Molly and Michael’s Mom, their stepdad Dave and his daughter Heather are moving out of Baltimore. The parents are artists—she a painted, he a sculptor—and the idea of living in the country is appealing for many reasons. They found a lovely house complete with nice visual appeal, large grounds, an outbuilding for supplies and workspace, and … a graveyard. The house used to be a church, and so the graveyard remains.
Molly is suspicious of that area immediately, dreading the place for possible ghosts—a belief that perhaps betrays a deeper dread of death. Her brother is a much more scientifically minded sort, who loves to capture and catalog insects; the nearby woods and marsh offer a wealth of opportunity for him to find new specimens. Unfortunately, the house has no real opportunities for Molly and even less for her new sister.
Heather’s mom died in a fire when Heather was three, and in the five years since she has formed a strong bond with her father. This new wife, these new children … they are threats to the security Heather formed, and she lashes out at them. Refuses to give them a chance and tries to turn her father against them at every opportunity. He, being a loving dad, sees only her hurt feelings and often takes her side over that of his new, adopted children. So, when Molly and Michael are put in charge of her because they are older? Well, that’s the last straw. At least until Heather makes a mysterious, invisible friend in the graveyard. Someone called Helen, who might be related to a strange headstone that bears only the initials H. E. H. and dates—as coincidence would have it, the grave belongs to a child just about Heather’s age.
Well, that invisible friend becomes a tool for Heather, a device she can use to taunt her new, unwanted siblings and to threaten them. The more she doesn’t like her step-brother and step-sister, the more she promises they will pay when her friend comes. It’s kind of a sad joke in Michael’s eyes. However, the more Molly learns about the graveyard, the occupant of that lonesome grave, and the reputation the place has for both ghost sightings as well as kids who drown in the pool outside a ruined home tucked not far away in the woods, the more she begins to wonder at the truth of Heather’s friend and the looming threat.
Is this invisible friend an honest-to-goodness ghost? Or is she a manifestation of Heather’s own guilts for some dark secret from her past? What will happen when she comes—will she kill Molly, Michael, and their mother as Heather says? And if this is all for real, how can Molly hope to stop it?
Does the graveyard’s kindly caretaker, Mr. Simmons, or the town’s librarian hold the secret to unlocking this mystery? Or must Molly make a great sacrifice to save her family? Mary Downing Hahn weaves the new familial troubles, dark pasts, and a haunting together in the chilling and thoughtful middle grade supernatural suspense novel, Wait Till Helen Comes.
First released in 1986, Wait Till Helen Comes has won awards, gone through numerous reprints, seen adaptation into a graphic novel, and even a feature film adaptation in 2016. It has also faced challenges aplenty from parents who prefer not to see such a book in school libraries.
Where do the challenges stem from? Well, it has zero sexual content. Instead, it takes an unflinching and honest approach to both guilt and the concept of death. As well, it features scenes of children being manipulated into suicidal situations. The ghostly Helen is lonely, you see, and she shares a similar sense of guilt with young Heather. They form a bond and a dark friendship that ultimately puts Heather in jeopardy. There are a few unearthed skeletons that show up in the latter half, driving home the concept of mortality. This stuff is played straight and cold, taking an honestly unsettling approach to the material. That seriousness is the sort of thing that troubles some parents (and more importantly, parent advocate groups which may be composed of people without their own kids) who assume children won’t learn about such things if they don’t read accounts of them. In a slice of delicious irony, the book features a funeral scene attended by Heather, Molly and Michael where some adults opine that children shouldn’t be allowed to attend such morbid things because they should be allowed their innocence for as long as possible. That is undoubtedly Hahn’s former career as a librarian and her awareness of the spurious logic behind book challenges showing up in the prose. Aside from the chilling ghost story and the hot blooded tale of step-sibling rivalry, Wait Till Helen Comes is a viable conversation starter of a book, one that won’t be right for every kid but nevertheless has a place in middle grade school libraries.
Hahn’s prose is clear and enjoyably readable stuff, the sentences and paragraphs on the shorter side to encourage compulsive reading. The emotional honesty is there, and the authentic frustration Molly feels is easy to empathize with. As with The Old Willis Place, we looked at last year, Wait Till Helen Comes employs a first person, teen girl’s perspective. Heather is initially painted as an insufferable character, but as Molly spends more time around her, the truth becomes far more complex—Heather is a troubled girl, but she’s not a one-dimensional brat or evil child. Not even the Helen ghost, supposedly responsible for several children’s deaths over the years, is one dimensional evil. They do terrible things, but once we understand who they are, we can also understand where such behavior comes from. The threat is there, however, and the stakes are never illusory.
For a sample of Hahn’s ability to blend real grounded relationships with a touch of the creepier side, one need look no further than the scene where Molly first learns of Heather’s strange new friend:
One hot afternoon, I went outside looking for something to do. The air was hot and heavy with humidity, and I decided to walk down by the creek, maybe wade or something, just to cool off. Leaving my book on the bank, I splashed through the water without realizing how close I was getting to the graveyard. When I looked up and saw the tombstones above me, I hesitated, thinking I’d turn back in the direction of the cows.
Then I heard a voice. Was it Heather’s? The breeze swirled the leaves, the creek chattered over stones, birds sang, insects chirped and buzzed, making it impossible to be sure who was speaking. Uneasily, I climbed the bank and tiptoed down the path beside the graveyard.
Wait Till Helen Comes, Location 439
Right there in the opening we have a hint of the darkness to come. Restlessness seems to have attracted discomfort and a yearning for release from both qualities leads to the place of growing anxiety for Molly.
I found Heather sitting in the shade staring at the small tombstone under the oak tree. On the grave, she had placed a peanut butter jar filled with black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace. As I watched, scarcely daring to breathe, she said something in a voice too low for me to hear, her hands flashing in the shadows as she gestured nervously.
Then she sat back, her mouth half-open, her eyes half-closed, nodding her head as if she were in a trance. All around me the leaves rustled, and I shivered, sure that the noise they made was hiding words from me that were audible to Heather. Convinced that she was in danger, I leaned toward her, peering through a tangle of honeysuckle, wondering what I should do.
“Oh, Helen,” Heather said suddenly, her voice louder. “Will you really be my friend? I’ll do anything you say—I promise I will—if you’ll be my friend.”
Wait Till Helen Comes, Location 444
Here is where the uncanny begins to creep into the ordinary. The voyeurism of a ritualistic behavior could come right out of any folk horror story. And there in the final section we get the name Helen first uttered along with a pact that seems innocent at first brush but resonates with an unsettling quality when we wonder what this Helen has asked for and what she will ask for.
Again she was silent, her head tilted to one side, a smile twitching the comers of her mouth. The breeze blew again, making a dry sound, a whispering, and Heather nodded. “I’ll wait for you, Helen. When you come, I’ll be the best friend you ever had, cross my heart.”
As she leaned forward to rearrange the flowers, I gripped the fence and called to her. “What are you doing, Heather? Who are you talking to?”
She leaped to her feet, her face pale and angry. “Molly!” she screamed, “Go away! Go away!”
“Not until you tell me what you’re doing!” I shivered as the breeze gusted through the honeysuckle, filling the air with sweetness. Something hung in the space between us. For a moment, I felt it watching me. Then it was gone, and all around me the insects struck up a chorus of cheerful summer sounds.
Wait Till Helen Comes, Location 451
Even nature itself seems to be trying to drown out Molly’s question. Are the insect sounds just a normal event or the hint of the otherworldly?
“I don’t have to tell you anything.” Heather’s narrow face was almost expressionless, masklike, as if it hid secrets, terrible secrets.
“You were talking to someone. I heard you. You called her Helen.”
Without looking at me, Heather took a flower from the jar. Pulling a petal off, she dropped it and watched it flutter down to the grave. “You didn’t see anybody. Or even hear anybody, did you?” She glanced at me, her tangled hair almost hiding her eyes.
“There was something,” I insisted. “I know there was.”
Heather shook her head and continued pulling the petals off, one by one. She watched them as they drifted with the breeze down to the earth. “Don’t spy on me anymore, Molly,” she said softly. “I don’t like to be spied on.”
Wait Till Helen Comes, Location 457
The threat evident in seeing what was not meant to be seen, whether penetrating the veil between the mundane and the supernatural or the more everyday act of spying carries an implicit danger. Heather does not need to make fist or voice promises of doom when she’s visually dismembering innocent plants as an implied consequence for Molly’s looking where she ought not.
“You better come out from under that tree,” I yelled. “You heard what Mr. Simmons said about snakes and poison ivy.”
“I’ll stay here as long as I want.” Heather finished stripping the flower of its petals and bent to pick up another one. “If you want me, you’ll have to come here and get me,” she said.
A ray of sunlight lanced down through the oak’s leaves and touched the jar of flowers, and from somewhere in the branches overhead a crow cawed. Folding my arms tightly across my chest, I backed away from the graveyard. “Get bitten by a snake,” I said as I began walking back toward the church. “See if I care!”
The only answer was the rustling of leaves and a faint sound of laughter. Without looking back, I quickened my pace, anxious to get away from Heather and whatever else might be lingering under that tree.
Wait Till Helen Comes, Location 464
The natural warnings take on uncanny dimensions when accompanied by the laughter in the trees. The sunshine is far from pleasant here, where rays fall upon and illuminate an air tight container filled with dismembered bodies—flowers, of course—a vessel that shares echoes with a killing jar. Molly’s off-the-cuff rebuttal therefore has no teeth—how could Heather get bitten by snakes when it seems that all of nature’s creatures are siding with her?
The relationship between these stepsisters initially seems to be the real meat of the scene. Their dialogue certainly drives things nicely. However, the underlying details show how steeped in this uncanny otherworld Heather truly is, and it makes a dialogue sequence all the more unsettling.
Mary Downing Hahn’s middle grade novel Wait Till Helen Comes is an intoxicating mix of gothic horror elements with a new family’s efforts to find their way through a patch of disfunction. The book does a fine job of balancing hope and horror, spinning a yarn that will have the kiddies turning the pages to find out what happens while also employing some subtle but sophisticated storytelling tools for conveying deeper resonance. A solid read.
#
Wait Till Helen Comes is available in paperback, hardcover, eBook, and audiobook editions.
“Not-So-Invisible Fiends: Mary Downing Hahn’s Wait Till Helen Comes” is copyright © 2023 by Daniel R. Robichaud. Quotes and cover image taken from the Clarion Books eBook edition, released in 2008.
Disclosure: Considering Stories is a member of the Amazon Associates. Under that program, purchases made using the product links in any of our articles can qualify the Considering Stories site for a payment. This takes the form of a percentage of the purchase price, and it is made at no additional cost to the customer.
consideringstories 