"Ashes On My Pillow" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Dog

In their first day in their new house, Tom and Jillian enjoy dinner without furniture and talk about what they want to see in in their front garden. Jillian doesn't think roses are a good idea because they're dishonest. They look fine, but they're lazy and dangerous. Once they start renovating the house, a gift from Tom's mother, Jillian can have whatever she wants.

They plan to raise a family there, but they have work to do. Their dinner is interrupted by a sound from the basement, and when they check it out, they find that Tom's mother has left a bunch of old items in the house.

A small, black dog emerges from behind some old furniture and they chase it upstairs. Jillian later claims that she once had a stuffed toy just like it when she was five, but lost it somewhere.

Answer: Pretzel

The home renovations happen quickly. After the pair finishes painting a few of the rooms, Tom starts breaking through the walls of others with the help of a friend and Jillian starts working in the garden, encountering their neighbour for the first time. That night, during dinner, Tom and Jillian talk to friends about the trunk they found in the basement containing their childhood tests. Tom urges Jillian to talk about the creepy drawings she used to make about a flexible man named Pretzel Jack who she made into a flip book when she was younger after seeing a contortionist at the circus.

Answer: She tears it up

Tom and Jillian end up at the hardware store to pick up more paint and, while in another aisle, Jillian gets nervous spying on Tom speaking to another woman. They get back home and Jillian checks through the mail, immediately tearing up a hand-written letter from Bill Hope.

She asks Tom about the woman at the store-- Sarah Winters-- and it turns out that Tom worked on her master bedroom a while back. Jillian asks if he slept with her. He explains that he's not like her father. That night, as the lights flicker next to their bed, Jillian has horrible nightmares.

Answer: A gun

The next morning, Tom calls Jillian down into the basement, asking her to picture the far wall on her way. She claims that there's nothing down there, but when she looks, there's actually a blue door where, previously, there was nothing. Tom takes a photo of the door for posterity, claiming never to have noticed it; his mother, on the phone, claims never to have seen it before.

There's no keyhole and it appears to be locked. That night, Tom's coworker, Jason, also struggles to open the door. Jillian jokingly asks if they call the cops, but Jason suggests they open it.

But they can't, even with a sledgehammer. So Jason grabs a gun.

Answer: Stairs

Instead of ceasing all attempts to open the mystery door and against Tom and Jillian's best wishes, Jason grabs a shotgun from his truck and brings that into the basement in an attempt to open the door. Each shot causes the lights in the house to flicker uncontrollably until, eventually, they turn out.

They all don flashlights and, to their surprise, the door still holds but the knob can be wrenched free. Jillian does this herself, creating the hole, opening the latch, and pulling the door to reveal a staircase descending deeper than their basement.

Answer: A handprint

Tom, Jillian, and Jason peer down into the stairwell behind the door as the lights in the house turn back on, but they still need their flashlights to see deeper inside. At the bottom of the stairs, they find another door, this one with a white handprint on it at face level.

This one is locked as well, and Jason intends to shoot the lock off. He's stopped though. They realize that the door leads in the direction of the neighbours' house and they decide to check in with them first. It turns out to be a PhD student renting from the owners, the O'Connells, who've ben there since Tom was a kid, and he doesn't know anything about it.

He does agree that it's all very interesting though, since it ties into his psychology research.

Answer: Mistrust

Jason continues to try to use the shotgun to open the door at the bottom of the stairs and it's clear that not much is going to work. The trio takes a crowbar to the knob and even makes an attempt to saw the knob clean off, but none of it seems to help. Jillian, sitting in front of the door on her own at a later time, decides to knock on it.

She leaves before she can hear it knocking back. At her therapist's office, Jillian brings up the door but can't rationalize it. Her therapist instead turns the discussion to her trust issues, and she brings up the woman at the hardware store.

The doctor tells her that secrets and mistrust feed off one another, so she needs to be wary. He also says that her parents' relationship was an anomaly, so she needs to put them out of her mind.

Answer: Jillian

Jillian gets home from her therapist's office and finds Tom heading out, allegedly to Jason's place. Instead, he heads to a woman's house. Jillian, having followed him, finds this out with her own eyes. She heads home soon after and pours herself a drink before a loud crash sounds from down in the basement. Alone, she heads down and opens the closed door on the far wall.

The stairs are still there, but this time, when she descends them, she places her own hand on the handprint on the far door...and it unlocks. So she opens it. And her flashlight goes out.

Answer: False

On the other side of the second door, after the flashlight begins to work again, Jillian finds an unmarked and unlit room. She moves the flashlight across it and when she does, she finds a figure standing in a corner, facing the wall. It turns around and rushes at her but, as she screams, the figure races up the stairs, contorting itself on the way out.
Jillian calls the police soon after, and Tom returns home, but it appears that whoever was in the basement room is long-gone and unlikely to return. Jillian speaks to the neighbour after the questioning and he speaks cryptically about places which seem 'special'.
That night, Jillian and Tom decide to stay in the house instead of go to a hotel. Jillian sleeps with a knife next to the bed.
The day after the incident behind the second door, Jillian calls Sarah Winters and, as it turns out, Sarah is considering a restraining order for Tom.

Answer: Jason

Tom gets home to find Jillian still awake and the two of them have a discussion about Jillian's returned anxiety. Tom, needing time to think, heads out for a bit. Jillian doesn't notice the man from behind the door reentering the house. Tom takes a drive back to the house he visited the night before. Jillian heads out as well, visiting Jason because she wants to talk to him about Tom.

She asks about Sarah Winters, but a noise is heard from the kitchen. The lights begin to flicker and Tom suggests that maybe it's all in Jillian's head.

As they head back into the living room, they don't notice the same man from the basement as he rights himself and emerges to attack Jason with a knife, stabbing him repeatedly before doing a couple of flips and leaving Jillian alone.