"Silence Lay Steadily" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Theo

Shirley and Nell, at one time, tried to open the door to the red room with Mr. Dudley's master key. It never worked. When they tried to get in, none of them knew that Theo was on the other side, somehow in another room altogether-- her dance studio.

Trying to follow up writing his book about Hill House, Steven is comforted by a now-pregnant Leigh. She urges him to break past his writer's block.

Steven and Hugh pull up to the house to find Luke's stolen vehicle already there. They smell gas when they enter. If Luke is there, they know where to look. Hearing banging inside, they rush down the hall. It's only when Steven turns around that he finds the tall man with the bowler hat following.

Answer: The man with the bowler hat

Hugh and Steven head straight to the spiral staircase in the library where they see the ghost of Abigail waiting on the stairs. The man with the bowler hat enters behind them and Hugh asks his son to keep focused on his face. The man stares intently at Steven, craning downwards to do so, before departing. And then they run upstairs, straight to the Red Room, to bang on the door. It's always been locked, Steven says, and when Hugh turns his back, Steven sees it's actually open; Luke is inside on the ground. When he enters to help his brother, the door slams closed behind him.

Putting down the work on his new book, Leigh asks where Steven is and he explains when he entered the red room. She asks if that's when Luke died, but Steve is confused by this. Luke didn't die; he was alive on the floor. And then he died, Leigh says. He needs to say it. The door closed, Steven says, but he can't say what happened because he doesn't remember how he got out of the house.

Answer: True

Steve comes to realize a lot, sitting there working on his book. He doesn't remember reconciling with Leigh, for instance. He doesn't remember Leigh's pregnancy either. She explains it's because he hasn't written it yet. None of it's real unless he makes it so through his book. No one else's pain is real until he puts it on paper and even then it's pale imitation. As she continues to wear him down, she reveals her belly, showing that it's distending and darkening with a growing pattern of mold. The only thing that breaks him free of this nightmare is Nell, who urges him back to reality.

Steven is laying in the red room. All of his siblings are with him. He looks over to find Luke on the ground, already overdosing, and he tries to perform CPR.

Answer: Rat poison

When Luke arrived at the house and tried to light the gasoline on fire he found that it absolutely didn't work. The spark never lit. He saw his mother standing at the top of the stairs, reaching out to him, and he was grabbed from behind by Poppy's ghost.

He finds himself back out on the streets after he was beat up and mugged. He calls the treatment facility begging for a bed but he's taken in by Joey, who found him the payphone and bought them a comfortable hotel room. Joey suggests one last hit before they go back in and get clean; he says no because he's ninety days clean. She injects herself while suggesting he always had a thing for her. He continues to say no but there's already a needle in his arm.

He opens his eyes to find himself in the red room, having injected a needle of rat poison into his veins. Steven walks in the door at that moment, but is immediately incapacitated by Poppy as the door slams shut.

Answer: That she cheated on her husband

When the door to the red room slams shut, Hugh fights to break in from outside as the black mold spreads over the door handle and onto his flesh. That's when Theo and Shirley arrive, hearing the banging upstairs. Theo runs ahead, finding her father but getting spotted by Poppy, and it leaves Shirley to begin seeing things.

She sees herself in a hotel bar as a man buys her a drink from further along. She buys the man an appetizer as a joke, explaining that she's married. The two end up talking at great length as she discusses her future home. The man offers her a nightcap, also revealing that he's married. She refuses a drink up in his room as the two of them miss last call. And he leaves.

Except that's not what happened. She went upstairs. Stressed with her life, family, business, house, and the circumstances, she went upstairs and slept with him, cheating on her husband. The man reveals that she never told anyone, pretending to be the perfect wife, mother, and sister.

Shirley sees her own funeral before her. She walks down the aisle to her coffin as she's reminded of what what must be done to her body when she does die. Her own corpse rises from the coffin and tears at her own face as Nell appears and frees her from the nightmare.

Answer: Trish

Shirley wakes from her dream in the red room and finds Steven performing CPR on Luke. Theo, however, is still asleep, her back against the moldy wall.

Theo sees herself telling Trish the story of the one time her mother hit her as a child, when she smashed a window in a greenhouse roof. Despite her mother's scolding, she smashed more windows after that. Trish asks about the gloves but Theo can't remember the reason for them. When she touches Trish, she can't feel anything. Trish tells her her own story though, about a man who dreamt that he boarded himself up in his walls to escape his children. When he though he escaped him, truly he never did. He scratched at the walls like a rat and when he inevitably emerge he was taller than he once was. As Trish slides down the bed, Theo is grabbed by several ghostly hands and held down. Only Nell can pull her free, and when she does Theo awakens.

Theo finds her siblings fighting to save Luke's life but it seems as though it's too late.

Answer: The bowler hat

Luke finds himself awake in a clean, white-painted version of the red room where Abigail and a young Nell are already sitting at the table, ready for tea. Olivia, finding him (at last) awake, rushes over to him having missed him for so long. She says that they are home.

She tells a fond story of the place she wanted to live forever before offering him a bowler hat-- his big boy hat. Nell, however, tells him to go; he shouldn't take a seat. He apologizes to his mother but she refuses to let him because he's awake and he's perfect.

He wants to be in the red room; he's been knocking on the door for years and finally he's inside. Nell's ghost pulls him from the room and he awakens in the real room. He asks for his siblings to take him to the hospital but points over to Nell as she saved him.

Answer: Stomach

Nell tells her siblings that all of them have been in the red room so many times and they just never knew it. She always though that time went in a straight line from the beginning to the end but she was wrong; their moments always fell around them like rain or snow or confetti. Olivia always used to say all houses had eyes and bones and skin. Nell compares the red room to the stomach. It was Theo's dance studio; it was Nell's toyroom; it was Olivia's reading room; it was Steven's game room; it was Shirley's family room; it was Luke's treehouse. It put on different facades while it digested the people inside. Nell knows she can't leave and that there's so much she wants to say. While her siblings apologize, she reassures them that nothing would have changed and she loves them just as they love her. The rest is confetti.

In the hall, Hugh awakens and takes his pills before seeing Poppy appear before him. She recites a terrifying poem to him before Olivia appears, telling her to stay away. Olivia picks Hugh's pill bottle up off the floor; it's medication for his heart. She asks what he's done all this time and he admits he was holding a door shut to protect the family, and not only did the monsters get through, but his arms couldn't hold the family close.

Answer: His life

Olivia is glad the family is finally back because they're waking up. She refuses to believe that the children have been safe, especially since she woke up and no longer had the headaches she did. Hugh assures her that their children have certainly suffered but that's all they can do as parents. For all the bad the Crains endured, they also had beautiful, happy moments. Hugh urges Olivia to open the door to the red room but she refuses; Hill House is their forever house.

She can't bear to be alone there any longer. Hugh pleads with her one last time asking her to open the door in exchange for his promise to make things right. And so Hugh opens the door.

They're able to carry Luke out to the car and belt him in. Steven and Hugh send Theo and Shirley ahead to take him to the hospital, but there's something left to be dealt with.

Answer: Hugh

Hugh brings Steven into the house and back to the night of the horrible incident at Hill House, Hugh returned to find Olivia dead at the base of the spiral staircase and he was followed soon after by Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, both of whom arrived looking for their daughter, Abigail, who snuck out of her bed in the night. They subsequently found Abigail's body in the red room. All three bore witness to Abigail's ghost walking the halls soon after, and Abigail pointed at the culprit who hurt her-- none other than Olivia. Hugh watched as Olivia's ghost left her body and left the library altogether. He vowed then, to the Dudleys, that he would burn Hill House to the ground and salt the earth. Mrs. Dudley, however, begged him not to as their daughter still remained there. In exchange for the Dudleys' silence, Hugh never followed through. The goal was to starve the house of occupants. It didn't work.

Still in the house, Steven knows that none of the other siblings saw Hugh's body, overdosed on heart medication, at the top of the spiral staircase. The house and the promise are all Steven's now. As Hugh expresses the pride he has in his children, he reunites with Olivia and Nell, both waiting in the red room. The door closes softly shut behind him.

The ghosts of Hill House watch on as Steven leaves.

Luke awakens in the hospital with his siblings by his side. Steven returns home and explains his secrets and guilt to Leigh. Shirley sits with Kevin and admits her infidelity. Theo moves out of Shirley's guesthouse with Trish's help, tossing her gloves in the trash on the way. Mr. Dudley rushes his dying wife to Hill House to reunite her with her daughters.

Two years after the events that transpired, the remaining Crains celebrate Luke's sobriety with their partners. The doors of Hill House are still closed, but the building still stands and may yet stand for another hundred years.