Dark Places

Ben is Libby’s older brother who was falsely accused of murdering his family. Ben is short in stature, around 5’5”, and like Libby has bright red hair. When the novel opens, he has served 25 years of a life sentence in prison for the murders. An organization called the Free Day Society is convinced of his innocence and is trying to get his conviction overturned, but they lack the evidence to do so. Ben is ambivalent about getting out of prison; he would like to be free, but he refuses to provide any information, such as a reliable alibi, that would help his case.

Ben was 15 when the murders occurred. He was convicted based on Libby’s eyewitness testimony and the community’s bias against him. As a teen, Ben was a loner who was rumored to be involved in Satan worship. An allegation of molesting young girls fueled the public’s dislike of him, even though those charges had been dropped by the time his case went to trial.

The chapters told from Ben’s point of view give the reader access to his inner world. Ben represents the theme of The Relationship Between Emasculation and Violence, and Flynn uses this connection to encourage the assumption that Ben is capable of murdering his family. Ben is repeatedly mocked, embarrassed, and shunned, and he often leans on violence to reaffirm his masculinity. His violent tendencies manifest through visions of corpses, drawings depicting the murder of pregnant women, and his recurring thought “annihilation”—but Ben only engages in physical violence when forced by others, as in the instances of his mother putting him in charge of killing the baby mice and Trey and Diondra taunting him to kill the dying bull. While he was present on the night of the murders, his greatest act of violence comes from inaction, as he does not stop Diondra from murdering Michelle. Ben is also responsible for saving young Libby’s life by encouraging her to stay outside, out of harm’s way. These contradictions and complexities make him a round character.

Ben has mixed feelings when he finds out Diondra is pregnant; he is afraid of not being able to support his family and has doubts about Diondra’s fitness as a mother, but he is proud to be a father. He allows himself to be convicted of the murders to save Diondra and the baby. By the end of the novel, Ben has worked through his feelings of guilt about the murders—that he stood by and did nothing to stop them—and believes Diondra should pay for her crime.

Diondra is the novel’s antagonist. She is Ben’s 17-year-old secret girlfriend and Michelle’s murderer. Diondra is wild and often engages in risk-taking behavior, such as using substances and committing acts of ritualized violence. Her primary physical trait is her profuse curly brown hair, which is always crunchy from the grape hairspray she uses. She wears name brand fashions and spends money heedlessly, a trait that annoys Ben, who is poor. Diondra’s family is wealthy, and her parents frequently visit Texas. As a result, she is largely unsupervised.

In the present day, she spends most of her time behind the scenes, living under the assumed name Polly Palm. Her status as Michelle’s murderer is only revealed at the end of the novel. In the chapters told from Ben’s perspective, she emerges as a cruel, controlling, manipulative influence on Ben’s life. Because Ben keeps her existence secret, his family believes that the drastic changes he undergoes are motivated by dark urges. Ben’s innocent actions, such as writing down baby names and buying clothes for their unborn child, are similarly misconstrued as sinister. Diondra and her cousin, Trey, are Satanists, and they pressure Ben into engaging in Satanic worship, fueling rumors that lead to his conviction for his family’s murders.

Diondra’s pregnancy motivates Ben to remain silent about her role in the murders. When Libby visits Diondra, Diondra and her daughter, Crystal, try to kill Libby for deducing that Diondra was involved in the murders. Ostensibly, Diondra strangled Michelle to keep her from revealing her pregnancy, but she mutilates Patty and Debby’s bodies out of pure bloodlust. Unlike Ben, Diondra acts on her violent impulses, and her attempted murder of Libby in the present creates narrative symmetry. Diondra’s murderous tendencies subvert expectations; despite her clearly unsettling influence on Ben, the narrative heavily implies that various male figures—Ben, his father, even Trey—could be the culprits instead.

Patty is Libby’s mother. Like most of her children, she has bright red hair and a slight frame. She is 32 when she dies, but years of hardship have left her looking much older: “Her forehead was creased like a child’s paper fan, and crow’s feet rayed out from her eyes. Her red hair was shot with white, wiry threads, and she was unattractively thin, all bumps and points, like she’d swallowed a shelf’s worth of hardware: hammers and mothballs and a few old bottles” (61).

Patty epitomizes The Psychological Pressures of Poverty and Debt. She struggles to raise her four children as a single mother after Runner leaves and her family farm fails. Patty married Runner after becoming pregnant with Ben when she was 17, and her elderly parents transferred management of the farm to the young couple. Her marriage and financial security dissipated quickly, leaving her with an over-mortgaged farm, expensive equipment, and no skills or manpower to run the farm effectively.

Patty’s primary characteristic is her worry about money. She feels guilty that her family lives in poverty but is unable to find a solution to their financial difficulties. She particularly worries about Ben, who is distant and secretive at home. She is distantly aware that Ben feels emasculated in a house full of girls, but she does not know how to connect with him. Because Ben keeps Diondra and the baby a secret, Patty cannot support him, and she mistakes certain things in his bedroom—meant for the baby—as signs of his disturbed mind. Even so, she tries to protect him.

Patty is murdered as part of an ill-conceived plan to get insurance money to support her family. She is a tragic figure because her best intentions result in her and Debby’s gruesome deaths, her son’s incarceration, and Libby’s lifelong trauma. 

Lyle is a member of the Kill Club and the catalyst for the novel’s main events. He is tall, wears wireless glasses, and has delicate features, which Libby finds disturbing. Lyle is 22 and obsessed with 80s culture: He quotes from 80s movies and wears awkward 80s-inspired clothing. Lyle reaches out to Libby to invite her to be his group’s guest at the Kill Convention because he and the other members of the Kill Club are trying to solve her family’s murders. Lyle and the Kill Club represent the other half of The Objectification of Victims in True Crime Culture. In the present, they are the ones objectifying Libby; they exploit her trauma for the sake of their hobby. Lyle is one of the only true-crime enthusiasts who sees Libby as a person and not a thing of interest. He funds Libby’s trips to question people involved in the case and accompanies her on some of the visits.

Lyle identifies with Libby because he accidentally started a wildfire when he was 12 that destroyed 80 homes and 90,000 acres of forest in San Bernadino, California. Because of this, he relates to Libby’s status as a child whose actions unintentionally had dire consequences. As time goes on, Lyle moves from the Kill Club’s side to Libby’s. Lyle becomes Libby’s friend and confidant and saves her after she escapes from Diondra’s basement. Lyle is an ally figure because befriending Lyle helps Libby overcome her guilt and learn the truth about her family.

Runner is Patty’s ex-husband. He is small in stature and has violent tendencies, threatening Patty when she refuses to give him money. Runner is reckless and irresponsible, a figure who suddenly appears in Patty’s life and disappears again. He lived with Patty and the kids during the summer before the murders, but before that, they only saw him when he came to ask for money. Most of the time, he lived in a cabin in the woods not far from Kinnakee with his girlfriend, Peggy. Runner is a gambling addict and is in debt to Trey when the murders occur, which posits him as a suspect.

In the present day, Runner lives between a men’s home and an encampment in Oklahoma. He writers a letter to Libby saying he knows who the real killer is, but when Libby visits him, he tries to get money from her. He is unhelpful in providing information about the murders. Though the Kill Club considers Runner a suspect for the murders, Libby concludes that the murders are out of character for Runner and that he is not smart enough to commit a murder without getting caught. While Runner is an antagonistic figure, he is not the novel’s main antagonist because he lacks the agency necessary to significantly influence the plot.