Bag of Bones Trivia Quiz

Answer: Brain aneurysm

It was unexpected when Mike Noonan's wife, Johanna, died of a brain aneurysm while on a trip to the local pharmacy. Worse still, she was discovered to have been stopping into the store to pick up a home pregnancy test.

Mike, dealing with his immense grief, finds that he's unable to write novels in his wife's absence, almost as though her death interrupted the ritual that made his books not only find success, but get written in the first place. The final book he wrote, shortly before her passing, would be the last time he would write for four years. He would instead supply his editors with old manuscripts, locked away in a bank vault, while he coped with the loss.

Unable to bring himself to take an actual hiatus and suffering from nightmares about Sara Laughs, their cabin in the forests of Maine, he realizes he needs to find a way to pick his life back up. As soon as he signs off on a $7.5M deal for a three book run, he has an awful dream of arriving at the cabin only to be greeted by Johnanna's coffin...and her apparition rushing towards him out the building's front door.

Answer: Dark Score Lake

Mike is convinced into taking an actual vacation, and though he heads to Key Largo for six weeks, he comes to realize he might be afraid of being unblocked and writing without Jo. It's with this in mind that he makes the decision to face his fears (and his nightmares) and return to Sara Laughs, calling his housekeeper, Bill Dean, and anticipating making his return in time for the Fourth of July. When he left his house, he didn't know he would never end up going back.

Arriving at Dark Score Lake, Mike finds that he arrives at Sara Laughs right at the proper time to align with his dream, right down to the colour of the sky and the amount of plant cover blocking the driveway. As he approaches, unlike his dream, nothing bursts from the door. That said, he catches a brief sight of something from the corner of his eye and, inside the house, he thinks he hears the fading cry of a child. He can't do much besides blame it on the air in the house's new pipes. He sleeps fine through the night with no nightmares to speak of.

Answer: When he's driving down the road

On his first day back on Dark Score, Mike drives into town bound for the local diner when he comes across a young girl, Kyra Devore, walking alone down the center line of the local road. He pulls over and pulls her out of the street just in time for her mother, Mattie, to arrive and introduce herself as one of his neighbours from around the lake. Of particular interest, at least to Mike, is that Kyra has a name similar to the little girl he and Johanna planned to have-- Kia.

The encounter proves to be more complicated than it seemed from the outset when local billionaire Max Devore, Mattie's father-in-law and Kyra's grandfather, calls Mike late at night to ask what he was doing with his relatives. The Fourth of July fireworks go off around the lake as Mike stands up for himself on the intimidating phone call. When Bill arrives at Sara Laughs with some local gossip, he warns Mike not to get too involved; Max Devore is mad, like a Howard Hughes type of crazy, and he's probably in town to claim his granddaughter.

In the days to follow, Mike sets up his writing nook and gets the sense he's not alone. As he finds his old IBM Selectric in Jo's nook, he starts hearing more voices in the cabin, seeing apparitions on the local docks, and feeling that he's not quite alone when he steps into the cellar.

Answer: On the fridge

Mike is served a process by the deputy sheriff who, appearing at Sara Laughs, summons him to town to discuss Kyra's well-being with Devore's legal team. It's for this reason that he hires a child custody lawyer, John, through his agent. Mattie, coincidentally, invites Mike for dinner, and it's through this that he decides to help her out by paying for her legal aid. After dinner, the two chat and Mattie reveals that she believes she might be haunted by ghosts due to some weird occurrences. Mike doesn't tell her, but similar events have been happening in his cabin; letter magnets on his fridge seem to be spelling out small words. He buys more before the end of the evening.

All the while, Mike starts to discover that in her final months, Jo visited Dark Score several times without his knowledge, on one occasion dropping off owl statues and, on another, being spotted with another man at a local baseball game. He has no clue about this though; Jo wasn't the type to cheat, but he has no explanation.

One night, Mike has a dream that he can only compare to a delirium. Sara Tidwell, the woman who the cabin was named for, laughs furiously as he experiences lust and death in his sleep. He wakes up in the upstairs hall with his typewriter by his side, and when he brings it to his office, he finds that he's compelled to start writing.

Answer: Library

After his first morning of writing at the old typewriter, Mike finds that he has eight pages of a book that could be, and their creation is a deeply cathartic act. He cries when he realizes that he might, after four years, be through the worst of his mourning.

His progress is hampered a bit, however, since he's brought in for the deposition and questioned by local attorney Elmer Durgin, a man later discovered to be paid a significant sum by Max Devore. Fortunately, with John Storrow representing Mattie and Romeo Bissonette coming in from Lewiston for Mike, they're well cared for in the unexpected circumstance. What Mike can't prepare for, however, is the notes left on his fridge ('HELP IM DROWN') and the shrieking he experiences when he returns to Sara Laughs.

Over the coming days, Mattie is forced to cut ties with many of her local friends as gossip spreads and Devore pays off officials. She ends up losing her job at the library as a result. In the meantime, Mike asks his housekeeper, Brenda Meserve, about the local area, hoping to understand if its history might be contributing to the odd goings-on in the cabin. Sure enough, she claims the lake might be haunted from all the way back to when Micmacs resided in the woods nearby.

His research into Jo's last months also hits a new obstacle when he discovers that she quit all of her community events and groups in the months leading to her death. He knows she was at Dark Score Lake, somehow, during that time.

Answer: He commits suicide

Mike starts having weird visions in waking life not long after his writing takes shape. On one evening he has a vision of a boy drowning in Dark Score Lake. It's the worst time for coincidence; that's exactly when Max Devore and Rogette Whitmore arrive, taking what seems to be an innocuous stroll along the road. Though Mike warns them away, he finds himself unable to fight back against the older pair, Max with a cane, able to knock the writer into the lake, and Rogette with a strong pitching arm, hurling rocks at him from the shore. The only way Mike can escape and avoid drowning is by swimming out to the float in the water and waiting for them to leave.

The following day, Mike receives a note from Rogette, delivered by local man Richard Osgood. He ends up calling instead of responding to the messenger, speaking to Rogette about the circumstances which, to his surprise, come down to Devore ending the legal battle and heading to California, never to return. It sounds too good to be true... and perhaps a little bit more so when he wakes up to find that Devore committed suicide in the night, suffocating himself in the bathtub with a plastic bag.

Answer: Her brother, Frank

Mike's investigation into Jo's whereabouts continues before he goes asking Frank, her brother, and he confirms that it was him alongside her during her last visit to Dark Score Lake. Something, he claims, seemed to frighten her, and she brought him to the cabin to ensure nothing bad happened to her while she went into the studio. She knew it would be the last time she would walk through the front door, and she knew the house had a way of calling someone to it when it needed them.

Mike finds out more from the people living nearby. Jo, as it seems, was researching Mike's family tree, asking about ancestors, and drawing her conclusions. All of these answers begin to emerge as new messages appear on his fridge, including the name CARLA DEAN, which shows up in his letter magnets. As Mike discovers, the Refrigerator People, as Kyra calls them, are not an isolated incident in his household; they communicate with her as well.

An awful nightmare awaits Mike one night, and in this dream he leaves Sara Laughs for the Fryeburg Fair circa a century ago. He finds Kyra in this dream and she seems to have memory of it upon waking, as he later finds, but the two encounter a ghoulish Sara Tidwell dressed in Mattie's clothes, waiting for them to approach. The pair escape into a ghost house and return to their waking life, an event that Mike experiences with his wife's screams ringing through the cabin.

Receiving a phone call next day, Mike discovers that Mattie has gotten her job back. It's good news to counter the bad, however, as Brenda informs him that Carla Dean was Bill's sister; she died sixty years ago in a fire set at Dark Score Lake. What all of these facts only seem to confirm is that Kyra is at the center of everything. The odd supernatural occurrences all point to her.

Answer: A barbecue

Things unfold quickly for Mike as he begins to put their pieces together. After Brenda lets him know about Carla Dean, she calls back to let him know she can no longer work for him; she quits based on a feeling she had in a dream but she begs him to leave. He can't leave, however, as he's also able to determine that the people of TR-90 have a history of naming their children with names that begin with the letter K, not unlike Sara Tidwell's son. When he goes for a swim later in the evening, he returns to the cabin to find that all of his fridge magnets have vanished.

Rogette Whitmore calls John Storrow and he informs Mike after the fact that $80,000,000 has been left to Mattie on one condition, specifically that she must stay at Dark Score for one year following Max's death. It's an odd request, but one that Mattie is willing to tolerate considering the windfall.

The good fortune is enough for Mattie to suggest a celebration, and it's with that that John Storrow, Romeo Bissonette, and George Kennedy fly in for a barbecue. John gifts Mike a stenomask on the way to the party-- just a silly present to remember the deposition.

As a storm rolls in, the group enjoys their meal, partakes in games, and dances to the music they put on an old radio. After Kyra is put down for a nap in the trailer, the shots ring out; someone drives by with a machine gun and opens fire on Mattie's trailer. Though the others survive (with injuries amongst some of them), Mattie is killed in the attack.

Answer: Under the studio

Though Mattie is killed, George Kennedy grabs a gun from his vehicle and shoots out the car of attackers who, having attended the funeral of local man Royce Merrill, seem compelled to make their move for vengeance. Mike knows he has to get out so he helps the others and puts Mattie to rest before grabbing Kyra and heading back to Sara Laughs through one of the worst storms to pass through Maine. They make it back, fortunately, dry off, and calm down after the tragic events of the day. Kyra, however, sees ghosts in the house. Mike helps her out, giving her Benadryl to sleep, until everything is more or less the way it was in his dreams.

It's then that he runs a bath and goes to grab a knife. He can end it all because that's the right thing to do. Fortunately, he stops himself when he realizes it shouldn't be this way.

Mike resists compulsion when he realizes what the cryptic messages have been telling him to do, and when he looks to his manuscript, investigating the letters on the pages he's written, he discovers that Jo hid a message in his very story to let him know: OWLS UNDER STUDIO. When Jo realized that Indian folklore suggested owls could keep evil at bay, she hid them away for when Mike would need them.

When Mike heads outside, he finds the ghosts of Dark Score watching him, and when he finally makes it out to the studio, he's greeted by the fighting ghosts of what must be Sara and Jo, the former trying to force Mike to act out her aims and the latter trying to protect him. Mike finally makes it to the crawlspace to find Jo's steno books, notes, photographs, and memories of the tragedies people were forced to commit on Dark Score. Last of all, he finds the family tree she'd been researching, indicating that Kyra would, in fact, be the last living person on it, and the last one with a name starting with K.

It's with this knowledge that Mike retrieves a few items from the cabin and proceeds down the street, coming face to face with the ghosts of men who committed awful murders at Dark Score in decades past.

Answer: Lye

As Mike encounters what appears to be a living memory of men killing Sara Tidwell for walking on the street around Dark Score Lake, he uncovers the truth about what happened to her and her son and the reason for her supernatural vengeance. When he awakens, he finds himself near the shore of the lake, dons the stenomask, and digs, uncovering the bodies left behind by Jared Devore and the other men of TR-90 who faced her wrath in subsequent generations. All the while, Jo's ghost protects him from Sara's attacks. All it takes is a bottle of lye. He pours it on the bones and puts an end to the torment.

It isn't quite over, however. When he returns to the cabin, Kyra is gone. As it turns out, Rogette Whitmore never returned to California; she hid in Warrington's across the lake and waited to end the curse herself. Mike follows a trail of ribbons left behind by Kyra and finds the pair on a dock out on Dark Score where Rogette, actually a Devore (and Kyra's aunt this whole time) prepares to finish the job.

Kyra is only saved when Mattie's ghost appears before them and forces Rogette into the water. The remaining wind and waves brought on by the storm do her in as she crashes onto the dock. With no one else to harm Kyra, Mike takes her back to the cabin, burns his useless manuscript in the fireplace, and waits for morning.

All settled at Dark Score, life changes for the better in the coming months. Mike starts working on full adoption of Kyra, and she spends Christmas with him at Frank's. It's likely he will be approved. He sells the house in Derry and moves on to live at Dark Score full-time. Mike never writes another book again, and that's something he's able to come to terms with.