Lisey's Story Trivia Quiz

Answer: The groundbreaking of a library

Lisey Landon has been spending time organizing her late husband, Scott's, office suite. After two years, she has finally gotten around to jumping in and cataloguing his unpublished works, many of which have never been seen by readers. Lisey is concerned somewhat by what she calls 'incunks', people wheedling for Scott's works, bothering her endlessly.

She has help in the organization in the form of her older sister, Amanda, who isn't really 'all there', but she helps none-the-less, looking through the piles of works along the southern wall of the cottage, not only cataloguing, but noting the ones in which Lisey is featured. Lisey later finds pictures that Scott took and realizes the emotions that she gets from viewing them. All the while, she has dreams of her late husband. Lisey begins to read through the articles and books amongst the snake of books winding along the south wall, beginning with a clipping and photo from the Nashville "American".

She quickly remembers the time, from the trip from Maine to Nashville, to the bad omens she had that morning, to an unorganized ceremony, unscripted and humid. Lisey recalls that perhaps herself, Scott, and the man who wrote the article, Tony Eddington, were the only ones who knew the true story of that near-tragic event.

After fueling the crowd Scott spoke with some of his colleagues regarding the event, but unbeknownst to them, a blond attacker (Gerd Allen Cole) emerged from the crowd and shot Scott in the side. While Scott stumbled off to the nearby parking lot, Lisey hit Allan Cole twice in the face with the silver shovel used to dig for the groundbreaking ceremony. Following Scott, she waited for the ambulance to arrive, all the while listening to his cryptic statements, assuming that all this time, he was merely in shock. Lisey puts the article away on the booksnake and sits for a moment before a phone, unused for years, rings into action. She leaves it for the machine, and the man on the other end says that they'll try again later. When Lisey goes to bed that night, she gets the urge to search for the silver shovel.

Answer: A teacup

Lisey makes dinner first, knowing that food would get her mind off of the shovel, and it does, but only until she reaches dessert. With the impulse to go to the barn and find the shovel, she does, but she gets the odd feeling when she goes that it isn't the only reason she should. The unused phone rings once more, and it turns out to be her sister, Darla, calling because of an emergency; Amanda had another of her big tantrums, cutting herself in the process, this time because her ex-husband remarried. Lisey suggests sending her to a home in the Two Cities, but Darla is insistent that she come help her, since she was always the calm one. Lisey says that she's on her way, but she then notices the silver shovel amongst the belongings that Scott has along the wall. By chance, she also comes upon a large box filled with at least a thousand pages of work, and looking on the top, she notices that the story's title is 'Ike Comes Home'. Before she picks up the work, the phone rings a second time, and this time, a man is on the other line. He gives her the name 'Zack McCool' before telling her that he will get Scott's work by any means necessary, even if it means coming down and causing her harm. She lets him know how she feels and hangs up the phone. She remembers Darla and Amanda and decides to lock up, but she quickly decides to check the large story in the box, only to find that it's a couple sentences of work:
"Ike came home with a boom, and everything was fine. BOOL! THE END!"
Lisey laughs at this, discovering that the rest of the pages are just blank.
Lisey proceeds to Amanda's house and Darla rushes out, saying that Amanda cut herself again, this time on a teacup, and while she went to the bathroom. Lisey walks inside to find blood all over the walls of the kitchen and Amanda sitting at the table. Lisey strips her sister down and takes her into the shower to wash her off, and so that they can all go to the hospital together, since she knows that her wounds won't heal over with a band-aid. As Lisey picks Amanda up from the table, Amanda whispers a word that Lisey gets goosebumps from: 'Bool'.
They head to the hospital, where they decide to let the doctor know that although it wasn't the first incident of Amanda's where she harmed herself, she was feeling quite better, and although the doctor later tells Lisey that he believes this, he tells her to read a certain book called "Cutting Behavior", which Lisey actually says she read, as it was Scott's idea during Amanda's first incident. She says she'll reread it and give it to her sisters after.

Answer: Greenlawn Recovery and Rehabilitation Center

Lisey spends the night with Amanda in order to ensure that she doesn't have an additional accident. While in bed with her, she dreams of Scott on a night that may have changed her life forever. After coming home from work, Lisey anticipated an evening with Scott, but when she got home, she found herself getting angrier and angrier. After six hours of waiting, Scott finally got home, drunk, and Lisey let him have it. Scott told her to wait as he left out the back door and ran down the hill. When he came back up, he had cut himself numerous times on a pane of greenhouse glass, saying that it was his blood-bool to her. Lisey is shocked by this and helps him in the house, removing shards of broken glass and taking him to the washroom. Scott tells her that he learned about bools from his father, and he and his brother were the best at them. After soaking his hand in light tea (a remedy that his brother taught him), he states that Landons are fast healers, and he'll be fine by morning. They go to bed, with Lisey telling him that she'll take him to the hospital in the morning.
In the middle of the night, Lisey wakes up twice. The first time, she finds herself alone in bed, and she checks the washroom for Scott only to find that it's empty. When she gets back to the bed, she finds that he was there the whole time, though she doubts this. The second time, Scott wakes her, saying that they should get married. Later in the morning, she accepts the offer, and they decide to wed in November. Later that week, Scott's wounds have fully healed, not even leaving scars.
When Lisey wakes up, she finds herself embracing Amanda, but she has the feeling it's actually Scott. These feelings make her temperature drop when Amanda says 'Babyluv', a word that Scott and she used. When Lisey asks Amanda about bool, she replies saying that Lisey has a blood-bool coming but she has good bool at the moment. As well, she has found her first three stations of bool and she has a few more to get before her prize. When Lisey turns Amanda over, she finds that she has gone into a semi-catatonic state, which she has done before. When she discovers that she can't take care of this alone, she calls Darla, and the two help Amanda out for a few hours before deciding to call the Greenlawn Recovery and Rehabilitation Clinic. Initially, they say that they have no rooms, but when Lisey asks for Dr. Alberness, a man that Scott spoke with before his death, they say that a room is available.

Answer: A dead cat

After Darla and Lisey drop Amanda off at the Rehabilitation Center, Lisey drives home and thinks about the stations of the bool, contemplating over whether or not the bools left for her are her memories or her keepsakes, or something else entirely. Lisey stops at a convenience mart to pick up a pack of cigarettes, a habit she and Scott gave up many years ago, and she smokes a few from the pack in her car while reminiscing about her honeymoon with Scott at a place called 'The Antlers'. She followed Scott into the woods that day and they ate lunch under a willow tree they affectionately named the Yum Yum Tree. Lisey snaps out of it about an hour later and remembers her time with Scott in the hospital, which happened shortly after he was shot in Nashville. The nurse looking after him went in to see if he was okay but found him missing. When she checked back later on, he was in his normal bed, as if nothing happened. Remembering the sequence of events, Lisey figures that her next station of the bool would take them to her honeymoon at the Yum Yum Tree, but to determine this, she must find Good Ma's Cedar Box, a keepsake passed down to her by her mother.
Returning home, Lisey passes by a PT Cruiser and waves at the driver, something customary around her house. When she reaches into her mailbox to retrieve her deliveries, she finds a dead cat inside, and upon heading in her back door, she finds a note from Zack McCool, who left the cat as a warning to her, as well as Professor Woodbody's number in Pittsburgh. She then realizes that Zack was the man in the PT Cruiser before she removes the cat from the mailbox, placing it into a plastic bag. She calls the Professor soon after, who tells her that he is very sorry, but Zack McCool (who he thinks is actually named Jim Dooley) will not stop, as he is a very shady man who seems to know Scott's work. Although Lisey recognizes his apology, she still calls the police, who stop by to take the note and the cat and stand watch outside her house. Before they arrive though, Lisey goes to her car to retrieve the silver shovel, and along the way she thinks that she sees a figure near the barn, but she can't be sure.
When the cops leave, Lisey searches the house top to bottom, literally, clearing the attic, spare bedroom, and cellar for the Cedar Box. When Lisey gets a call from Boston from her sister, Canty, she realizes that she forgot about the notebook given to her by Amanda when she cleaned the booksnake in the study, and as she flips through it, on the last page it reads: '4th station: look under the bed.' Lisey looks under the bed but only finds a pair of slippers, but when she looks to the back of the book, she finds the word 'mein gott', and her mind flips to her and Scott's time in Germany, which was really a horrible time; Scott stopped writing, Lisey was unhappy, and the time they spent together wasn't in sobriety. Regardless, Scott shipped the bed back to the States years later, and it is here that Lisey finds the fourth station of the bool.

Answer: Paul

Lisey is both happy and angry; sure, she's found the fourth station, but she also has to relive another memory, and perhaps one that is bit overwhelming for her. In her anger she tears apart a bit of the study, throwing Scott's awards onto the floor (luckily not breaking them). She figures that in his last years, he set up the bool hunt for her, but she can't figure out why.
Her mind flips to The Antlers and the Yum Yum Tree. The owners of the hotel set up their lunch and told them to go snowshoeing, as there was an odd October snowstorm at the inn. As the made their way through the woods, they found a Yum Yum Tree, which was simply a grand willow tree covered in snow. Going inside, they found that the atmosphere was still warm and temperate under the canopy, and it is at this time that Scott told her about his past. The first story was about his brother, himself, and his father performing a bool to get out the bad gunky, and how he would do anything to help his brother. Though Paul cut his brother to do this blood-bool, Landons were fast healers, and no harm was done. The second story was about what Scott calls 'the great bool', perhaps an 'excellent bool'. Paul set up a treasure hunt for his brother consisting of sixteen stations of the bool, and at the end, they had RC Cola as a reward. Scott recognizes this as the best day of his life. Before Scott begins another story, they note that the Yum Yum Tree is caving in as the snow is melting. Lisey quickly discovers that Paul, Scott's brother, was killed by his father many years later; he was shot in the basement of their house. Lisey was more shocked by the fact that Scott killed his own father later, hitting him in the head with a pickaxe, and then throwing his body down the property well. The Yum Yum Tree breaks apart then.
When Lisey snaps out of her memory, the phone rings, startling her. It turns out to be Darla, who tells Lisey that Canty is coming come to help with the Amanda situation. When Lisey hangs up she goes to the barn to return the cedar box, and upon finding the answering machine blinking in the office, she finds a message from 'Zack McCool'/Jim Dooley, who also turns out to be in the same room. He manages to knock her out with chloroform, and then chain her to a pipe under the bar to beat her. Using a large can opener, he also manages to mutilate her in certain parts of her body before leaving, telling her not to call the cops or tell a single person, and to say that she needs to do something about her husband's works before 8pm the next day.

Answer: Sweetheart Hill

Lisey wakes up hours later in pain. Crawling across the floor, she spies the overturned cedar box on the ground and a certain item she overlooked; a piece of a yellow afghan that she and Scott received on their wedding day. This was another station of the bool.
She first remembers 1996 where, at the end of the year, the first signs of illness showed in Scott, and slowly, he began a descent that would lead to his early death. One evening, she found Scott in a rocking chair watching "The Last Picture Show", but he had gone 'gomer', or catatonic, so to speak. She then remembers The Antlers, during the night after the Yum Yum Tree. Scott tells his third story about his past, this time about the death of his brother, Paul. One day when he was 10 and Paul was 13, Paul had waited for Scott to descend the stairs in their house before attacking him. At once, Paul knew that his brother was filled with the bad-gunky, driving him to madness. Narrowly avoiding attack, his father stopped the boy, taking him to the basement and chaining him to fastened items in the cellar. For three weeks covering Christmas and New Years, Scott watched the time take its toll on his brother, who may not have even inhabited his body at the time. Scott tells Lisey that he tried three times to take him to 'their place', Boo'Ya Moon, which is the real world inside out, like a pocket; a world that only he and his brother could get to. Every time Scott tried this though, it didn't work, and the third time resulted in Paul's death, as they needed to kill him to save their own lives. In The Antlers, Lisey asks where they buried Paul, and Scott mentions that he took him to Boo'Ya Moon, to a place called Sweetheart Hill. Lisey recognizes this as a place where they went in order to escape the falling snow of the Yum Yum Tree.
In the present time, Lisey realizes the truth behind her bool hunt. Perhaps Scott realized what would happen, and perhaps she could get to Boo'Ya Moon, something she would never have done, else she would have been driven mad like the Landons and the Landreaus before them. Lisey has been there before though. She vaguely remembers the end of their second night at The Antlers, where Scott pulled her into Boo'Ya Moon with him. To do this, she realizes, she must 'go behind the purple', but before this, she remembers her throbbing wound inflicted by Jim Dooley and she returns to the house for more medication.

Answer: False

Lisey rushes into the house and makes Scott's tea solution for her wound. As she rushes to the bathroom she takes a Vicoden and rests on her bed realizing that she needs to get past the purple curtain in her mind and reach Boo'Ya Moon to heal herself in the pool that Scott speaks of. She remembers her first trip to Boo'Ya Moon, where Scott took her to Sweetheart Hill and into the Fairy Forest to visit Paul's grave, which Scott says he dug with a toy shovel from their childhood sandbox (since no larger shovels would pass into Boo'Ya Moon with him. As Lisey hears a familiar silver bell on the wind, they find a second sign next to Paul's grave, pointing 'TO THE POOL'. As laughers, creatures who run on four legs but sometimes on two, begin their maniacal cackles in the night, they teleport back to The Antlers, where Lisey goes to work forgetting what had just happened to protect herself.
Lisey imagines Boo'Ya Moon and teleports herself, the shred of yellow afghan, and the silver shovel into Sweetheart Hill, and she manages her third trip to Scott's place. She realizes that it's twilight as she rushes through the Fairy Forest on her way to the pool. Coming across the bell she heard on both previous visits to Boo'Ya Moon, she recognizes it as a silver bell from her first place of employment, and Scott nabbed it for her as a joke. She leaves the silver shovel under the silver bell, feeling that it's the right thing to do. As night falls, she arrives at the pool, and her memories of her second trip to Boo'Ya Moon cross into her mind.
During Lisey's second trip to Boo'Ya Moon, it was 1996, and Scott had 'gone'. She got through to Scott enough to take her into Boo'Ya Moon where she found him near the pool wrapped in her mother's yellow afghan, and she managed to snap him out of his state. However, in doing this, she walked into the Fairy Forest, where his longboy found them. Luckily, they were able to teleport back into their guest room, where they had left, but they lost the afghan on the way. Paul lived a few more months before passing away. Once again, Lisey blocked this from her mind until now.
During this third time, Lisey dips herself into the pool and claims her 'bool prize', which usually turned out to be a Coke or RC Cola for Scott, but for her, it turned out to be two refreshing sips of the pool in which she healed. Lisey quickly teleports back across the purple curtain to her bedroom, soaking wet. She climbs off her bed feeling much better than before, knowing that she had done the right thing in Boo'Ya Moon.

Answer: Hollyhocks

Lisey heads to Greenlawn feeling much better physically. She knows entirely that her sips from the pool of Boo'Ya Moon were effective. Upon arriving, Lisey makes a mental note to memorize the image of her car though she can't put her finger on why. When Lisey goes to visit Amanda, her sister still has her vacant stare fixed on her face, gazing into the distance. Lisey realizes where she is and quickly attempts to travel to Boo'Ya Moon to help her. Landing in a similar pool to Scott's, Lisey finds Amanda sitting at the edge, which hasn't changed at all. Amanda, no longer cut in this version of her world, stares at a large sailboat in her pool known as 'Hollyhocks' from a pirate game she and the other girls would play when she was younger.

She and Lisey talk to each other as fast as possible and Amanda says that Scott knew Lisey would come save her. Lisey finally realizes that Scott knew about Amanda's condition, seeing her at the pool, and wanted to help her. The two of them talked in Boo'Ya Moon about Lisey. Lisey has Amanda fix the image of her car in her mind, and the two of them manage to pull themselves back across the curtain into the real world, where Amanda is back to (if not sharper than) her old self. The two of them quickly drive off, knowing that they'd have explaining to do at Greenlawn, but they had no time. Amanda reveals that all along, Scott knew, even down to the fact that he gave Amanda piles of notebooks on her birthday before he died, knowing they'd come in handy. Lisey pulls into Castle Rock State Park and the two celebrate in the rain before calling Darla and Canty, who, as it turns out, haven't even left the airport. Canty's flight was delayed by storms. Both are shocked by Amanda's recent recovery, but Lisey and Amanda divert them to Derry, a much further drive, so that they can set their plan into motion for 8pm when Jim Dooley arrives without their interference.

They also call Alberness who is shocked at Amanda's speedy recovery and Lisey decides to send her back for tests the following day (much to Amanda's disapproval). They head to Amanda's first where she hands Lisey a gun for security, then they head back to Lisey's house to wait for their 8pm meeting in Scott's study.

Answer: The Last Picture Show

While Amanda sits in the other room watching "The Last Picture Show", Scott's favourite movie, Lisey sits in Scott's study and has another memory, this time of Scott's last day. She had been called to Nashville in 2004 to visit Scott in the hospital, and when she was taken to the Intensive Care ward, she was directed to the Isolation Ward to find Scott in a room on his own.

As Lisey sends the doctor to get Scott some ice, he reveals to her that one day he went to Boo'Ya Moon after dark and accidentally ate some of the berries which, Lisey remembers, turn to poison after night falls. Scott tried to go back twice since then, but both times he was unable to get to the pool as it was blocked off by his longboy. Scott dies in the hospital that day. Lisey snaps out of her memory and finds that the phone lines are cut. Knowing that the next thing he does is cut the lights, Lisey calls Amanda into the room and gives her the gun.

When the lights are cut, Dooley appears stating that he can see the both of them with his night vision goggles, and before they know it, he advances on Lisey, pushing her to Scott's desk. Amanda fires the gun into the ceiling, but it does little else.

As Amanda fights at Dooley's back, Lisey sends them all to Boo'Ya Moon, winding up on Sweetheart Hill at sundown. As Lisey turns to run into the Fairy Forest, Amanda trips Dooley, forcing him to land on Paul's gravemarker and impaling him in the arm. They run through the forest, Dooley nearly catching Lisey on most occasions, but Lisey reaches the silver spade where she left it under the silver bell. After Dooley trips on a root, Lisey has enough time to wind up her swing and hit him square in the face with the shovel, forcing him back into the bushes. That's when Scott's longboy comes. While Lisey stays still under the tree, the longboy captures the thrashing Dooley as he struggles to get out of the bushes and he destroys him, causing his screams to ring through the forest. Lisey rushes back to Sweetheart Hill though, where she finds Amanda frightened as Scott's version of Boo'Ya Moon is different from her Southwind version. The two of them, despite their fright, manage to send themselves back to Scott's study. After relaxing over a cup of hot chocolate, Lisey gathers up the gun and Dooley's extra 'goodies' and she and Amanda head to visit Good Ma and Pa's grave out of town.

Answer: The yellow afghan

Over the weeks, Lisey learns a bit more about Jim Dooley (actually named John Doolin). Not only was he originally in a mental institution, but the same one as Gerd Allen Cole. The two bounced ideas off each other way back when. As well, the police find prints from Dooley's stolen PT Cruiser, giving the police the evidence they need (not that he'll be coming back).
Lisey, Amanda, Darla, and Canty all work together to clear out Scott's study in a week in July, all of them bonding over the experience. Although Canty thinks Amanda faked the whole 'catatonic thing', Darla was there, and she believes it to be a miracle. After this, Lisey sends the majority of the booksnake to the University of Maine; not the University of Pittsburgh. Her foreseen prediction of that day comes strikingly true, and she is not quite sad to see it all go.
There's still something bothering Lisey though, as if something is in the back of each reflection. Part of her is positive it's nothing, but part thinks it's Scott's longboy (her longboy now) staring across worlds at her. Over the days, Lisey realizes that travelling to Boo'Ya Moon is becoming too easy, almost like she's flexed the muscle too much. She realizes that at any time, she could simply slip into the other world, daytime or nighttime.
Lisey knows Scott hasn't had his final say though. On one afternoon, Lisey takes a radio up to Scott's loft and plays it in the sweltering heat. Quickly, her mind takes her to Sweetheart Hill and she finds herself near Paul's grave. As she picks up the pieces of her recent times here, she realizes that Scott has placed a final bool hunt for her. When she reaches Paul's grave, she finds a yellow thread attached to it, having managed to stay fastened for many years, and she follows this across the field to her final prize: her mother's yellow afghan, an anchor to this world. Under the afghan, Lisey finds a bucket of alcohol, and she cleverly realizes that Boo'Ya Moon was where Scott hid his caches in his last years. As she feels around the afghan she finds a final treasure: a manuscript box, and within this she finds Scott's fourth and final story to her: Lisey's Story.
Scott tells Lisey about his father and his slow descent into the bad-gunky. As the days built up, Scott's father warned him that if anything were to happen, to run as fast as he could to Pittsburgh, take all the money in the house, and start a new life to ensure his safety. This doesn't happen so fast though. Scott wakes up in bed one night, realizes his father is full on the bad-gunky and hides under his bed just as a pickaxe comes down through the mattress. Scott teleports to Boo'Ya Moon, realizing it's nighttime and he quickly hides under the single safe place in Fairy Forest, the Story-Tree, where Lisey sits reading Scott's last work. When Scott returned, he found his father sleeping on the couch with a note saying that he needed to be killed. Scott, loving his father, took the pickaxe from behind and struck him in the head with it, killing him instantly. Scott tells Lisey that his life was filled with regret following this, but he had no regrets with her at all. He tells her that she can escape Boo'Ya Moon with the afghan, and she knows how.
Lisey quickly races through the Forest, placing the manuscript box and Paul's gravemarker on the grave itself, passing the silver spade and bell, and reaching the pool. Quickly, she walks into the refreshing water of the pool and back onto the shore, wrapping herself in the afghan. She hollers herself back to Scott's study and finds herself standing alone with the afghan around her. Now realizing that Scott's words are done, and that she can use the afghan as a means of transport between her real world and possibly any other word beyond it, she decides to possibly let it dry, keeping it to protect her from whatever bad-gunky may be out there, and keeping her with her sisters and her life. In silence, she leaves Scott's study empty knowing that his story has finally been told.