' The narrator underlines this shift when Gruin realizes the sound is real, concluding 'the cause of the sound must be there too.' The structure thus promises a rational explanation that never arrives, forcing the reader to inhabit Gruin's escalating dread.

Diction of the Body and the Inanimate

Ernst's word choices consistently blur the line between living flesh and dead object. Maria José is described through her father's trade: he 'cut and stitched leather in the repair of shoes.' Her own body is rendered as a series of sculptural fragments—'great black eyes,' 'perfect, dainty oval of a face,' 'tiny feet.' The red heels themselves are personified: they 'danced' and 'clicked' with 'a sort of gay, mad rhythm.' After Maria's death, the heels become an autonomous force, 'twinkling unseen' beside Gruin. The narrator uses the verb 'escorting' to describe Gruin's relation to the dead girl, as though she were a social companion. This diction transforms a murder weapon—the car crash—into a perpetual, intimate haunting.

The Curse as Narrative Engine

Maria's father José delivers a curse that becomes the story's central mechanism: 'She will be with you always, beside you, walking when you walk, stopping when you stop.' The phrasing is rhythmic and repetitive, mirroring the heel taps it describes. Ernst embeds this curse in the text twice—once in José's voice, once in Gruin's memory—and each recurrence tightens the noose. The curse's specificity allows Ernst to build suspense through small variations: Gruin tries to outpace the sound by lengthening his stride, but 'no matter how he walked, the unseen little heels beside him clicked in even pace.' The curse also explains why others can hear the clicking: it is not a subjective delusion but an objective haunting, which Gruin's grandfather and psychiatrist both perceive.

Setting as Psychological Amplifier

Ernst uses New York locations to externalize Gruin's internal state. The story moves from a night club where Maria danced 'professionally, in twinkling white satin pumps with red heels' to a dingy basement shoe shop on Eighth Avenue, then to a cliff where the murder occurs. The final scenes take place at the crash site, now fortified with a 'concrete wall, hastily erected after the accident.' This wall, meant to prevent further deaths, becomes a symbol of Gruin's futile attempt to wall off guilt. The city streets themselves become a stage for his madness: 'people turning to look curiously after him' as he shortens and lengthens his step. The setting never offers refuge; even the library, where his grandfather sits reading, becomes a site of revelation when the old man hears the clicking.

Readers attentive to sound will notice how Ernst uses the heel clicks as a rhythmic device that structures the prose itself—short, staccato sentences often mimic the taps. The story rewards close attention to its opening taxonomy of fear, which Gruin exhausts by the final page. Because the excerpts end before the resolution, the reader is left with the question of whether the concrete wall or Gruin's own mind will give way first.

That clicking in Ernst’s story brought back a summer when every stair creak felt personal, a rhythm I couldn’t shake. I remember finishing it and just sitting still, the room too quiet. The sea girl — Story, Setting & Ideas gave me that same ache—something following, not seen, but felt between heartbeats. Both left me listening for echoes long after the page went cold.