For a lonely little girl, a new friendship can be wonderful...and very dangerous.
Wait Till Helen Comes is a 1986 children's novel by author Mary Downing Hahn.
After their mother Jean marries Dave, twelve-year-old Molly and her younger brother Michael find themselves stuck in the country for the summer with their new whiny, tattling, manipulative and malicious seven-year-old stepsister Heather. When she was only three, Heather witnessed the death of her mother in a house fire. Now jealous of the attention her father pays to his new wife and her children, Heather constantly schemes to make it looks as if the older children bully her. Molly and Michael are frustrated that their own mother always takes Heather's word over theirs.
But behind their new home is a graveyard where Heather soon spends all of her time. There she finds an abandoned grave belonging to a child the same age as she, bearing her own initials. Heather boasts that she's made a new friend, Helen, who understands her and will do anything she asks. Heather withdraws further from the family in favor of her new "friend," even as a string of destructive, inexplicable events begin.
In spite of her resentment toward Heather, Molly comes to fear that her new stepsister might be in terrible danger. Because over the past hundred years, Helen's had lots and lots of friends...all of whom ended up at the bottom of the local pond.
The book was adapted into a Lifetime Movie of the Week (alternately titled Little Girl's Secret) in 2016 and a graphic novel in 2022. The author herself appears in a cameo as the helpful town librarian in the movie.
This work contains the following tropes:
- A Storm Is Coming: It briefly rains before the first time Molly and Michael go to Harper House, but clears up allowing them to go both to the house ruins and to the library. Their going out leads to a large fight between Jean and Dave when they return and Heather claims they "abandoned her" at the creek before running off. During the climax of the book, a storm rolls through, trapping Molly and Heather in the ruins of the house for hours.
- Accidental Murder: The truth behind the death of Heather's mother. When Heather was three, she was playing with the stove and turned it on, and it caused a house fire. Her mother called out for her and tried to find her, but Heather had ran and hid when the fire got larger, and didn't answer because she thought she was going to be spanked. Her mother either burned to death or suffocated from the smoke.
- Adaptational Ugliness: Zigzagged—in the book and movie, Helen looks like a pretty little girl, just ghostly. In the graphic novel, she has two forms: one where she looks like a ghost, and another where she looks like a withered zombie.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Helen's heart locket is silver in the book, but in the graphic novel, it's gold.
- Blended Family Drama: Michael and Molly are living with their mom Jean, their stepdad Dave, and their younger stepsister Heather, who hates them and is doing everything she can to wreck her dad's new marriage. Her favorite tactic is to run crying to her dad while claiming Michael and Molly are being mean to her, and he always believes her without question and yells at them for picking on his precious little girl.
- Calling Parents by Their Name: Molly and Michael refer to their new stepdad as "Dave" because he doesn't quite feel like their dad yet; Heather calls her stepmother "Jean". Helen calls her stepfather "Papa Robert" when she drifts towards their skeletons in the cellar.
- Creepy Cemetery: Molly is horrified to learn that the family now owns the cemetery behind their new house, though it's actually quite ordinary and even pleasant in appearance; burials haven't happened for decades by the time they buy the place.
- Creepy Child: Heather is this even before she meets Helen. She's eerie, shows a lot of troubling behavior (such as gleefully beheading a family of paper dolls Molly made for her), and seems to delight in causing discourse among the family, particularly between Dave and Jean.
- Crusty Caretaker: The Creepy Cemetery has a caretaker, but this is averted as Mr. Simmons is pleasant and friendly. He does, however, warn the children about playing under the old oak tree and around the old Harper Place (though this warning is more to do with rattlesnakes and poison ivy than ghosts).
- Dark Secret: Heather accidentally caused the fire that killed her mother. This is why she bonds with Helen, who accidentally caused the fire that killed her parents and destroyed her home.
- Death by Adaptation: Molly and Michael's parents are implied to simply be divorced in the book. In the film, Jean was a widow before she married Dave.
- Death of a Child:
- Helen was seven years old when her house caught on fire and in distress she ran into the pond and drowned. Over the years at least three other little girls, maybe more, have been lured by her ghost into the pond and drowned as well—including Mr. Simmons' cousin Rose when he and his sister were younger. The graphic novel shows the most recent death with the dead child floating in the water.
- Mr. Simmons' little sister died as a baby, of an unspecified illness. She is buried with their parents in the graveyard he takes care of.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Molly gave up on reaching out to Heather after Heather reacted this way one too many times.
- Due to the Dead:
- Heather, after the grave is found, leaves a jar of daisies in front of Helen's isolated little tombstone every day.
- At the end, Helen's parents whose remains were found in the burnt house by Molly and Heather are buried with Helen in the graveyard, and Helen's headstone that only had her initials is replaced with one bearing her full name and later an angel to adorn it. This is what finally allows her spirit to depart in peace.
- Exactly Exty Years Ago: Helen Harper died exactly 100 years before Heather and Molly learn about her. Averted in the graphic novel—since it's updated to take place in the 2020s, it's instead been over 100 years.
- Foreshadowing: Near the beginning of the book and graphic novel, Molly and Michael briefly discuss The Bad Seed (1985), and Molly wonders if Heather "burned up her mother on purpose, the way Rhoda burned up the janitor?". Michael scoffs at the idea, but as it turns out, she's mostly right.
- Forgiveness: What ultimately frees both Helen and Heather. The ghost of Helen's mother forgives her for causing the fire that killed her and her stepfather, and Dave tells Heather that he doesn't blame her for starting the fire that killed her mother, allowing her to forgive herself.
- Free-Range Children: Deconstructed, as part of the reason the family moves to the country is so that the kids can roam unsupervised while they work (as opposed to their home in Baltimore, where it was too dangerous).
- Finally Found the Body: When Molly and Heather fall through the floor in Harper House into the cellar, they discover the skeletal remains of Helen's mother and stepfather buried under the floor, finally solving the hundred (plus)-year-old mystery of what happened to their bodies. In the graphic novel, the house is slightly less ruined, so their skeletons are unburied; however, the ceiling fell in during the fire, blocking off the room they were in.
- Ghostly Chill: Helen's presence brings a freezing cold. Even her hands are cold when Heather touches them.
- Ghostly Gape: Helen's eyes are nothing but shadowy sockets.
- Haunted Fetter: Helen's silver heart locket (gold in the graphic novel), which seems to give her power to charm anyone who wears it. When Molly rips it off of Heather's neck and throws it into the pond as far as she can, Helen instantly gives up her chosen victim—Heather—in favor of rescuing the locket. After her parents are buried next to her and she is given a proper tombstone, she gifts the locket to Heather for good by hanging it off of the angel on her tombstone, with a note inside: "With love from Helen. Do not forget me."
- Hazardous Water: Molly, Michael, and Heather are warned that many kids—almost always girls—have drowned in Harper Pond over the years. Molly has to save Heather from being drowned there by Helen in the climax.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: The bodies of Helen's parents were never found in the collapsed house, leaving her alone under a mislabeled, neglected tombstone with only her initials, and no one ever came to visit her or remembered her as she was the last generation of her lineage and an only child. Her loneliness drives her to seek new "friends" by luring girls near her age into the pond she died in to drown and thus hopefully stay with her forever as a friend.
- Kids Play Match Breaker: Heather is causing as much trouble as she can to try and make her dad Dave break up with his new wife, Jean. She makes him believe that her stepsiblings Michael and Molly are bullying her and the one time Jean steps in to defend her children against the accusations when Molly claims she'd been left at the creek, it leads to a large fight between the parents that escalates to Dave leaving and taking Heather out alone for dinner, saying they both need time away from Jean and her children.
- No OSHA Compliance: Nobody thinks to fence off the Harper property, despite all the incidents of young children drowning in the pond.
- Old, Dark House: Harper House, which is nothing but a burned-out shell with only one wall left standing and a small part of the roof. In the graphic novel it's still mostly standing and has been vandalized, but several parts and items inside are in ruins.
- Parents as People:
- Dave, due to it only being him and Heather alone for several years and her trauma about her dead mother that he doesn't fully address (by thinking it's better never to bring it up at all), tends to take her side in arguments over his stepchildren—a fact Heather frequently takes advantage of.
- Jean is doing her best at trying to get her children, Molly and Michael, to get along with their younger stepsister Heather. This results in her often lecturing them to treat her nicer and taking Heather's side in fights. The one time she takes their side against Dave, it explodes in a fight that leads to Dave leaving to take Heather out to dinner on her own (saying they need time away) and her skipping dinner in upset.
- Ransacked Room: At Heather's command, Helen vandalizes the house while no one is there, destroying nearly all of Jean's, Molly's, and Michael's belongings. Molly knows it was Helen's doing because nothing of Heather's or Dave's was touched, and Molly sees Helen's initials on the wall before they fade away.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni:
- Molly is the imaginative, dramatic, superstitious, and intuitive sibling, while Michael is more down-to-earth, rational, and likes to have—or force—a scientific explanation for everything around him.
- Dave and Jean are also this as parents, with Dave being the emotional, explosive, hands-on parent and Jean the more laid-back, logical, and hands-off one.
- Relationship Sabotage: Heather's troublemaking is in hopes that she can split up Jean and Dave so that she can have her father all to herself again.
- The Reveal: Heather accidentally started the fire that killed her mother by playing with the stove, and she's been carrying the guilt of that for four years, terrified that her father will hate her if he ever finds out.
- Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Heather might be a horrible brat but at the same time, she's also a lonely little girl who's been deeply traumatized by the death of her mother that she believed she caused (and apparently never got any form of therapy to help her cope with it).
- Sugar Bowl: Helen promises to take Heather to a magical kingdom "where the rain never falls and the rose never dies," filled with unicorns and mermaids and rainbows, where the two of them will be happy together forever and ever as princesses in glass towers. All she has to do is step into the waters of Harper Pond. Molly is briefly charmed by the description herself before thunder brings her back to her senses.
- Survivor Guilt: A theme that impacts the entire family (and Helen!), each in very different ways.
- Theme Initials: Helen and Heather share the same initials—H.E.H.—which is what initially draws Heather to Helen's grave.
- There Are No Therapists:
- Heather lost her mother at the age of three. Unbeknownst to everyone, she feels responsible for it, since she started the fire. Since then she has suffered nightmares, flashbacks, and emotional regression, and clings to her father, unwilling to share him with anyone. But sure, let's remarry and make her adjust to much-older stepsiblings and a replacement mom, then drag her out to the middle of nowhere with no other children to interact with!
- The film at least attempts to address this by saying that Heather has spent the last few years in a juvenile mental institution, but does not address that Dave yanked her out while she's still clearly deeply troubled.
- There's also more than a little indication that Molly is still deeply scarred by the death of her father (she suffers from chronic sleeping issues and a deep aversion to death), but no one ever suggests that this might be the cause of her acting-out, nor do they suggest she seek counselling. (The film, again, averts this, stating that Molly has been seeing a therapist and showing her taking medication for her sleep disorder.)
- This is addressed in the book near the beginning, when it's explained that Dave doesn't trust therapists. Molly mentions that she overheard him telling Jean that "all they do is mess up your head." Dave does not state this in the graphic novel, showing how perceptions about therapy have changed since the 1980s.
- Time Marches On: The original 1980s book has Dave refusing to take Heather to a therapist, saying that all they do is mess up your head. In the 2010s film it's said that Heather did go to a mental institution but Dave pulled her out, and in the 2020s graphic novel the line is dropped, showing that social mentalities about therapy have changed since the 1980s.
- Title Drop: Heather shouts the title at Molly as a warning.
- Too Unhappy to Be Hungry: Upset after a particularly nasty argument with Dave, Jean tells her kids to eat dinner without her and leaves the house.
- Troubled Toybreaker: Heather is a malicious little brat who hates her new stepfamily, and is also somewhat messed up in the head because her mother died in a fire when she was three years old andHeather blames herself for it. When Molly mentions her rejected attempts to be nice to Heather, she discusses time she let Heather play with her old Barbie dolls and came back to find out that Heather cut their hair off playing "beauty parlor" and tore their outfits into shreds. She also ripped up a family of paper dolls Molly made for her.
- When She Smiles: Throughout the graphic novel, Heather often gives Molly mean smiles after she's finished getting her and Michael in trouble. But after their adventure at Harper House that brings them closer together, and as they're talking to Dave about having the Harpers properly buried in the graveyard, Heather gives Molly a sincere, loving smile.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Helen's modus operandi is to lure girls her own age into the same pond where she drowned. The book implies she's done this dozens of times over the years. In addition to this, she appears to have the power to charm her victims, to appear and disappear at will, and the ability to interact with solid objects (at one point even overturning an enormous heavy curio cabinet). Molly later realizes that Helen is acting the way she does out of both guilt for "causing" the death of her parents and loneliness, after Helen says that none of the children she lures to their deaths ever stay with her.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: One of Heather's favorite tactics is to pretend that Molly and Michael are being mean to her. All she has to do is shed some Crocodile Tears and Dave will start berating them for "bullying" their younger stepsister.
