"The Final Chapter" Trivia Quiz

Answer: At a college party

In Sacramento in 1994, Ilonka dyes her hair a deep red and fine-tunes the details of her salutatorian speech in front of her mirror. When she heads down to the kitchen, she grabs a bowl of dinner with her foster dad, Tim and he praises her for successes. What he does do, however, is tell her she should break some rules for once, at least to celebrate the end of a chapter of her life. It's why, when her friend Lauren comes by to pick her up, they head to a real college party to celebrate instead of a high school gathering.

It's at the party, while pacing herself and waiting for her friend, that Ilonka meets Brian and the two hit it off with her pretending to be an English major and him rattling off his favourite classes (which all seem to be her areas of interest). The real shame is when Ilonka starts coughing up blood. She rushes to the bathroom to wash it off her hands and has awful visions in the mirror-- a man with no eyes appears in her reflection; an old house stands on a hillside; a hooded figure shrouded in darkness looms. And then she collapses.

Answer: Thyroid cancer

It's determined that Ilonka is diagnosed with papillary thyroid carcinoma, and when she and Tim talk to Dr. Rowlands, they find that the first order of business is to remove her thyroid and start her on radioactive iodine treatment. It's possible that it's treatable, but there's also a risk of death, of course. Ilonka is shocked by this unfortunate circumstance; she was planning to go to Stanford in the fall.

Ilonka celebrates her eighteenth birthday in this hospital, and what's worse is that evening she overhears her father and doctor discussing the lack of success behind her recent round of treatment. Unfortunately, the tumours in her lungs have gotten worse; she hasn't responded well. Another round of chemo won't make a difference. It's terminal and it's tough to say how long she has. It's possible she could make it to 19, but not certain.

That evening, Ilonka logs into Yahoo and researches the survival rate of thyroid cancer, eventually learning about Brightcliffe Manor, a hospice for dying teenagers. In looking at an article on this, however, she once again experiences awful visions of a hooded figure, this time seated at a table in a library, surrounded by encroaching darkness.

When Ilonka awakens, she finds an article she's looking for about a seventeen-year-old girl, Julia Jayne, who went to Brightcliffe and was cured of her cancer as through by a miracle.

Answer: Sitting on a bench

It takes a bit of convincing. When Ilonka tells Tim that she'd like to go to Brightcliffe, he balks at her suggestion, but she insists that it's a place where young adults can transition through their last days on their own terms. It does mean that there will be no more treatments or trials for her cancer, but it's what she wants. Tim only agrees to a trial period. He'll stay at a Motel 6 in town nearby; if it doesn't go well, she'll go back home to Sacramento.

When Ilonka rides up to Brightcliffe, she experiences deja vu. It's the house from her visions. Spotting a kid on a bench overlooking the sea, she walks over and introduces herself, suggesting she might know him. He feels the same, but it's clear the two have never crossed paths before. He introduces himself as Kevin; he's there because of his leukemia.

Ilonka is brought into Brightcliffe by Mark, one of the nurse practitioners, and as she walks inside for the first time, she looks down a hallway to see a ghoulish spectre watching her arrival. Tim and Mark see nothing, but Ilonka collapses into unconsciousness at the sight.

Answer: False

Ilonka awakens in a bed in Brightcliffe House to find Tim and Dr. Stanton watching over her. Distressed, Ilonka explains she saw an old woman, but Dr. Stanton explains she probably just got confused in her fainting spell. Besides that, the doctor welcomes her to the facility.

Heading to Dr. Stanton's office, the three take their seats and the doctor tries to put Tim at ease, empathizing with the position of having to leave his foster daughter at the hospice. Her son Julian, after all, passed away from a long illness, so she knows what he's going through. She advises the two of them not to look at the cancer as a battle and, instead, look at Brightcliffe as a respite and a place where they can choose to focus on living instead of fighting.

They proceed with the tour shortly after, stopping at the dormitories and meeting some of the other guests. Spence, for example, acts as peer mentor to Ilonka, taking her on what he calls 'The Ghost Tour' and reminding her that most people who come to Brightcliffe meet their end there. They'll have group therapy; they have yoga as well. When they come upon the library, Ilonka feels at home. The arcade is a bit less her speed. It doesn't feel like it's an altogether gloomy place.

Answer: Morgue

Coming across the arcade, Spence introduces Ilonka to Amesh, the former newbie at Brightcliffe, who's only been there for a couple of months. He jokes about the hazing he expected and kind of wanted on account of his never being able to attend college, but Spence insists it's not something they do at Brightcliffe.

When Ilonka spies an old elevator at the end of the hall, Amesh suggests she get inside and hit B to go to the basement, but Spence reminds that there's no hazing. Amesh persists until she closes the gate and nearly presses the button and he's forced to admit it leads to the morgue. There's no use even using the elevator, Spence says-- it runs on its own at night, moving between floors on account of, probably, faulty wiring.

In another room, Cheri practices the cello. The guys suggest not listening too much to her since her stories keep changing. They head down the hall to what will be Ilonka's room with Anya, her roommate, who was originally supposed to give her the tour. Anya's off somewhere so they leave her to get comfortable in her room.

Before he heads out, Tim says his goodbyes and Ilonka reassures him it's the right choice. She sees him off as he drives away and then returns to unpack her things.

Answer: Rachel

While Ilonka unpacks her things, she catches a glimpse of something under her bed and moves the furniture to find something chalked into the floorboards beneath. It's then that Anya, her wheelchair-bound roommate, arrives and introduces herself. Anya explains the markings quite simply; her old roommate, Rachel, was into Wiccan stuff before she passed. It's likely a remnant of her time in the room.

Ilonka joins the other residents in the dining hall, meeting Sandra and Natsuki when she takes a seat for dinner and learning that Sandra and Anya are the senior residents, having been with Brightcliffe for six months. Anya recently got her double diagnosis, she explains-- she's still dying. Every six months, however, they can have their stay renewed...if they make it that long.

The conversation around the tables shifts to Rachel's last days at the hospice and Anya notes things got real dark. Anya used to speak of a shadowy creature reaching for her through the darkness and when she turned to look it would be gone. On the last night, she ran back to the room-- a miracle in itself-- claiming she barely got away. The others chalk the actions up to the drugs Rachel she was on near the end.

Mark, delivering Ilonka's food, lets her know that curfew is 10:00pm and it's strict. If someone were to fall while wandering the building at night, no one might find them.

Answer: No

As night falls and the patients head to bed, Ilonka falls asleep and immediately dreams unsettling images from Brightcliffe not unlike those she's been seeing during her fainting spells. She awakens to find Anya getting out of bed in the dark and getting into her wheelchair. Before Anya exits the room, she turns and looks to see that Ilonka doesn't notice.

Ilonka does, however, and she follows her through the building's hallways at a distance, watching as Anya takes the elevator down to the first floor. From a hiding spot, she watches as some of the others arrive at the library and make their way in, taking a seat at a table in front of a roaring fire and pouring drinks from Dr. Stanton's secret stash. Kevin asks why Anya didn't invite Ilonka; she says she wasn't sure about her.

From a hidden corner, Ilonka listens to them talk about their storytelling and Natsuki takes the head of the table to resume hers, but first, they all recite their chant: "To those before and those after. To us now and to those beyond. Seen or unseen. Here but not here."

Answer: Jump scares

Natsuki continues her story, one about a boy named Ren coming home from a concert and hearing a strange song playing in an empty classroom in his school. When he walks home he finds that his street, one that he walks home on everyday, is almost unrecognizable. It didn't make sense, and then he heard that awful melody again. He felt himself being watched not from the streets, but the houses-- all of them. Every window had a smiling face, each watching him, and he knew he should have run in the other direction. When one of the people in the window offered to help and beckoned him closer, he heard the voice behind him and the figure appeared and screamed!

Spence tells Natsuki that a jump scare is cheap-- startling, but not scary. But she continues. Ren fell to the ground and the apparition vanished until it grabbed him from behind, continuing to frighten him by appearing and screaming repeatedly at his periphery. Natsuki even says that a frightened cat jumped in front of him, spooking him just a bit more. It's a tactic Spence calls out, again, as a cheap scare.

Natsuki reminds them-- Ren's teacher believes she should have warned him about that awful melody. Some music finds its way into your head. As Natsuki crawls across the table and continues her assault of jump scares, Ilonka accidentally knocks something over from the shadows, actually startling the others. Kevin tells her to come out. Now that she's there, she might as well join them.

Answer: Dates

When Ilonka emerges from her hiding spot, Anya tells her to take a sip of wine before they consider inducting her into the club, but Ilonka's hesitant, especially with the meds she's on. The Midnight Club, however, insists upon it; nobody rides for free, and all of them (save for Cheri, who's been with them for three months without anteing up) are required to sit around the table and tell their ghost stories. People did it before they got there and they keep up the tradition.

Ilonka takes a seat in front of the fireplace and, though she starts the story with a girl who found out she was going to die (much to the audience's frustration), she explains it's about Julia Jayne, a girl she doesn't let on lived at Brightcliffe in earlier days.

It was Julia's junior year when she met Nathan-- 1968-- and it was the year she found out she had thyroid cancer. She was 17 and, eventually, she was brought to a hospice to wait out the remaining days. She obsessed over the date that was 05-20-1969, one year from the date of her diagnosis, and the day she thought she would die. Late at night she swore she could hear Nathan calling out for her and, on one occasion, she took a candle, wandered into the hall, and took the elevator down. When Julia didn't turn up for breakfast, she was hunted for but never found.

A month later, she returned, appearing in the lobby of the hospice. When asked where she had been, she claimed she never left the house, and it was shortly after that doctor's found her cancer was in remission. Her tumours started to shrink and her prognosis changed. But before she left the hospice, she started giving new dates, telling everyone around her new dates. They seemed like gibberish until people started dying on the dates she gave.

Answer: Contacts the others

As Ilonka finishes her story, Sandra asks what happened to Julia Jayne, but Ilonka doesn't elaborate more until she asks about the Midnight Club. After all, they claimed there was something more important to it than telling stories. She'll only finish the story if they tell her what that is.

It's Anya who explains. There's a pact that goes back to the start of the club whenever that was. They're telling stories, but they also know that someone is going to die very soon. The first one of them to die will have work to do-- a responsibility-- because it's up to them to try to reach out and let the others know what it's like on the other side. Ilonka asks if anyone has heard back from someone yet, and they claim they haven't, and she says there's plenty to learn from Brightcliffe. She'll even tell those stories (and join their pact) if they'll have her.

Before the teens head back to their beds, Kevin suggests to Ilonka that she could be a writer, but he knows what she's about. He's taken the time to look at the pictures in the halls, and he knows that Julia Jayne attended Brightcliffe. Ilonka admits she embellished a bit of the truth, but based on police reports she disappeared for a week and came back in full remission. She claimed it was because of Brightcliffe. She found something there and it cured her. It's why Ilonka believes she's going to live.

As Kevin heads to bed, Ilonka stays up a bit longer to look at the photos on the wall. She doesn't notice the shadow passing by in the next hall over.