The actual stuff my family owned, those boxes under my stairs, I can’t quite bear to look at. I like other people’s things better. They come with other people’s history.
One item in my home I didn’t steal is a true-crime novel called Devil’s Harvest: The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee Kansas. It came out in 1986, and was written by a former reporter named Barb Eichel, and that’s all I really know. At least three semi-boyfriends have given me a copy of this book, solemnly, wisely, and all three of them were dumped immediately after. If I say I don’t want to read the book, I don’t want to read the book. It’s like my rule about always sleeping with the light on. I tell every man I sleep with that I always keep the lights on, and they always say something like, “I’ll take care of you, baby,” and then try to switch off the lights. Like that’s that. They somehow seem surprised that I actually sleep with the lights on.
I dug out Devil’s Harvest from a leaning stack of books in the corner—I keep it for the same reason I keep the boxes of my family’s papers and crap, because maybe I’ll want it someday, and even if I don’t, I don’t want anyone else to have it.
The opening page read:
Kinnakee, Kansas, in the heart of America, is a quiet farming community where folks know each other, go to church with each other, grow old alongside each other. But it is not impervious to the evils of the outside world—and in the early hours of January 3, 1985, those evils destroyed three members of the Day family in a torrent of blood and horror. This is a story not just of murder, but of Devil worship, blood rituals, and the spread of Satanism to every corner of America—even the coziest, seemingly safest places.
My ears started their hum with the sounds of that night: A loud, masculine grunt, a heaving, dry-throat wail. My mother’s banshee screams. Darkplace. I looked at the back-page photo of Barb Eichel. She had short, spiky hair, dangling earrings, and a somber smile. The biography said she lived in Topeka, Kansas, but that was twenty-some years ago.
I needed to phone Lyle Wirth with my money-for-info proposal, but I wasn’t ready to hear him lecture me again about the murder of my own family. (You really think Ben’s guilty!) I needed to be able to argue with him instead of sitting there like some ignoramus with nothing useful to say. Which is basically what I was.
I scanned the book some more, lying on my back, propped up on a twice-folded pillow, Buck monitoring me with watchful kitty eyes for any movement toward the kitchen. Barb Eichel described Ben as “a black-clad loner, unpopular and angry” and “obsessed with the most brutal form of heavy metal—called black metal—songs rumored to be little more than coded calls to the Devil himself.” I skimmed, naturally, until I found a reference to me: “angelic but strong,” “determined and sorrowful” with an “air of independence that one usually doesn’t find in children twice her age.” Our family had been “happy and bustling, looking forward to a future of clean air and clean living.” Mmm-hmm. Still, this was supposedly the definitive book on the murders, and, after all those voices at the Kill Club telling me I was a fool, I was eager to speak with an outsider who also believed that Ben was guilty. Ammo for Lyle. I pictured myself ticking off facts on my fingers: this, this, and this proves you jackasses are wrong, and Lyle unpursing his lips, realizing I was right after all.
I’d still be willing to take his cash if he wanted.
Not sure where to start, I called the Topeka directory and, most beautiful bingo ever, got Barb Eichel’s number. Still in Topeka, still listed. Easy enough.
She picked up on the second ring, her voice merry and shrill until I told her who I was.
“Oh, Libby. I always wondered if you’d ever get in touch,” she said after a making a throat-sound like eehhhhh. “Or if I should reach out to you. I didn’t know, I didn’t know …” I could picture her looking around the room, picking at her nails, skittish, one of those women who studied the menu twenty minutes and then still panicked when the waiter came.
“I was hoping I could talk to you about … Ben,” I started, not sure what my wording should be.
“I know, I know, I’ve written him several letters of apology over the years, Libby. I just don’t know how many times I can say I’m sorry for that damn, damn book.”
Unexpected.
BARB EICHEL WAS going to have me over for lunch. She wanted to explain to me in person. She didn’t drive anymore (here I caught a whiff of the real story—meds, she had the shiny coating of someone on too many pills), so I’d come out to her and she’d be so grateful. Luckily, Topeka’s not far from Kansas City. Not that I was eager to go there—I’d seen enough of it growing up. The town used to have a hell of a psychiatric clinic, seriously, there was even a sign on the highway that said something like, “Welcome to Topeka, psychiatric capital of the world!” The whole town was crawling with nutjobs and therapists, and I used to get trucked there regularly for rare, privileged outpatient counseling. Yay for me. We talked about my nightmares, my panic attacks, my issues with anger. By the teenage years, we talked about my tendency toward physical aggression. As far as I’m concerned, the entire city, the capital of Kansas, smells like crazy-house drool.