"Open Casket" Trivia Quiz

Answer: The red room

Shirley is jolted awake in the middle of the night and her husband watches as she whispers and falls back asleep-- "Nellie's in the Red Room."
The day before, Shirley worked with a family at the funeral home, specifically sitting down a young boy who lost his grandmother. The boy claimed that he was waking up at night and seeing his grandmother standing beside him. Shirley assured him that she would make his grandmother look just as good if not better than he remembered her to help him cope with her loss and stop him from being scared of her.

Answer: A heart

Back in Hill House, Shirley once walked in on her mother working on the blueprints for a new home, what she believed would be their forever home. Olivia told her daughter that she built it to have a dining room in the center, almost as though it were the heart of the house, since it was the room where they all spent the most time together. Once they finished renovating Hill House and sold it off, they would be able to start work on their big project and move in. Taking Nell outside, Shirley went around taking photos on her Polaroid camera.

While she did this, Luke saw a figure in the woods while their father, Hugh, spoke with Mr. Dudley about the master key, which never worked on the red door.

Answer: A mask

Shirley, exploring around Hill House, eventually wandered off to the woods to find a small cemetery in which she found the graves of the Hills and a small shed. Opening the door to the shed she found a darkened storeroom and, inside, a small litter of kittens. Taking a photo of them with her camera, she found herself spooked by what appeared to be a face.

It was actually a wasp's nest built around an old Halloween mask. Shirley, worried about the dogs around the property at night, begged her father to let her take them inside and he allowed it. Mr. Dudley, however, claimed that he had never seen dogs on the property, even if the kids had been hearing them every night.

Answer: Shirley

Shirley and her husband, Kevin, argued about the funeral business. Because Shirley has been too accommodating to their customers, they've been haemorrhaging money-- not enough to cripple them, but enough to be concerned. She reasoned that special cases deserved their help and empathy.

When one of her clients arrived to drop off some jewellery for his mother, Shirley thought she saw a man sitting in the other room. He disappeared almost instantly. Kevin, returning, asked if she heard anything about Nell or Luke.

She hadn't, really. Six years earlier, Steven and Shirley were responsible for Luke who, falling off the wagon again, needed to get back into rehab. With his insurance lapsed, it fell to Shirley to cough up $6,000 for his first month back in the clinic.

The whole family was there to see him off, at least all of the siblings.

Answer: Five

After dinner, Shirley confided in Theo about Kevin's chequebook. Since they had joint accounts it seemed odd to her that he would have his own names on a different chequing account. Grabbing some milk from the fridge, Shirley also remembered being allowed to take care of the five kittens from the shed, feeding them milk with a dropper. That night, Theo woke Shirley up because she thought she was banging on the wall and calling her name.

She wasn't. They heard the dogs outside again, out in the distance.

The girls, scared, both started hearing and seeing the banging, then loud enough to rattle the pictures on the walls., and they screamed until Hugh came down to calm them down. This memory turns out to be a dream. As she listens to her father, his mouth elongates in a horrible groan and she's roused from the nightmare by her phone.

Answer: Steven

After seeing the ghost of Nell in his own apartment, Steven calls Shirley right away to inform her that she's dead; she killed herself. He admits that he saw her in his living room and Shirley, surprised, believes he's wrong, even though their father called.

After the call, Shirley, distraught, heads out to the guesthouse to tell Theo the tragic news. In Hill House, Shirley woke up in the morning to find that one of the kittens in her cardboard box had died in the night. Hugh and Olivia helped her bury the cat in a box in the yard, but after a quick eulogy, Shirley believed that the kitten was still alive because its mouth was moving.

The truth is, it wasn't alive; a bug was inside of it, and it squirmed out of its mouth.

Answer: True

Soon after Shirley hears about Nell, she puts plans in motion to bring her sister to the mortuary so that she can be the one to hold her funeral. Theo reminds her that Steven needs to come from Los Angeles, they need to contact their father, and Luke has fled from his most recent stay in rehab, so he may not even know the news. Shirley feels that she owes Nell, and she suggests that she'll also be doing the cosmetics and restoration for the ceremony. Shirley has other work to attend to though.

She attends her clients' funeral and offers to bring their son to see his grandmother one last time, remembering how scared she was to see her own mother at her funeral.

Answer: Migraines

Nell's body arrives at Shirley's funeral home and they bring her down to the basement to begin the process. When Shirley is left alone with the body, she hesitates a great deal before opening the bodybag and gazing down. Steven calls Shirley while she's working on the body and she yells at him to get their brother and father on a plane.

After all, she's working in their sister's chest cavity; it's the least he can do. She remembers the kittens once more, and this time she recalls when she brought Nell to feed them.

This time, however, the others had died. Olivia tried to calm her down, but it led to an argument that ended with Olivia getting an almost immediate migraine. She explained later that she hadn't had a migraine in more than a year, and this one was different somehow. Talking with Hugh, she realized then that the whole situation would probably give her a somewhat morbid view of death.

Answer: Shirley sent him away

While quietly sewing up Nell's scalp, Shirley sees that her children are peeking in the door to the embalming room and she decides to answer all of their questions outside. Allie asks what she was doing (embalming her) and Jayden asks how she died (she doesn't know); Shirley assures them both that Nell loved them but she needs to do this work on her own. After the children are sent away, Shirley continued her work. Just as she used photos as a child, she looks at the photo that she took as inspiration for her sister's final look, one from her wedding, and she remembers that day, doing her makeup before she walked the aisle. That was the day she turned Luke away when he arrived in a cab, still high, because he left rehab to be there. The rest of the family never knew he was there.

Answer: Her mother

Shirley cries while she works, and as she looks down at her sister's face she notices the lips moving. A bug crawls out of her mouth, not unlike the one from the kitten she buried.
When she walked down the aisle to see her mother, she arrived at the casket to see that the funeral director had fixed her. It was what she would later do for others. She takes her sister's picture when she finishes with the body and she heads to the door, but when she turns out the lights and goes to leave, she sees a second body in the room-- that of her mother as it rises from the slab and smiles at her. It holds out the jewellery box and it pries open to let out a horrible cat scream.
That night, as Shirley goes to bed, she doesn't notice the light on her forever home model, on a table in her office, flickering twice-- a sign to go back to the house.