This is the title of a short story written by Stephen King and published in his Night Shift collection. This melancholy tale bears no elements of the horror and supernatural genre that have made the author so famous, but stands on its own merits as another example of his ability not merely as a horror writer, but as a storyteller. Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author best known for horror novels. ... Night Shift (1978) is the first collection of short stories by Stephen King. ... Melancholia (Greek μελαγχολια) was described as a distinct disease as early as the fifth and fourth centuries BC in the Hippocratic writings. ... Horror can mean several things: Horror (emotion) Horror fiction Horror film This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The supernatural (Latin: super- exceeding + nature) comprises forces and phenomena which are beyond the realm of current scientific understanding, and which may actually directly contradict conventional scientific understandings. ...

It is written from the perspective of a man burdened with deep guilt and regret after discovering that his estranged sister has commited suicide. He recounts one fateful day long ago when the two were children playing in their family's barn. They had a game where they would take turns climb to the top of a very tall ladder in the barn, and jump off into a huge haystack. On his sister's turn, when she was nearly to the top, the old, rickety ladder suddenly gave way, leaving her dangling desperately to the titular ladder's last rung. He manages to pile enough hay under her to break her fall and save her life, but is later astonished at her complete trust and faith in him to protect her. He tells of how the intervening years were not kind to her, and how he was too wrapped up in his own affairs to come to her when she needed him. The story ends as he reads the final letter she had written to him a couple weeks before she jumped off a building to her death. One that, had he gotten sooner, would have made him realize how desperately she needed him to save her again. This page concerns suicide. ...