“Can I borrow your flashlight?” said Eddie. Harris handed it to him with a frustrated groan. Eddie shone it into the woods up the hill with a sigh of relief. “They’re allergic to light,” he explained. “They can’t follow if you watch them,” said Eddie, staring up the driveway.

“What do you mean-they can’t follow you if you watch them?” said Maggie. “Is that how you got away? You walked backward through the woods? How did you figure that out?”

Eddie nodded. “It’s how Gertie got away in The Witch’s Doom.”

“Of course!” said Harris. “I remember those things! They were really horrible.”

“The Witch’s Doom?” said Maggie. “I don’t get it. Are you saying those things came from a Nathaniel Olmstead book?”

As Eddie nodded yes, the flashlight splashed her face with a ghostly glow from underneath. Even with a smudge of dirt on her nose, she looked so pale that, for half a second, he thought she looked like the statue in the woods, but when her voice wavered, he knew she couldn’t be anyone but herself. She looked between the two boys skeptically, as if they might be playing a joke on her.

Maggie thought about that for a second. Even though she still looked confused, she nodded, seeming to understand what they were saying. “Do we have to walk backward all the way back home?” she asked. “My dad’ll kill me if I bring home several dozen giant shadowy demons.”

Despite everything, Eddie laughed. Harris joined him.

“I don’t think they’ll follow us,” said Eddie. “They need the shadows, and even though it’s only half-full, the moon is probably too bright outside of the woods. In the book they only appear when it’s very dark out. But just to be sure, I’ll keep my eyes behind us until we get somewhere safe. You guys can guide me.”

“My pleasure,” said Harris, brushing aside the vines that covered the hole in the fence. Eddie stumbled backward as Maggie and Harris steered him through. He prayed that the Watchers were no longer watching.

They picked up their bikes and walked them up the hill to Maggie’s house, where her father begrudgingly agreed to pile everyone into his pickup for a ride back into town. As they passed the entrance to Nathaniel Olmstead’s overgrown driveway, the moon returned from behind a small bank of clouds, and Eddie finally felt safe. He knew the Watchers would never set foot past the shadows where the trees ended and the moonlit asphalt began.

Eddie was sitting at his desk to distract himself with math homework, a task he expected would be nearly impossible after the evening’s events, when his mother knocked on his bedroom door. She’d reheated his dinner and brought it up to him, along with the cordless phone.

“It’s for you,” she said, resting the large antique silver platter on the comforter folded at the end of his bed.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said. She kissed his cheek before heading into the hallway and closing his bedroom door.

“Hey!” Harris said. He sounded exhausted. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. How ‘bout you?”

“Freaked out,” said Harris. “Those things were scarier than the dogs from the lake. Scarier than the gremlin.”

Eddie silently noticed that he didn’t include the Woman in Black. Despite the horror of meeting the Watchers, he knew they both understood that meeting her would be worse.

“Where did they come from?” said Eddie.

“I’m not sure,” said Harris. “In The Witch’s Doom, the old woman tells Gertie that legend during the town meeting, remember? She says the Watchers haunt the woods once the sun goes down.”

“Right,” said Eddie. “Maybe the same thing happens up at the Olmstead estate.”

Harris was quiet. Eddie could hear him breathing over the phone.

“What’s wrong?” Eddie asked.

“I was just thinking… if those things live in Nathaniel Olmstead’s woods now,” said Harris, “did they arrive before or after he left?”

Eddie shook his head. “Let’s not think about that,” he said, changing the subject. “I feel like we’re closer than ever. Did you get a chance to look at the code in the new book? I think it was different from the code in The Enigmatic Manuscript. Why don’t you check?”

Harris paused before answering. “I don’t have the books. You have the books.”

“Oh right,” said Eddie. “I forgot.” He grabbed his open book bag and dug through his notebooks and folders.

The books! Where were the books?

A terrible thought flickered through Eddie’s head. When he’d dropped his bag, had he lost the books? Everything had happened so quickly, it was difficult to remember if the bag had seemed lighter when he’d retrieved it from the pile of leaves. He’d been so concerned with trying to escape those things.

He imagined the books sitting in the middle of Nathaniel Olmstead’s driveway-a place he had hoped to avoid for quite some time.

“Uh…,” he struggled to say. His face began to sting. He emptied the bag, but the only thing remaining was the big hammer at the bottom, which he quietly shoved in the back of his desk drawer.

“Eddie? Are you there?”

“Yeah,” Eddie whispered. “I’m here… but the books are gone.”

Every time someone slammed a locker door the next day at school, Eddie felt like jumping out of his skin. His heart raced when Ms. Phelps asked him a question about ratios. Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie thought he saw someone watching him in the mirror while he washed his hands in the boys’ bathroom, but when he turned to look, no one was there. The past couple days had taken a toll on his nerves.

Part of him was relieved that he had lost the books the night before. If it weren’t for Harris, Eddie thought he might want to take a big break from anything having to do with Nathaniel Olmstead. But the other part of him felt terrible that all the work they had done so far was gone. Now, even if they were actually smart enough to figure out what the code meant, they couldn’t!

They met after third period outside the gym. When Eddie saw Harris, he gasped. Harris looked terrible. His hair was greasy, his eyes were glazed, and he looked like he’d just crawled out of bed.

“What’s wrong?” Eddie asked.

“I couldn’t sleep,” said Harris. “I kept wondering where we might have lost the books. I know last night you said you didn’t want to, but the only thing I can think to do is go back to the house and look for them.”

They heard a sneaker squeak on the linoleum behind them. When they turned, Maggie smiled. For the first time since he’d met her, Eddie thought she looked happy to see him. She brushed her dark hair out of her face and hiked her bag up on her shoulder. “Can I come?”

Eddie and Harris were speechless.

“Look,” said Maggie, “that was some crazy stuff up there in the woods last night. I can’t stop thinking about it.” When the boys didn’t answer her, she said in a playful tone, “Then I guess it’s not really worth showing you what I found.”

Harris rolled his eyes. “What did you find?”

“You’re not interested. Forget it.”

“Maggie…,” said Eddie, sounding more pathetic than he wanted to.

“This whole boys-only thing is so fifth grade,” she said. She smiled again. “Promise you’ll let me come, and I’ll tell you.”

Eddie turned to Harris. Somehow, he was certain what she had to offer would be worth it. They both nodded. “You can come,” they said at the same time.

“Great.” Maggie slapped their shoulders. They both winced.

“So tell us. What did you find?” Harris said.

Maggie slipped her bag off her shoulder, reached inside, and dug around. “In the house last night, I overheard everything you said.” Harris started to protest, but Maggie interrupted. “Get over it.” Harris folded his arms but listened. “After you read that story about that creepy old woman, Eddie, you mentioned something about a code that matched up a couple of books you guys had.” She pulled two books out of her bag. “These books, right?”