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There hadn’t been much time to think before she tied the noose of phone wire around her neck.
If she had time to think, perhaps she wouldn’t have done it at all.
The cord dug into the flesh of her neck, but she’d barely felt it, her body going so numb that she collapsed on her knees.
Her whole life Hetty had felt a certain kind of ache.
It was a light ache in her heart that lingered only until the cord tightened.
The only ache left, being that of her lungs.
It’s a sensation that’s hard to express into words, the cutting off of oxygen at your own hand.
Inflicting that amount of pain, that in the same moment becomes a relief.
That first breath after death.
That was the relief.
Hetty Woodstone was not ignorant to what she had done.
When she saw her lifeless body at her own feet, the entrance of the police coming in a wave around her, one kneeling, checking her pulse, Hetty was well aware that she was a ghost.
She’d always believed in that sort of thing.
What she couldn’t be sure of was what to expect next.
Her body was quickly delt with. Swept away before her son could even see it.
The weight of what she had done, and disgrace behind it, was evident.
Her son was advised to keep a low profile on the events that had unraveled, having to pay off the police a pretty penny to keep it out of the papers.
Hetty watched him hand them a check and usher them out of the front door.
Her funeral was brief, private, and uneventful.
She stood beside the closed casket herself. Her son was the only one to have wept, softly at her side.
He had apparently barred anyone else from coming, or perhaps none came.
However, she found that hard to believe, due to the fact most the women she’d known would have been flitting around the room looking for clues to the rumors they’d be starting immediately thereafter.
Perhaps this explained their absence, because rumors, she knew would be ardently kept out of circulation.
Though that was impossible, and the excuses the minister would rattle off at her funeral were clear triggers to such things as rumors.
Words spoken of her “troubled spirit finally finding solace from a burden her mortal mind could no longer carry.”
Those who asked about Hetty’s death were quickly fed a line of “found already deceased, having suffered an unexposed illness of the mind.”
Was he telling them she’d gone insane without saying it?
The funeral was short, but hardly sweet. Hetty couldn’t have been more depleted by it.
Taking her life was the one thing she had seen as in her control.
But the aftermath was completely out of her hands, more so even then her life had been.
Without much else to fret, Hetty fretted of where her body might have been buried.
This was one item that had not been discussed in the mansion, but must have been handled outside of its walls.
Though she had been present for her son’s phone calls, only having heard his end of the conversations.
By this, she only knew her gravestone would have no trace of who she’d been other than she’d existed.
Her name, date of birth, and date of death.
She felt that was undignified.
She knew so was her death.
Still, did that make her anything less than a mother? A daughter? Even, a wife?
Anything at all?
And now, her existence was even blanker than the plaque that would mark her remains.
She spoke not a word; there was no one who could hear it.
She sat watching her son grieve alone in the big house, excusing all the help from their positions, leaving it empty, and eventually, his absence would come with it.
He’d gone out of town.
He’d escaped the cold dark shell of a mansion that was once brimming with noise, hustle, and fortune.
But Hetty could not.
The windows were drawn for so long, that she did eventually wonder outside, out of the shadows of her empty rooms.
In doors it had felt like winter.
Outside, the trees were still full of green life, the sun beating down on them.
The fields of her home’s lot spread wide, but there were no headstones.
She must have been buried in the cemetery after all.
That was at least some degree of less resentment.
Taking her stroll around the property, Hetty became slowly fascinated by the life of birds and small bugs.
The sort of new found admiration for such delignate life that as a living she had always taken for granted.
A sider spinning a web on a tree branch would have once caused her to squeal and shout for the help to come and squash it.
Now though, she watched it closely, seeing it not as a pest, but as a living creature experiencing what she no longer would.
The warmth of day light shimmering off the web, the relief of a cool breeze that rattles the branch just slightly.
Another pass time she’d come accustom to was passing her hand though things.
At first it was surreal.
Seeing her fingers, which looked to her as solid as they had in life, slip through objects that had once been held firmly.
And soon, it became almost therapeutic. She’d find herself doing it for hours, just grazing the surrounding she could no longer interact with.
Even though she was alone in this cold dark hell she’d inflicted upon herself, the only true Peace Hetty found was in sleep.
She couldn’t be sure if as a ghost she actually needed it.
But as Hetty Woodstone she certainly did.
Even though there was the peace in sleep, waking to the grief quickly became the harder part of her long days.
She’d experienced it full fold and more than once.
Perhaps this would be her full afterlife. There never-ending cycle of grieving herself.
Most often came denial, like trying to speak to her son on his arrival home from his far too long trip, during which she had worried and wondered about his wellbeing.
Also frequent was bargaining. Yes, she had tried it.
“Dear God, if you are there,” she kneeled at her bed, “know that I am ashamed of what I have done. I repent. Please, stop punishing me.”
Which led into depression, during which Hetty would spend days crying, weeping, and eventually anger would come from that.
Hetty had never expressed herself in life.
If there were tears, they were hidden and they were quickly repressed.
After all, she was wearing coats of makeup, that of which had to look presentable.
Even joy was kept on a level that was light hearted, and not too boisterous.
And anger, Hetty had trained herself well in life to bottle that up.
The only time she’d allowed it to bubble over, truly, without it just being annoyance or slighted frustration, was when she had pulled that cord around her neck in her last moments.
But now, alone, and invisible, Hetty realized for the first time that she could roar.
She could shout.
She could have inflicted some damage had her body not prevented her from making contact with anything.
As for acceptance, would it ever come?
Death had proved not to be an escape at all, but instead a trap.
Regaining her posture from time to time, Hetty walked the halls, as she imagined this was what a ghost does do.
She never wondered past the corridors she dwelled in as a living. There was no interest to her in places such as the helps quarters, or the attic, or basement.
Honestly, she never even entered the kitchen or the toilets anymore.
What reason did she have for those?
When he was home, she stuck close to her son, following him, watching him, like some helpless hopeless pet.
Eventually she stopped praying.
But she never stopped trying to be heard.
And finally, one day, she was heard.
Hetty had been throwing one of her tantrums.
She was crying, hollering at the heavens, grieving for her lonesome lifelessness.
Making noise as much as possible.
The noise echoed down through the vents.
The basement ghosts covered their ears, complaining to one another about this new Ghost upstairs that frustrated their happy silence since the disappearances of the ghosts before her.
Not far from where the basement ghosts stood, Sasappis perked up, “There it is again!”
“Well, man lead the way,” Isaac complained in the dark, “Where there’s a voice, there must be salvation!”
“Thor cannot see anything,” Thorfinn complained from between them.
“None us can buddy, but I think I can finally get us out of here,” Sas promised.
Hand in hand the three men marched towards the shrill shrieks of grief Hetty howled.
Until they broke out of the dirt and into the basement.
“It’s the basement ghosts!” Sas was relieved as he announced the fact, to let go of Thor’s much too tight grip.
“I never thought I’d say this,” Isaac told the muddled huddle of ill-gotten ghosts, “You’re a sore sight for sore eyes.”
Thor scooped one up in a tight embrace.
“Put me down.”
“Long as you lot are back,” Nancy complained, “Will you go up there and calm whoever this new ghost is down?”
“Well, who is it?” Isaac asked.
“We don’t know,” Nancy groaned, “We don’t go up there!”
“Come on guys,” Sas once again led the way, but when Thor went for his hand, he kept it safe from the iron grip by pulling away.
Hetty was stomping, growling, wailing.
She had no breath, and yet she felt herself gasping for it.
How was this always as if she was reliving her death?
She held her throat, her voice raw, her eyes still watering.
Closing them she looked up at the ceiling, for she no longer referred to it as the heavens, and she let out one more stricken shout before she heard her name.
“Hetty Woodstone?”
For the first time since she’d taken her own life, Hetty felt a tinge of fear.
She hadn’t been afraid of her plight. She had been grieved by it.
But hearing someone say her name after so long, felt frightening.
These three odd shaped men from different eras then her own, or even each-others, were watching her have her meltdown.
How utterly embarrassing.
“What happened to you?” Sasappis asked her.
Hetty wiped her tears from her cheeks with open palms, “What are you doing in my house?”
“We’ve been here since before you built it,” Sas told her, matter-of-factly.
“Where then, have you been all this time?” Hetty found herself demanding.
Far more important than the embarrassment and shock of being seen and heard, Hetty found herself no longer alone. And that was something she found unexpectedly uplifting.
Thor had a smile, so big on his face, and tears in his eyes, “Lost in dirt. Hetty’s voice save us all.”
He approached her, arms open, and Hetty retreated backwards, so fast and so far, that she fell through the wall behind her.
With a thump she hit the ground outside of her house, and three heads poked out to look down at her.
“Are you okay?” Isaac shouted down.
“No,” Hetty lay flat looking up at them.
“Hold on, Thor come down,” he and the others vanished back into the wall.
Hetty, though she had an urge to get up and run away, went instead with the urge to stay laying there in the grass she couldn’t feel.
Cruel punishment that she had felt the hard thud of landing on it.
The other three ghosts arrived promptly.
Isaac helped her to her feet.
“We heard you” he explained, “And you led us back to the mansion. We’ve been in there for years it seems.”
“How? Why?”
“It’s a long story,” Sas dismissed, “More important, Hetty, what happened to you?”
Hetty sighed, giving the three men a hard look. She conformed to their kind for most her life.
After her husband’s disappearance, when she’d finally had most the say, she came more accustom to holding her own, and now was the time to make sure she kept that status.
“I’ve become rather accustomed here to being alone, so if you three wouldn’t mind,” she turned away. Though being alone was the last thing she truly wanted.
Shutting them out seemed to be the safest resolve.
“You haven’t been alone,” Isaac assured her. “This place is buzzing with us ghosts.”
“You haven’t met Nigel?” Sas asked her.
“Whom?” Hetty didn’t change her position, facing away from the three of them, hoping not to invite anymore questions about herself.
“The red coats,” Isaac was dismissive now, but his tone was also heavy, “They reside on property, but we have claimed the mansion and they stay at the stables.”
“And basement ghosts,” Thor added.
“The result of a Cholera pit,” Sas explained.
Hetty’s nose twitched at the thought of a such a pit being established in her basement, “They were there the whole time?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” Hetty felt herself form a well performed grimace, stuffing in the disappointment of missing the opportunity to have had company in her misery, “I’m certainly grateful I never came across them,” she claimed.
“Hetty,” Isaac stepped up, forcing Hetty to face him again, “Let me escort you across the property. I can give you a tour.”
“Of my own property?”
“Of your new existence.”
“As long you don’t pester me with questions,” she took his arm as he offered it.
Sas gave Thor a pat on his large back as they watched the two walk away, “Don’t worry man, she’s going to be around for eternity.”
“Thor wish Hetty would have noticed Thor, really noticed Thor.”
“I know,” Sas looked down as Thor offered his hand.
“Hold Thor hand,” he demanded lightly.
“Oh, okay,” Sas sighed, letting Thor squeeze his hand in a vice grip.