At the end of World War II, Jack Baker, a landlocked Kansas boy, is suddenly uprooted after his mother's death and placed in a boy's boarding school in Maine. There, Jack encounters Early Auden, the strangest of boys, who reads the number pi as a story and collects clippings about the sightings of a great black bear in the nearby mountains. Newcomer Jack feels lost yet can't help being drawn to Early, who won't believe what everyone accepts to be...

To save Groosham Grange, the strange boarding school he attends where ghosts and ghouls rule the academy and students study witchcraft, David Eliot must win the Unholy Grail, a magical cup awarded to the star pupil.