At the same time, both boys opened their mouths and said, “The Rumor of the Haunted Nunnery!”

“I was thinking the same thing when we were up in the woods,” Eddie added.

Harris leapt from his chair and ran to the bookcase next to his bed. Eddie could see Harris’s alphabetized collection of Nathaniel Olmstead books filling the top row. Harris pulled out a book and flipped through it until he found what he was looking for. Eddie couldn’t see the book’s cover, but he knew exactly what Harris had found.

“‘Reflected in the water, some of the stars had already changed color, from white to red,’” Harris read aloud. “‘As he watched, they all turned, then began to move. In an instant, they divided into hundreds of pairs of red eyes that watched him from under the lake’s surface.’” When he finished, he looked up at Eddie. “The monster lake-dogs.”

“Do you actually think that’s what we saw?”

“It sure looked like it.”

“In the book, the dogs came out of the lake and chased Ronald after he accidentally touched the water,” said Eddie.

Harris was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “The water turned black after you threw the pebble at it. Remember? Then we saw those stars. They turned red. Then that thing started to come up onshore… just like in Nathaniel Olmstead’s book…”

“Right,” Eddie whispered.

“The group of people from this article touched the water, too, when they were searching the bottom of the lake,” said Harris, closing the book and putting it back on the shelf. “Maybe that’s why the dogs chased after them?”

“Maybe,” said Eddie. “But I have a different question.”

“What do you mean?”

“How does a pack of dogs live underneath a lake?” he said, swiveling toward Harris. “Unless the Olmstead Curse is real?”

Harris blinked at him.

“There has to be some connection between what happened to us in the woods and everything else you told me today,” Eddie continued. “The symbol carved into the statue is the same as on the front page of the book my parents found at the antiques fair. The dogs appeared in the lake, just the way Nathaniel Olmstead wrote about them in The Rumor of the Haunted Nunnery. And what about the legend of the ghost in the woods-the Woman from the graffiti? Maybe she’s…”

“What? She’s real too?” Harris said into his hands.

Despite what he’d seen in the woods, Eddie felt foolish for thinking something so crazy. He bit at the inside of his mouth and tried not to blush. “It’s just a thought.”

“If we could read the stupid code, we could sort out what the connection might actually be,” said Harris, lifting his face from his hands.

“Totally,” said Eddie. “We’re on the verge of something really big. But there is something else…”

“What’s that?”

“The curse… Remember how you said some people in Gatesweed think that the monsters in Nathaniel Olmstead’s books are real?”

Harris nodded skeptically.

“Those people don’t seem so crazy anymore, do they?” Eddie continued. He thought about the scaredy cop and the tow truck driver, Sam. And Mrs. Singh, the librarian. “Maybe they know something we don’t.”

Before Harris could answer, there was a knock at the door. The boys jumped as Frances opened the door a crack.

“Dinner’s ready,” she said. “Hope you’re hungry.”

Before Eddie got on his bike to ride home, Harris asked him to see The Enigmatic Manuscript one more time. Eddie hesitated for only a second before pulling the book out of his bag. After everything they’d gone through today, he felt it belonged to Harris as much as it belonged to him now. He watched as Harris flipped through it, scanning the strange writing.

“What is it?” asked Eddie. “Do you see something?”

“I’m not sure,” said Harris, looking up. “Do you mind if I keep this tonight?”

Eddie looked into Harris’s eyes, and what he saw there, he knew he could trust. This is what came with friendship. “Okay,” Eddie said. “That’s cool.”

“I’ll give it back to you tomorrow,” said Harris. “I promise.”

Eddie refrained from telling Harris to be careful with it, as he got on his bike and waved goodbye.

Harris returned the book to Eddie during lunch the next day, just like he said he would.

The day after that, Eddie brought the code-breaker book to school. One small section had caught his eye. It mentioned the history of secret decoder rings-a toy popularized in the 1930s that allowed kids to send encrypted messages to each other. The ring consisted of two alphabets lined up next to each other on two attached discs. To create the secret code, you simply rotated the discs, offsetting the two alphabets, so that the letters no longer matched up. The letter A offset by three would become the letter C. To solve the message, you simply had to know the offset number.

“Something like this could be the answer to the code in The Enigmatic Manuscript,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, but that’s assuming the code we’re trying to solve is a simple letter puzzle,” said Harris, “that this book only needs to be translated, then bam, we’re done. Mystery solved.”

“What do you mean?” said Eddie. “What else would the code be?”

“Well… anything, really,” said Harris. “When was the last time you read an entire book that had only three-letter words?”

Eddie blinked, frustrated. “Don’t you think we should at least try?”

“I guess so.” Harris shrugged, unconvinced. “If this decoder-ring thing is the answer, and that’s a big if, how are we supposed to know what offset number Nathaniel used?”

Eddie shook his head. “We could go through the whole alphabet,” he said, “offsetting each letter.”

“A through Z?” said Harris. “That’s going to be a ton of work.”

Together, they spent a week of lunches trying to figure the code out. In the evenings, sometimes, Harris would come home with Eddie, and they would work on their project in his bedroom. Eddie’s mother was constantly writing in her notebook at the kitchen table, and his father was always out in the barn, sorting through his antiques, so the house’s quiet was suitable for the boys’ concentration. They finally made it through the entire alphabet, offsetting the letters one by one. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. The only pattern they could discern was the arrangement of letters into groups of three. Still, they wondered how, or why, anyone would write an entire book using only three-letter words?

Near the end of September, as the leaves finally changed color, and the north wind brought colder, drier air to Gatesweed, Eddie began to feel more at ease in his new school, especially the one day his English teacher introduced his class to Gothic literature. Mr. Weir had asked the class to give a report on a spooky book of their choice. Even though English was his favorite subject, Eddie was still nervous to talk in front of his class. He had prepared the night before by rereading Whispers in the Gingerwich House, a book with which he was quite familiar.

His report went well. Eddie only stammered a couple times. No one laughed, so he made it through his speech, then sat down quickly.

After two more reports, someone near Eddie raised her hand.

“Why do we like being scared?” said a voice quietly. Eddie turned around-it belonged to Maggie Ringer, the girl whom Eddie had run into the first day of school. She looked as pale and weird as ever. Her hair was especially stringy, as if she hadn’t washed it in days.

“Excuse me?” said Mr. Weir.

“In these stories, the authors are always trying to scare us,” said Maggie. “Why?”

Mr. Weir pushed up his glasses and smiled. “Eddie? Can you think of an answer?”

Silence. Then slowly, Eddie nodded. Before he could stop himself, he answered, “So we know what we’re up against.” All the students looked at Eddie like he was crazy. But he was certain he was right, so he confidently continued. “Nathaniel Olmstead once wrote that most of his stories came from his nightmares,” he said, looking at his desk. “He said that we have bad dreams because our brain is trying to protect us.” A boy coughed nearby. Eddie wondered if he was making fun of him. “If-if we can figure out a way to beat the imaginary monsters…” People started to snicker. Eddie spoke quickly, “Then the real monsters don’t seem so scary.”