It`s the summer of 1960. The sixth-grade boys of Elm Haven, Illinois, are forging the powerful, magical bonds that a lifetime of growth and loss will never erase. Amid the sun-drenched cornfields and the sly flirtations of the town`s young girls, that loyalty will be pitilessly tested. From the silent depths of the Old Central School, a hulking fortress tinged with the mahogany scent of coffins, an invisible evil drifts outward--plunging Mike, Duane, Dale, Harlen, and Kevin into a war without boundary or mercy, where an eternal enemy owns the night.