"Graveyard Rats" Trivia Quiz

Answer: A gold tooth

Two men break into a graveyard, dig six feet down, and crack into a long-resting casket to find the corpse rotting inside. Their reward isn't the corpse, but her jewellery; they start removing her rings and accessories as they comment on the beauty she probably had in life. Heaving themselves out of the plot, they're surprised to find a man waiting for them to emerge. Holding them at gunpoint he reveals himself as Masson, the steward of what he calls this 'garden of remembrance'. He tells them that they should have more respect for the dead before sending them away into the night.

Little do these men know, Masson's not a cemetery keeper at all, but just a better graverobber. He waits until they leave to remove a gold tooth from the corpse's mouth, accidentally dropping it into the casket. When her reaches in to grab it, it's to his own surprise that he's bitten by a rat.

Answer: Salem

Down by the docks, Masson arrives and trades his find from the graveyard to find that it's much less valuable than he initially believed. With his debts mounting and his continued losses at the card tables looming over him, his situation grows more and more dire. The problem, he says, is that there are too many rats. Often he'll get to a coffin and open it to find nothing inside because the rats have cleaned it out. It's an epidemic!

And it always has been, Masson continues, as rats have always reached Salem's port on old trading ships and remained there. In other countries, he says, people worship rats. Back when Cotton Mather rid Salem of its evil cultists, there was known to be a network of caverns beneath its streets. Heaven knows what's breeding down there. Worse is that he can't seem to get to the rats in their fortifications-- not only are they too deep, but he's claustrophobic.

Masson pleads for a bit of mercy while he deals with the problem. He has one week to solve it, otherwise he'll be buried in the cemetery he's working in.

Answer: A small vial

Masson proceeds through Salem to an unmarked establishment and performs the special knock on the door to get Dooley's attention. Dooley drags him in, much to his own frustration, and reminds Masson that he was asked never to come back. Masson is there to see if there's anything promising but there's nothing of real consequence; only paupers and vagrants have been brought to his facilities. Masson insists either way on having a look at any recent corpses, just to make sure, and he even brings forth his bribe, a small vial of 'The Devil's Elixir', and that's just enough to do the trick.

Answer: A sabre

Masson descends into the autopsy chamber and finds four bodies laid on their tables but none of them bear any valuables of note. There is, however, another room curtained off and though Dooley tells Masson not to look, he does anyways, finding a deceased shipping merchant, and a wealthy one at that. One look in the corpse's mouth shows rows of gold teeth. Masson fights to claim them but Dooley reasons with him that they can't, otherwise he'll be found out.

The fight is for naught anyways as Dooley's colleague enters the chamber with the family of the deceased. Masson and Dooley hide, overhearing all of the wishes of the dead man's wife, notably that his presentation be upheld, his medals be affixed to his breast in his coffin, and that he be buried with a sabre gifted to him by King George, his most-prized possession.

That night, Masson returns home after an evening of drinking, settles into bed, and suffers a nightmare in which he sees rats tear a hole through his ceiling and pour through en masse.

Answer: That the body has been taken already

Masson attends the funeral of the shipping merchant, arriving early to find the body in its open casket. He arrives before the family of the deceased and welcomes them to the funeral indicating to them that he will be responsible for delivering the body to its final resting place in the cemetery. He assures them that he will do so with the utmost care.

At the cemetery, Masson watches on as the widow shovels the first dirt onto the coffin in its plot.

That night, he's already digging up the grave. He hits the casket with his shovel and, to his surprise, he already hears the sound of rats squeaking inside. Tearing off the lid, he opens what appears to be an empty casket. He only barely notices the feet of the body being pulled into a hole at the end of the coffin. He reaches in to grab it and shines his flashlight inside, but there's no way to solve his problem but to go in after it. The only thing that prevents his claustrophobia from taking over is his knowledge that if he doesn't pay his debt, he'll be in a coffin himself.

Answer: Pulls on a loose root

Removing his thick jacket, Masson crawls into the hole in the end of the coffin, flashlight in-hand, and pursues the body as it's dragged into the narrow, labyrinthine tunnels beneath the cemetery, actually gaining on it until he places his hand directly into loose soil, uncovering a deep hole heading down directly in front of him.

He proceeds with caution from that point...until a loose root jabs him in the eye as he crawls. Angrily he tugs the root loose, but with it comes a rain of stones, rubble, and soil from above.

He's barely able to crawl free of the cave-in though it does rattle him, triggering a claustrophobic fit. He shouts down the tunnel, warning the rats of his vengeance, before he sets out again.

Answer: Skeletons

Masson resumes crawling and motivating himself until he hears the awful sound of a swarm of rats in the tunnel behind him and while he crawls as fast as he can he's unable to avoid being overtaken by the creatures. In a moment of impulse, he grabs his gun and fires it into the swarm, accidentally hitting the tip of his foot in the process. Doing so, however, awakens the beast in the adjacent tunnel, a massive mother rat feeding its young in the darkness.

The creature approaches Masson as he grabs his gun and as it lets off an awful roar he fires on it, angering it into pursuit through the narrow tunnels and their walls. Eventually, Masson falls through one of the pits he'd tried to avoid, plummeting through the earth and into a pit of skeletons, much to his dismay.

Answer: A black church

Once Masson takes stock of where he is, he sifts through the bones and skeletons and finds that he's managed to locate the mother lode-- anything the rats couldn't eat ended up in the pit with the bones of the deceased. He roots through the payload and pockets as much as he can, soon coming across the sabre possessed by the shipping merchant.

As Masson gets to his feet he realizes that he's in a much more concerning chamber than he realized. He pans the flashlight around the room to see a statue of a many-tentacled being seated along the wall and realizes he's in a black church. Opposite the statue is a praying skeleton kneeling and adorned with a striking gold necklace. Masson can't help himself from reaching for it but as he does, the skeletal being comes to life, gripping his arms and screaming at him as he tries to pull free. The skeleton bites off his ear as it strives to reclaim its jewellery though Masson is able to crawl away and back up another tunnel...or at least try.

Answer: A rock

Masson crawls upwards, grabbing roots and rocks as he ascends as fast as he can. He prays out loud to God that he squeeze his way through the narrow, claustrophobic tunnels and, to his amazement, he's able to reach another chamber; he's able to stand inside (though he hits his head on the boulder in the low ceiling above). As the skeleton continues to chase behind, he does his best to grip at the boulder and pull it loose, intending to block off the corridor he came from. To his disappointment, however, another corridor further along allows him to catch another glimpse of the mother rat, finally having located him once again.

Trapped with no other directions to take, Masson takes the sabre in his hand and brandishes it at the giant rodent. It leaps at him nonetheless, succeeding in knocking it from his grip, but Masson grabs at another loose root instead, this time bringing the boulder crashing down on the beast, killing it once and for all, but triggering another cave-in.

Answer: No

Though Masson destroys the giant rat he's not out of the clear quite yet. The cave-in manages to keep the living skeleton at bay, but it reaches out for him and convinces him to keep moving. Further up a tunnel, he shines his light upwards to see a glimmer of hope and he pursues it, believing it to be his way out of the labyrinth. It isn't though. When he reaches the end of the tunnel he finds nothing more than a reflective placard on the inside of a coffin. At the dead end, he's overtaken by all of the rats as they start to feast and extinguish his only light.

Some time later, graverobbers crack into a coffin, opening it to find Masson's dead body adorned in all of the jewels and trinkets he found in the tunnels. As they reach towards him, rats emerge from their hiding places in the casket and from within Masson's body.