Thursday is trivia night.
Every Thursday, four friends and I meet up at a local restaurant that hosts weekly trivia games. With all of us being young adults that recently graduated from college, trivia is a great way for us to stay connected despite all of us being real adults with real jobs now.
Every week, we go to the restaurant, Benny’s, and sit at the same booth. We participate in five categories of trivia, with each category having five questions. We drink, laugh, answer the questions, and usually win or at least place second. This is the routine that we have followed for the past few months. Until the group chat got a text from Henry.
Have you guys ever heard of Lucy’s Bar?
I read the message and instantly went to look it up on Google Maps. Nothing came up in the search bar, except some recommendations for other bars or establishments that started with an L.
I typed out my response.
No, where is that?
Some place over on Fairmont Ave. I got an ad in my mail advertising trivia at this place on Thursday. Maybe we check out a new spot?
I frowned when reading that. Personally, I love the status quo, and hate change. Even when it comes down to something as simple as where we attend trivia night. But before I could respond, Alice sent a text.
I’d be down to try a new place. It gets boring when we always win every week at Bennys ;)
Well, if Alice wants to try the new place, then Jenny will side with her. That only leaves me and Morgan. I had to respond before he did.
We’re going to give Gary a heart attack if we don’t show at Benny’s tomorrow. We’re there every week.
Gary is the head bartender, and he’ll usually let us get away with one round of beers for free.
Come on, it will be fun to try a new place.
Henry really seemed to want to try this new place. Sigh. Before I could formulate a response, Morgan finally chimed in.
What’s the harm in skipping Benny’s for one week? We’ll see if the trivia here is fun and if it’s not, at least we tried somewhere new.
And that settled it.
The following evening, I drove slowly down Fairmont as I squinted at the buildings, looking for a sign advertising Lucy’s Bar. We don’t live in a small town, but I’ve lived here long enough to be pretty familiar with the businesses the lined the street. I’d never heard of this place before, so I figured it must be new.
After parking on the side of the road, I began to wander down the sidewalk. When I reached the last building, I turned to the group chat for help.
Where is this place?
Go around the side of the bank building, there’s a sign pointing to the stairs. The bar is down there.
Sure enough, once I rounded the corner of the building for the bank, I saw a bright neon sign with an arrow pointing down the stairs. No wonder I’d never seen this place. I followed the stairs and found all four of my friends already seated at a table. I scanned the place while walking over to them, and it looked like an average bar. One bartender stood behind the counter of the bar, and there was a mix of regular tables, high top tables, and booths along the wall. There weren’t many others, just a few groups of people scattered about. I greeted my friends as I slid in next to Henry at the booth.
“I never knew this place was here,” I said.
“I didn’t either until I got the ad,” he shrugged. “I didn’t know of any other places that hosted trivia and I thought it might be fun.”
“I think we have a good chance of winning,” Alice whispered while Jenny nodded her head in agreement. “We’re the biggest group here.”
While we waited for our appetizers and drinks to come out, I looked more closely at the other groups. There were two groups of couples seated at different tables, two trios, and one group of four that were also in the booths around us.
After a few minutes, our food was brought out. I could now see a nametag on the woman who was waiting on us.
“Are you the Lucy that owns this bar?” I asked.
“The one and only,” she replied with a wink. She looked like she was in her 40s and had on the brightest red lipstick that I’d ever seen. “We’ll get trivia going here in just a moment.”
I watched as she went into the kitchen, and a moment later she emerged and sat on one of the stools at the bar. She had a handful of cards with her that she laid down on the countertop before clearing her throat.
“So what does the winning team get?” I asked Henry.
“I’m not exactly sure, the ad just listed the location and time for trivia,” he replied with a shrug.
“Alright everyone, we’re going to get started! There should be multiple sheets of paper on your table as well as a couple of pencils. After each question, you’ll write down your answer and then bring it up to me.”
It was similar to our normal trivia in the sense that there were five rounds of five questions, but bringing up the answer after every question seemed a bit tedious. After everyone turned in their answer, Lucy would repeat the question, tell us the answer, and then grant points to the teams who answered correctly. Oddly enough, I did end up enjoying getting to hear the answer sooner, rather than at the end of the round.
The first round was general trivia. Generic questions about the year that this product came out, or who wrote that great American novel. The second round covered sports. Then the third round covered geography. The first question related to the Pacific Ocean, and the second question related to a country in Europe. Then Lucy asked the third question.
“Where can you find Hell?” she asked.
My friends and I exchanged glances with each other. “Like, as in actual hell?” Morgan asked.
“Where can you find Hell?” Lucy repeated, grinning at us.
“What are we supposed to say? Under the earth? The earth’s core?” Jenny asked.
Alice shrugged. “I’m good with putting the core of the earth.”
So that is what we wrote down. Henry brought the slip of paper up to Lucy, who read it and smiled. After the last group brought their paper up, Lucy prepared to give us the answer.
“Where would you find Hell? Well, you would hop in your car and drive over to Michigan, where you’d find the tiny unincorporated town of Hell,” Lucy said with a laugh.
All of the tables also let out little laughs now that the question made more sense. The next two questions were normal geography questions. Lucy listed the placings of each team, and my group was in first, but only by a couple of points. Then we got to the fourth round.
“Time for round four!” Lucy exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “Name this 2005 horror film that Keanu Reeves starred in.”
Everyone immediately turned to Henry, the horror film buff in our group. “Constantine,” he whispered, and Jenny wrote it down. She had been tasked with writing the answers since she had the neatest handwriting. After everyone turned in their answers, Lucy confirmed that Constantine was the correct answer.
“Next question. Who do you like the least in your group?” Lucy asked.
I looked at my friends, and then at Lucy to see if she was being serious.
“Who do you like the least in your group? There is no right or wrong answer, but you will not get a point if you don’t turn in a real answer,” she explained.
“What?” Morgan said. “What kind of question is that?”
“Yeah I’m not writing anything down,” said Jenny.
“If you choose not to write an answer, you will not receive a point. And it’s in your best interest to get as many points as possible. So you can win, of course,” she said cheerily.
We all sat in awkward silence, waiting to see if anyone would bring their paper over to Lucy. No one did.
“Well,” Lucy chuckled. “You guys get a pass with that one. But moving forward, if you do not bring up a real answer, you will get docked points. Next question: who is the most rational, level-headed person in your group?”
“Uh, still weird but I guess this isn’t a mean question to answer,” Alice said.
“I would probably say Jenny,” I answered, and everyone nodded in agreement. Jenny wrote down her own name on the paper and brought it to Lucy.
“Excellent, now you can earn a point,” Lucy told her. The other groups slowly filed over to turn in their papers and once everyone was seated again, Lucy asked another question.
“Who in your group would you sacrifice if you had no choice?”
Complete silence filled the bar.
“I think I’ve had enough of these questions,” Morgan said. “I’m done with this.”
The rest of us voiced our agreement and began to put out cash to pay so we didn’t have to wait for a bill to be rung up.
“I’m afraid that no one can leave until trivia is complete,” Lucy said in a sympathetic voice that did not seem sincere.
“I don’t think you can really stop us,” said a man from one of the couples that was sitting at a high-top table. He was putting his coat on while his wife grabbed her purse. Lucy was silent as she watched the couple walk up the stairs. Once at the top, we couldn’t see them anymore, but we heard the sound of a door attempting to be pulled open followed by cursing.
Flustered, the man ran back down the stairs. “The door is fucking locked. Open the door!” he shouted at Lucy.
“I told you that no one may leave until trivia is over,” she clucked. “Please return to your table so we may continue.”
“We should be allowed to leave if we want,” Morgan told her as we all stood awkwardly around the table. Everyone else was murmuring in agreement, trying to figure out what to do.
“The rules are the rules. Once you begin trivia, you must play all the way through. I highly recommend continuing your participation, because the first-place group will win a very promising prize,” she told us.
“You can’t keep us locked in here,” said a man from a different group.
“There is no other way out of the bar,” Lucy told him, and the murmurs at each table slowly began to turn into panic. “All I ask is that you finish trivia. That’s it.”
We all looked around at each other. Alice looked at her phone and groaned in frustration. “Of course we don’t have service in here.”
“It seems like we just have to tough it out and finish the trivia. We’re already on the fourth round, we only have about 6 questions left,” said Henry.
Disgruntled, the couple seemed to also come to this conclusion as they returned to their table, and we all sat back down.
“You all have one minute to submit your answer for the previous question. If you fail to turn in a paper with a real answer, you will be docked a point,” Lucy told us.
“She doesn’t know any of us,” I whispered to my friends. “Let’s just put a random name and turn that in.”
Jenny nodded and wrote something down before bringing it to Lucy. After the minute was up, only three of the other groups had turned their papers in. Lucy reviewed the slips and tallied the points. “Sadly, none of you get points for this round. Some of you failed to turn in an answer, while the groups that did submit an answer chose not to truthfully name a member of the group. You all get docked one point.”
“How the fuck does she know that?” I whispered to everyone, who all stared back at me with wide eyes.
“Next question! Last one in this round. What is the worst sin you’ve ever committed? Since there is more than one person in each group, I expect one answer for each person. Your points still count toward your overall group score, but you can get more points if everyone answers truthfully.”
We all sat there, speechless. “Do we try to leave again?” Jenny asked.
“I wouldn’t,” Lucy said, red lips stretched into a wide grin. “Just finish it out. There’s only one round left. Your group is in the lead, and it is in your best interest to keep it that way.”
“Why do you keep saying that? What does first prize win?” a girl from one of the trio tables asked.
“You’ll find out soon enough. If I were you, I’d work very hard to try to take that first-place spot,” Lucy replied. “Now let’s turn in those answers.”
The girls from that table ignored her and walked over to the staircase anyway. We heard them pushing against the door, but apparently to no avail, as they gloomily came back downstairs a minute later.
“Well somehow she knows if we’re lying, so we have to turn in the right answer,” Alice said.
“About the worst sin we’ve ever committed? That’s a fucked up question,” Morgan retorted.
“Clearly this woman is whack, but we all have to turn in our own answer. We don’t have to look at each other’s answers, but I think we should just answer truthfully,” Henry reasoned.
“Fuck it, yeah. I just want to get out of here, let’s turn in our answers,” I said.
I pondered for a moment. What is the worst sin I’ve ever committed? I cheated on my partner in high school, I felt really awful about that for a long time. Obviously we weren’t married or anything, but I wrote down adultery/cheating on my slip of paper and turned it in. Lucy snatched the paper from my hand and after reading it, winked at me.
I walked back to the table and sat down. After everyone had reluctantly turned their answers in, the room sat in an eerie silence while Lucy examined the papers and wrote down the scores. She proceeded to list out the ranking of groups by points, and our group still held the lead.
“We have made it to the last category,” Lucy announced. “First question, what is your deepest fear?”
While not a fun question, it wasn’t as awful as the sacrifice question. The rest of the round proceeded with bizarre questions, including “who do you hate the most in your life?” “if you had to kill someone, how would you do it?” “which circle of hell in Dante’s Inferno would you be sent to?” and we finished with the grand finale question of “will you return to trivia at Lucy’s?” My answer was simply a “fuck no.”
After the last group turned in their paper for the last question, I let out a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding. The same guy who tried to leave earlier stood up again. “Can we leave now? Trivia is finished.”
“I haven’t yet announced the winners,” Lucy replied without looking up from her scoresheet.
“I don’t care who won, we want to leave,” he told her.
“Well, the winners get to leave first,” she said in response. She listed the rankings again, with the duos finishing last, then one of the trios. Third place went to the other trio, second place went to the group of four, and my team was announced as the winners.
“Congratulations!” Lucy said, beaming toward our table. “You all get to leave first. Second place gets to choose three people to leave, and third place gets to choose one person to leave.”
Everyone who had been gathering their things stopped in their tracks. “Forget that, we’re leaving,” said one of the girls in the duo that finished last.
Lucy stood to her feet. “No,” was all she said.
“You can’t stop us,” the other girl said, and the two of them headed toward the stairs. The bartender, who had been silently cleaning glasses at the counter, now stood at the foot of the stairs, blocking them.
“Let us through,” the first girl demanded. The man stared at her silently. He lifted his jacket up to reveal a gun tucked inside the waistband of his pants. The girls shrieked and ran back to their table, while everyone else descended into panic mode.
“Quiet down!” Lucy yelled so loudly that it stunned everyone into silence. “First place group gets to leave first. My second and third place groups, you have two minutes to decide who goes and who stays or else you will all stay.”
“Guys lets get the fuck out of here,” I whispered, and we all hurried toward the stairs. The man moved slightly to let us through, and we all clambered up the stairs. I reached the door first and I held my breath as I pushed it. Thankfully, it opened. We stumbled into the chilly night air and backed away from the staircase.
“We have to call the police, right?” Alice asked as she already had her phone out and unlocked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Morgan said, watching the staircase.
“What just happened?” Jenny whispered, staring at the ground. “What did she mean when she said that the second and third place groups had to choose who got to leave?”
No one answered her. A moment later, three other people emerged from the staircase and came over to us. “We left Adam in there,” one of the girls said, tears streaming down her face. “Please tell me you called for help.”
“We did,” Alice assured her. “The police are coming.”
We watched the doorway to see if one person from the trio would come outside, but no one did. No one said a word as we all stared at the staircase, hoping that someone would appear from that hell hole of a bar. After a few minutes, smoke began creeping up the stairwell and rising into the open air.
“Hey, I think there’s a fire!” Henry exclaimed and he and I ran toward the staircase. We quickly descended the steps and tried to tug on the door, but it was shut firmly. One of the guys from the other group followed us and we all tried to kick the door in. We heard banging on the other side of the door, and the faint cries of those stuck inside.
“There’s got to be a way we can get this door open,” I said to them, pulling my shirt over my nose and mouth. The panicked cries of those trapped in the bar were growing louder.
“With what? There’s nothing around here we can use to try and bust the door down,” he said miserably. “We need to get away from this smoke.”
“My friend is in there,” the other guy said. “She said we had to leave someone or we’d all have to stay, and Adam told us to go and get help. I promised we’d go back for him,” the guy said, beginning to weep.
“Help should be here soon,” I said, but even I didn’t believe that help would come in time for this guy’s friend, because the stench of burning meat began to fill my nose. I think the others smelled it too, because we all trudged back up the steps. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the agonized faces of the group that left their friend down there.
Another few minutes went by before we heard the sirens approaching. “Should we go out to the street? I’m not sure if they’ll know we’re back here,” Jenny said.
We agreed and followed her around the side of the building to the main street. The members of the other group followed us and rushed over to the car, trying to convey that their friend was inside and needed help. The responding officers, realizing the gravity of the situation, followed us back around the building toward the staircase.
But something was different.
The neon sign that labeled the bar was now gone. Weeds and vines were covering the railing that surrounded the hole in the ground where the stairs were.
“This is where you were?” one of the officers asked skeptically.
“Yes!” one of the girls cried. “We were down in this bar to play trivia and the lady was being weird with her questions and then she wouldn’t let our friend leave, there’s other people who are stuck down there too.”
The officers descended the staircase while we all hung back. “This doesn’t look like a bar to me,” one of them called up the stairs.
Dismayed, I went down the stairs to see for myself. He was right, the door swung open into what looked like a basement, but it was devoid of a bar, chairs, tables, or any sign of life. The ground was dirt, and the empty space gave no indication that a bar had been here moments ago.
“This some kind of prank?” an officer asked.
“No, sir, we were just down here,” I insisted. “It’s like she said, there were other groups of people with us and they got trapped in here. I smelled smoke and we tried but we couldn’t get the door open.”
The officers clearly did not believe me, and how could they? I would also find it hard to believe that an entire bar disappeared in a matter of minutes.
After they took all of our statements individually, they addressed us all together.
“I’m not sure what’s going on here, but all of your statements match up. I can tell you that nothing has been down there for several years, let alone a bar. We’ll keep looking for your missing friend and keep an eye out for any missing persons reports in the area,” an officer said.
I don’t really remember getting home that night. The next few days were a blur. Every Thursday, I drive to the site where we had that trivia night, only to find that it still remains a decrepit old basement. My hope is that when Lucy’s Bar reappears, I will be there to ward off anyone who thinks they’re going in for a night of fun. And my advice for you is, if you ever find yourself participating at a trivia night in a new place that you’re unfamiliar with, make sure you win.