Little Cody Bockman disappeared on a rainy morning.

It’s 1983 and fourteen-year-old Jack is back.  He saw the energetic five-year-old Cody riding his bike early on. A few hours later he was gone without a trace—vanished into thin air.  Jack feels guilty.  If he’d followed the kid to make sure he reached home, maybe…

The circus had rolled into town the night before.  Could the carnies be involved?

Or had Cody ridden into the Pines and been carried off by the strange, foul-smelling creature people had recently glimpsed?  Some say it’s the Jersey Devil, others say it’s something real, and dangerous.

Or what about Ernst Drexler, the odd man in the white suit staying to the Lodge?  No one in memory has ever lived at the Lodge.  He says he’s an “actuator” for the Ancient Fraternal Septimus Order that owns the Lodge, but what does that mean?  And why is he here? 

And then Jack learns an awful truth about Mr. Vivino, a man running for local office.

Using his nascent fix-it skills, Jack uncovers links to these events and situations…all circling back in one way or another to the mysterious little pyramid he and Weezy found next to the ritually murdered corpse in the Pines…all leading to an edge-of-your-seat finale in one of the lost towns of the Pine Barrens.