The sound of her voice is something awful. It’s hard, raspy, as if it hasn’t been used in a while, which I guess it hasn’t. It’s kind of liquidy, too, as if Helen’s speaking from underwater. There’s something else, a quality to the woman’s voice Regina will have a hard time putting her finger on when she relates Helen’s visit to her husband and his friend. She has an accent, Regina will say at last, but who doesn’t have an accent in this place? It’s not the accent the woman had when she was alive, no, not like what any of them has, moving from one tongue to another. This accent is what you’d imagine if an animal learned how to speak, something that wasn’t trying to master your particular language, but the idea of language itself. It’s not the way you’d think a dog or cat would speak, either. It’s the voice you’d give a lizard, or an eel. Although she’s the first to hear Helen speak — aside from George, presumably — she’s far from the last, and the consensus is that her description hits the nail right on the head. When she hears Helen, the hairs on the back of Regina’s neck stand straight up, and she has all she can do to keep where she is and shake her head no.
According to Regina, Helen doesn’t so much look at her as through her. Apparently she sees her shake her head, however, because she repeats her request, those same two words, “The children.” Regina repeats her answer, too, shaking her head so hard she’s afraid it might fly off.
It isn’t until Helen states her demand a third time, stepping closer to the door as she does, that Regina finally finds her voice. “They’re not yours anymore,” she says. “Go away.”
The woman doesn’t. Instead, she takes another, lurching step forward. Regina backs away, grabbing for the door with one hand. “Go away,” she says, “go back where you belong. Get back in the ground.”
When Helen makes to cross the threshold into the house, Regina swings the door shut. Not quite fast enough — before it’s shut, Helen thrusts her arm inside and starts grabbing at Regina, who, panicking, throws herself against the door, pushing with all her strength against the woman on the other side. The arm catches at her hair, her ear, and Regina slaps it away. Helen’s skin is stone cold, Regina will report, and damp. She pushes, and Helen pushes back, and the woman’s strength is terrible. If not for the fact that her body is full of broken bones, Helen would have the door open and those children in no time. Regina can hear the sound of the woman’s bones grinding against each other as she heaves herself against the door. Despite Regina’s best efforts — which I gather were nothing to sneeze at; she was a strong woman — Helen is slowly gaining on her, inching the door open. Sweat pouring down her forehead, Regina calls on God and the saints for help and, when none of them inclines to answer, lets loose every curse she knows in English and Italian on the woman. None of it makes any difference. If she’s thought to exorcise Helen by calling on the Almighty, it appears the woman isn’t afraid of him; if she’s thought to shock her by cursing, it appears Helen has heard worse. She continues pushing the door open, and Regina knows it isn’t going to be long until the muscles in her arms and legs, already trembling with the fight, give out. She screams her frustration, slapping away that cold, grasping hand, and that scream is what does the trick. It summons the children, her own and Helen’s, who pour out of the back room in a tide. Without stopping to figure out what’s what, they rush to the door and pile against it. Their strength isn’t much, but it’s enough. Now Regina is gaining, heaving the door shut. Helen flaps her arm at them, and the children, shrieking, scratch and claw it, one of them breaking her cold skin. Black blood — literally black blood — splatters the floor. The arm jerks back. The door slams shut. Regina’s oldest throws the bolt.
Now comes Helen’s turn to scream, and scream she does. Bad as her voice is, her scream is a thousand times worse. Like a devil burning in hell, is how Regina will describe it. Years later, I understand, each of the children will still be waking from nightmares of it. Regina braces herself against the door, ready for Helen to make another try at it. She doesn’t. While the echoes of her scream are ringing in everyone’s ears, she leans close to the door and whispers to Regina through it. Whatever she says is more than two words, yet the children either can’t hear or can’t understand her. They see the blood drain from Regina’s face. They see her squeeze her eyes closed and suck in her breath a little, as if she’s felt a pain. But they don’t know the reason for any of it. Helen waits around for a moment after delivering her message, as if she’s listening to its effect on Regina. The children hear her on the other side of the door, breathing heavily from her efforts. Maria, Helen’s oldest, will tell Lottie’s sister Gretchen that the breathing sounded like her grandfather’s in the months before his death, hoarse and harsh, and something else, wet, like the way you breathe when you’re congested. Slowly, Helen retreats from the door, shuffling back to what was her house and husband.
Regina tells no one except Italo about Helen’s message to her. When he returns from work later that day, she sends the kids out to play — she’s kept them inside and close around her since Helen’s appearance, and even when she tells them to go outside, she insists they not go far — and she and her husband have a long talk about the day’s events. One of the children — Italo and Regina’s son Giovanni — hangs close to the house to try to spy on his mom and dad’s conversation. Only natural, I suppose, given that Regina hasn’t explained any of what happened earlier, just given abundant hugs to him, his brothers and sister, and the other children, and told them all to pray the rosary. The next day, Giovanni will tell Christina, the youngest of the Schmidt girls, about what he overheard. At first, he says, his dad was furious, ready to storm right over to the dead woman’s house and put her back in the ground. He was on his way to do that very thing when his mom told him that the woman had whispered something to him. Her voice dropped as she told his dad what it was, and Giovanni couldn’t hear. Whatever her words, they stopped his dad in his tracks. “What?” he says and Regina answers, “You heard me.” “Impossible,” he says. “Not,” says she. There was a lot of back-and-forth. The boy reports that Italo kept asking Regina, Was she sure? and, How could this woman know such a thing? his voice becoming more uncertain and quavery with each repetition. In return, Regina’s voice gained strength as she said again and again that she didn’t know how this woman could know, though the damned and devils in hell were supposed to know all manner of secrets, weren’t they? But that yes, so far as she could tell right then and there, the woman was correct. In fact, it explained a number of things. By the conversation’s end, Italo was in tears, sobbing, “What are we going to do?” over and over; Regina saying she didn’t know, but that they still had a little bit of time. Understandably, young Giovanni was upset at listening to all this. When he took up his position to eavesdrop, he hadn’t bargained on listening in on his dad sobbing. Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore, and ran inside to join his parents, weeping himself. For which consideration he received a clout upside the head from Regina for spying, and a teary embrace from Italo. He watched Regina tell Italo he must consult his German friend about this matter. He was an educated man, the German — more importantly, he struck Regina as owning a measure of wisdom, and wisdom was always a precious commodity, especially at a time like this. She thought the German stood a better chance than most of them of knowing what to do about this woman who should be lying in the ground but was up and walking around. Because dealt with she had to be. There was no arguing the matter. Still wiping the tears from his eyes, Italo agreed. He would talk to his friend.