You Like It Darker Trivia Quiz

Answer: An alien

When Mark Carmody's father passes away, he finds the tale that he left behind in an old desk and discovers what really may have happened to his writer dad and his artist friend, Dave, when they headed into 30-Mile Wood for a hunting trip back in 1978.

Shortly before Laird Carmody passed away, Mark tried to keep reporter Ruth Crawford at bay as she tried to get to the bottom of the coincidental and unexpected talents of both Laird and Dave, both of whom rose in their respective fields in their forties despite coming from the middle of nowhere-- Harlow, Maine. She managed to get a bit of info out of Laird, but nothing of substance.

The truth comes out when Laird finally passes away, falling into a coma after breaking his hip outside his home. He bestows upon Mark a key to his desk, and inside this, amongst a pile of newspaper clippings about UFOs, is a spiral notebook containing his story.

If the tale is to be believed, Laird and Dave headed out on their annual camping trip and felt something amiss. With a lack of animal sightings and a number of weird lights in the cloudy, night sky, the two planned to leave early but were met, one night, by what appeared to be an injured woman collapsed on the bridge out of the woods. Providing CPR and oxygen, the men were able to bring her back to consciousness, but not before realizing that she was not human. The pair would be knocked unconscious by a blinding light and, when they came to, they were met by another being, this one thanking them for bestowing the breath of life unto their injured companion. They explained that they were merely visiting the planet to claim souvenirs as Earth was but a small and rare planet containing intelligent life and it would not last much longer. The being left behind what appeared to be a spectacle case, and when the two opened the gift they awoke to find that their latent talents had been pulled forth. While Dave's drawings improved immediately, Laird knew exactly how to start his first novel.

Mark, unsure as to whether or not his father could be telling the truth, heads out to 30-Mile Wood and visits the cabin his father once visited, finding it sealed away, purchased and protected by his dad decades earlier. Inside, on the mantle, he finds the spectacle case. He blows on it, just to make sure it is what his father claimed, and a seam forms on the polished container before disappearing.

Answer: Murder

A retired man, Harold Jamieson, sits to read his copy of the 'New York Times' in Central Park when another man sits on the bench next to him and asks a favour. For $20, the man says, it could save his life.

What the man tells Jamieson is that he'd taken the leap and joined Alcoholics Anonymous to help his problems with addiction, and his sponsor, Randy, gave him the first four steps of the process to complete. For all intents, he claims, it seems to have helped. The fifth step, however, is one he was apprehensive about as it required him to tell a stranger about his wrongdoings. He'd tried a cabbie the day before and was rebuffed, so he decided to try again in the park with Jamieson.

Jamieson accepts the offer to help and what he discovers is that the man lived a life of, at the start, seemingly inconsequential lies-- harmless ones in childhood to start, but more nefarious as time went on. In his adult life he moved around and married a woman for two years, but unable to hide his drinking, the relationship came to an end.

As the man explains, taking Jamieson's hand and coming to the end of his story, he knew he had to stop drinking when that relationship ended, but only after he cut his wife's throat, an action he believed would help-- and it did. The man stabs Jamieson with an ice pick before departing, thanking him for helping with his fifth step.

Answer: The COVID-19 Pandemic

Willie, a young boy who likes bugs and dead birds, is considered weird by everyone, even his own family. One night, after dinner, Willie's sister (Roxie) confides in their mother about his weirdness, worrying that he might have serial killer tendencies. Worse, Willie spends too much time with his grandfather, who already has weird quirks of his own.

That night, while looking at a jar of dying fireflies in his grandfather's room, Willie listens to the man as he tells about his experiences at the Battle of Gettysburg. Willie asks him to tell the story, again, about being on the Nile River with Cleopatra.

When winter arrives, so does a disease from China, and it changes everything. Willie's grandfather, coincidentally, receives a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and as the world goes into lockdown and hospitals are unable to adequately take new patients, the family struggles to take care of him in his final days.

On his grandfather's final night, Willie asks him if he can watch him die. His grandfather agrees, but in his final moments, he pulls Willie close to his mouth. Willie, now changed, informs his family of their loss.

Answer: A murder

One night, Danny Coughlin has a particularly vivid dream of a dilapidated gas station in rural Kansas in which he finds a dog chewing on a buried body-- its hand having emerged from the ground up to its forearm. Unable to shake the feeling of the dream's reality from his mind, he takes a drive out to Hilltop, near the Nebraska state line, finding the old Texaco station and, sure enough, both the hand and the dog are where he dreamed they would be. Nervously, he purchases a prepaid phone and reports the crime before heading home, hoping that his anonymous deed would help.

It does and it doesn't. Danny is identified by the police, partly due to eyewitness accounts and his voice over the phone. The body is found (and ID'ed as a 24-year-old stabbing victim), but the police, led by Inspector Jalbert and his parter, Ella Davis, are certain that Danny is the killer. They search his trailer and approach him at his workplace and, fortunately, he's able to obtain a lawyer in time for questioning at the Manitou Police Department. Despite a lack of evidence and a consistent story, the KBI doesn't seem interested in quitting.

The case escalates when Inspector Jalbert uses the local paper to identify Danny as a potential suspect. He's let go from his job, pestered by Jalbert while running errands in town (often in front of neighbours and locals), and is asked to drive to Grand Bend to give a statement to the KBI. He quickly realizes that Jalbert planted evidence in his vehicle, and after relinquishing it to his lawyer, he avoids being caught out by a local cop (convinced to help by Jalbert) before making it to his appointment.

It's in Grand Bend that Danny expresses his concerns to Davis who, as it turns out, has her own doubts about Danny's guilt. Both determine that Jalbert has been exhibiting odd cases of arithromania and that his actions have been leading to Danny's life becoming less and less safe. With nothing left to stay for, Danny makes it clear he'll be heading to Colorado to live with his brother; the KBI has nothing to keep him around for. Within the next couple of days, Inspector Davis discovers that Jalbert has been planting evidence and causing the difficulties in Danny's life himself; it's enough for her to confront him at his hotel, begging him off the case since it risks all of their work and reputation.

The day before Danny is set to depart, the victim's brother arrives at his house and shoots him, sending him to the emergency room. He survives, fortunately, and during his time in the hospital, the actual murderer, a serial killer from up north, confesses to the crime (and two others) after a fourth victim leaves him no choice. When Inspector Davis informs Jalbert, the latter expresses no guilt.

That night in the hospital, Danny has another dream.

Inspector Jalbert, meanwhile, in a fit of mania, begins to believe that Danny and the actual killer probably knew each other, committing the crimes together as a team. The baseless consideration is enough to send him down to the hospital with a gun in-hand.

Danny, meanwhile, calls Inspector Davis and warns her of his second premonitory dream, one that ends with his death. Rushing from her home, Davis is able to intercept her former partner at the hospital and explains that Danny had to have been telling the truth about his dreams the whole time, otherwise she never would have known he'd show up with his weapon. It's a revelatory moment for Jalbert who, instead, turns the gun on himself and pulls the trigger.

Answer: Misfortune

Ever since Finn was young, he'd been the victim of bad circumstance and ill fate, with events in his life ranging from being dropped as a baby to broken arms to nearly being struck by lightning. His grandmother, as he recalled, used to say that for every stroke of bad luck, God would give two strokes of good; he had yet to see those returned.

It got worse. At the age of nineteen, Finn was mistaken for someone else and kidnapped near his home in Ireland. Locked away in a torture cell he attempted to prove he was not who they said he was-- a man by the name of Bobby Feenie who appeared to have rushed by him at an opportune time-- but it was no use. Unable to provide what his captors were looking for, he was left with little sleep and food. At a point, they even waterboarded him.

As the trials escalated, Finn was eventually brought out of containment. A bag was placed over his head and some of his captors loaded him into a van, explaining that the situation had become too volatile. The leader of the gang was no longer to be trusted; the others feared for their lives. Giving him a stack of cash, they dropped him off in the city, close to his home. Wandering through the neighbourhood, he couldn't help but wonder if it was all a dream.

Answer: A baseball bat

The Brown Family, two parents, their two children, and their Granpop, get in their car and drive off to Derry, Maine to visit Granpop's dying sister and, along the way, they take a misguided turn down an alleged shortcut on Slide Inn Road. Unfortunately, the road narrows and worsens, leading all of the passengers to become impatient with the drive. Hitting a culvert that they deem uncrossable, they realize that they need to reverse back through the field towards the old, burned out Slide Inn, where they can turn around in the driveway, a task that the parents, Frank and Corinne, do alone while Granpop and the children, Billy and Mary, head back on foot.

While Frank and Corinne back up the vehicle, Billy and Mary wander towards the old building and stumble upon two curious men, Pete and Galen, who quickly usher the children back and help move the Brown Family's truck. Unfortunately, by this point, Billy has already seen too much; in the burned out ruins of the Old Slide Inn, he saw a dead body. That's when the men reveal their gun and demand the family's money.

Though Frank and Corinne are too petrified to move, Granpop volunteers to open the trunk and grab the family's belongings, all the while promising more money in the keepsakes and heirlooms he's brought along to his sister's. One of these items, as he reveals, is an old, autographed bat, and when Billy distracts the men, Granpop uses it as a weapon to disarm and smash their captors. Once they feel safe enough to escape, they grab their things, accidentally leaving the bat, and get out, leaving Slide Inn Road in a hurry and returning home.

Answer: An iPhone

Detective Frank Wilson, already feeling nagged at home, gets called into the station to deal with an unexpected situation. A murderer, Lennie, is brought in for his statement, having evidently killed his wife, Arlene. The problem, Frank discovers, is that Lennie believes he hasn't seen his wife in quite a while as her body had been taken by an alien at some point in the recent past. He goes on to explain that he read about it on the Dark Web-- the alien picks at you and picks at you and makes you depressed, breaking you down gradually until you lose all self respect. When he saw the 'red screen', he knew. It appeared for only a couple of seconds.

When Frank returns home, he begins realizing that his wife, Sandi, is doing things-- subtle things-- that are making him angrier and angrier throughout the night. Before bed, he gets the call from the station; Lennie stabbed himself in the jugular with a pencil while he was in his cell.

That night, when they go to bed, Sandi tells him the truth, specifically that she's going through premature menopause and that her mood hasn't been quite the same. Frank explains that, despite this, he loves her all the same. As he nods off to sleep, he doesn't notice the screen on his phone blink red for a few seconds. Sandi smiles in the darkness.

Answer: The Facilitator

Craig Dixon, a Turbulence Expert, is called into action by his Facilitator only a couple of days after landing in Boston, having just come in from a rough flight from Seattle. Unfortunately, he has no choice but to take the ride, flying down to Sarasota, Florida within the next day. He takes his usual seat, booked for him in advance, as usual, and waits it out.

There are a couple of odd characters seated on each side of Craig on this flight-- the brash-until-he-starts-drinking Frank Freeman, and Mary Worth, who's flying to the Siesta Keys for a getaway with her girlfriends. Both of them seem to be perfectly fine seatmates.

The flight hits its unexpected clear-air turbulence 34,000 feet over South Carolina, during which the plane is tossed in the air in an almost supernatural way. Craig has a vision of the aircraft's destructive fate, but as soon as his premonition comes to an end, the flight rights itself and continues on its course to Sarasota without further issue.

It's coincidence that Mary Worth ends up needing a ride to the Siesta Keys, and it's a good opportunity for him to chat with her about the flight. It's his job, he says, to be a terrified passenger on flights as they hit turbulence. In fact, it's the only way to prevent them from crashing, no matter how safe people believe air travel to be. She admits she saw it-- the crash-- though it never seemed to happen. Despite her hesitation, Craig asks her for a card and he later hands it over to his Facilitator after they part ways.

When Mary gets back to Boston, she receives the call and she speaks to the Facilitator for a good amount of time. She's on a flight the next day, this time heading to Dallas. The turbulence strikes over Oklahoma.

Answer: Lloyd's dog

Six months after his wife's death, Lloyd Sunderland's sister, Beth, brings him a new puppy, leaving it with him intentionally and buying him everything he needs to take care of it-- all this despite his protests. It's against his better judgment that he names it Laurie, a name that just came to him and seemed right.

The puppy slides into his life without much issue. There's a battle to ensure she's housebroken; sometimes he's woken up in the night (where he spends time staring at the stars). By October, he declares she's off probation, and by the time he visits his sister in Boca Raton, things are good, so much so that he books an appointment with his doctor. He receives a clean bill of health-- everything is fine-- but going in the first place was likely due in part to having the dog.

In December, while walking Laurie out by the boardwalk, Lloyd finds a local man, Don, on the ground, bleeding to death with an alligator's jaws wrapped around his head. He unclips Laurie, sending her home moments before the alligator lashes out. Fortunately, Lloyd is able to use Don's cane to keep the beast at bay, at least until the boardwalk crumbles under his feet, barely saving him from the creature.

Lloyd is able to return to Laurie, rushing her home and calling 911 to report the incident (and death). He's later told that the alligator was likely there all summer-- they'd walked by it several times before-- protecting its nest from predators. In the moments after hearing this news, Lloyd muses on what Laurie might be thinking when she looks at him.

Answer: Vic Trenton

Widower Vic Trenton takes summer 2020, during the uncertain days of the COVID-19 pandemic, to stay at his friend Greg's place in Florida while he mourns the passing of his wife, Donna, who he met by chance (again) ten years ago and remarried-- an interesting turn of events considering the death of their son, Tad, back in 1980. It's here, staying on Rattlesnake Key, that he meets his eccentric neighbour, Allie Bell, who walks around the beaches pushing a double-pram she claims contains her two sons, Jacob and Joseph. Unfortunately, the pair died nearby forty years ago, having been bitten by a nest of poisonous rattlesnakes. After that day, locals killed off all the snakes in the region, forcing them out altogether.

The night after meeting with Allie, Vic dreams of the twins, pushing their pram for them despite there being rattlesnakes in the seats. Even when he wakes up he believes he can hear the squeaking wheel of the carriage. The next day, the plot thickens when he finds Allie on the road near her mailbox, being eaten by buzzards. The autopsy would later show she had a heart attack, a result of an already-known heart condition.

It only takes another night before Vic awakens to find the pram outside in his courtyard. He pushes it back to Allie's house, leaving it in the garage, but along the way he enters a fugue state wherein he sees what happened to the boys four decades ago. He decides that it would be worth his while to leave Florida-- something isn't right-- but his plans change quickly.

It starts with visions, sometimes of rattlesnakes and corpses, but sometimes of the stroller, reappearing in his house without anyone pushing it (though he can hear the squeaking). Then, local retired policeman Andy Pelley, after discovering a revised last will and testament, determines that Vic had motive to kill Allie since she named him the recipient of all her belongings, including her property. Their meeting becomes an interrogation and Vic is required to stay in the region until an inquest is made. Before Pelley departs, Vic realizes the stroller is moving out near his car.

The situation worsens with the ghosts of the boys appearing before Vic in his house as the forms of two grown men with swollen child heads. Realizing he has to do something rash, he dresses the boys' stroller up and rolls them out to the boardwalk towards the whirlpool that remains where Duma Key once rose from the water. Here, where the boys met their end with the rattlesnakes, he pushes their pram out to the swirling eddy and lets them drown there, finally ridding himself of their influence.

As Vic stands near the water's edge and looks across, he sees the once-sunken Duma Key where it should have been, and a man who looks like his son watching from a distance. And in a blink, both vanish.

Answer: H. P. Lovecraft

After two tours in Vietnam, William Davis returned home to Maine and got a job at a temp agency, leaning into his surprisingly honed skills as a stenographer. Within his year on the job with Temp-O, he sees a compelling ad from someone known only as 'The Gentleman Scientist' looking for a stenographer of confidential and phlegmatic temperament.

It's why he drove out to Dark Score Lake and met Elgin who, after a brief interview, gave him a job and space in the rooming house on the property starting in July. During this initial meeting, William noticed that all of Elgin's books were about sleep including, as a sore thumb, the H.P. Lovecraft book "Beyond the Wall of Sleep". William had to ask-- were the experiments about getting beyond the wall? Elgin replied it was about getting under the wall.

William arrived at the rooming house shortly after and familiarized himself with Elgin's notes, specifically the driver's licenses and surveys filled out by his varied test subjects. The first of these was Althea Gibson who, after drinking a glass of diluted Flurazepam, was told to focus on a picture of a house and imagine what's inside of it. Once inside she needed to head into the living room and find the crack in the floor. Then, if she could find it, she needed to pull it open and lift up the floor to report on her findings. Ten minutes later William and Elgin noted odd reactions to the task starting with an uncanny baring of teeth and sharp hand movements. When she awoke, she claimed to see her Grampa's house and there, lifting the heavy floor, she saw darkness and smelled an awful odour.

When William asked, Elgin claimed that this whole experiment was a way for him to know what holds the universe together. Althea wasn't strong enough to lift the floor entirely and see, but someone else might be. It took another four experiments with other people before someone saw anything new, using their time under sedation to write, for fifteen seconds, in Vietnamese, the phrase "The moon is full of demons." William worried that something, somewhere, knew he would understand the writing.

The seventh experiment was the last one and the subject was Burt Devereaux. During his time under sedation, the men watched as Burt's eyes split open and fine tendrils of darkness spread toward the one-way glass protecting them from the testing room. Although Burt's eyes healed themselves after the event, it was apparent that something was wrong; Burt's breath had changed to something foul and his body had let go. The black tendrils, having separated themselves from Burt's body, floated in the corner of the room and Elgin collected some as a sample

William, worried about their safety and knowing that Burt was beyond saving, disposed of the man's body, leaving it in his car at a rest stop quite a distance away. By the time he hitchhiked back, Elgin had already opened "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", entered the house, and attempted his own experiment. William, finding Elgin's body on the couch, its head wrapped in black tendrils, saw his name written in these filaments on the one-way mirror: WILLIAM DAVIS. Before departing, he opened the gas lines and tossed in Elgin's lighter, leaving the aftermath to be considered a freak accident.

William returned to Temp-O, just to have a job if the cops came by. They did, but nothing came of it; it was believed Elgin died in the gas explosion, and William was left alone after that. He drove to Nebraska in the fall, attempting to put distance between himself and Maine, even if the events would forever haunt him.

Answer: Three

Phil Parker met the Answer Man three times in his life, and the first instance was in 1937 when he was 25 years old. Faced with the dilemma of joining his long-time girlfriend (now fiancée), Sally Ann, in moving to Boston to work for a large lawfirm or remaining in his hometown of Curry, NH, he spotted the man's signs driving along a rural road. Finding the man seated at a table, he was presented with a cost of $25 for five minutes of questions he would receive the true answers to. The only catch was that he could not ask 'should I...?' questions; the Answer Man could answer questions, but not solve Phil's problems.

During this first visit, he discovers that he would both marry Sally Ann and live, happily, in Curry, NH. Looking beyond this, he discovered that there would be a war in four years and two months; he would be in it; he would not be hurt and he would not die. At the end of his five minutes, the world around him swam to grey and he woke up behind the wheel of his Chevrolet.

And it all happened like that, but with more details in life. After marriage, he opened the firm, himself, in New Hampshire and was quickly successful. When war broke out, he joined the military, and when he left, Sally Ann was pregnant with their child. He would come back a Medal of Honor recipient and a war hero. His son, Jake, would be three years old then. It would be hard for Phil to determine if the Answer Man told his future or made it happen.

Life progressed well into the 1950s when Phil saw the Answer Man a second time, this time offering services near Jake's school for a $50 charge for three minutes of questions. This time, the questions and answers were different: Phil would not run for a senate seat despite recent developments in his life; his son would not play pro baseball and, in fact, would find no future in sports. When he asked if his son would be okay, his time had already run out.

Jake would lose interest in sports by the time television came into the Parker household, and it would momentarily fuel a love for writing western stories. Soon, however, Jake would start sustaining nosebleeds, and a doctor would inform Phil and Sally Ann that he was afflicted with acute lymphocytic leukemia. He would pass away in 1953.

In the years to follow, Sally Ann would decline as well, though from vices sustained in her grief. She would die on election night in 1960, driving her vehicle home from the bar, and her father would suffer a heart attack upon hearing the news, dying only a few days later.

Sally Ann's death resulted in years of depression for Phil that would only be remedied by the work he could do for his community and customers. After suing the New England Freedom Corporation for negligence, taking millions from them over five years of legal battles, he would find massive success in his field. By the time he retired in the 1980s, he would be declared Curry's #1 citizen.

In the 1990s, then in his later years, Phil started getting migraines, symptoms of a brain tumour according to his specialists.

It was October 1995 when Phil got in his car one last time and drove to Curry, knowing he would find the Answer Man waiting. He found the signs on the road outside of town and, seated before the ageless man, he discovered that all of his answers would be free. He only had one question though-- Do we go on after we die?

When the Answer Man said yes, the greyness came one last time.