The cliff towered over the horseshoe harbour and was scarred as though the claw of an enormous prehistoric creature had ravaged its countenance; the green and brown stains that ran down surface of the jagged rock bled into the water. Carved out of the middle of the cliff face was a cave large enough to stand and the cyclops cliff, with its singular black eye, peered menacingly over the harbour below as twilight descended each night.
At the top of the cliff, a lone house perched on its edge: painted pale peach with fourteen tall windows, each had their light blue shutters closed. A girl waited in a rowboat at the base of the cliff. She hoped it would not be long before you arrived. Surely, she had thought, the closed shutters were an indicator that you were on your way. The sun had already begun to set outside the harbour, but the humid summer heat had not yet eased. The light changed quickly and the scars in the cliff grew grey and black and the shadows in the small cave darkened further, accentuating its grotesque expression.
The girl shivered and checked her watch. You were late. You were usually late, but you were later than usual. The girl shifted her weight and the boat rocked awkwardly; she quickly steadied it with the oars and sighed.
There was a sudden illumination of faint lights on the narrow steps that led up the cliff to the house and cast long shadows along the cliff and spread a cancerous blackness across its face. Even the smallest of crevasses developed a deepness of a thousand screaming mouths.
Where are you? the girl thought.
The girl had waited far longer than she should, but she persisted.
Above, the shutters on one of the windows flung open. The girl in the rowboat strained to see the figure in the window. It could be you. But the girl was not sure. The figure sat at the edge of the window and leaned out slightly. The girl stared at it, trying to discern the slightest clue – a mannerism or pose – that it was, in fact, you.
The girl searched the ghost shadow of the house and searched the blackened water of the harbour and searched her soul. The girl knew she should take up the oars and row away. She should not return to the harbour – to the base of the cliff – to the house. But the girl did not take up the oars. The girl willed you to come down the treacherous, moss-covered rocky steps. And as she willed you to come down, a light from above caught her eye – a light in the window where the figure was still sitting. The girl watched the figure and leaned back in the boat to get a better look, but it was not far enough. The girl moved nearer the edge of the boat and strained her neck just in time to see the silhouette of the figure disappear into the room, leaving a gaping white hole in house.
The girl waited, paralysed, her body merged with the rowboat in gloaming of the harbour; she only moved to grasp the oars when she caught sight of the shutters closing and the house was shrouded in darkness.
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The Gold Shoe Writer 