Abbie Walker returns in her third book, The Secret of Crybaby Hollow. Urban legends aren't just in big cities, as the students of Albany Junior High discover during a class assignment.  The small town of Albany, Alabama, has them, too.

Abbie wants to put her sleuthing on hold so she can just enjoy the sixth grade and the whole junior high experience.  But events force Abbie out of "retirement" and back into the spotlight as she begins to solve a series of mysteries that begin in Crybaby Hollow.

Kirk wants Abbie to help him find a missing friend before time runs out.  Sarah joins Abbie in her search for a lost shipment of Confederate gold.  And Abbie discovers that even nightmares have a way of coming to life!

Chapter One

"Okay, Tyler!" Abbie Walker shouted. "This is not funny!"

She stopped walking, held her breath and hoped for a response. Abbie sighed and slowly turned around carefully looking into the dense forest. She held her breath again, hoping to hear something that would pinpoint Tyler's hiding place. A whippoorwill sang in the forest and its song echoed through the woods. She could hear the water in the creek, but there were no sounds that indicated Tyler Graham was anywhere nearby.

"Come on you little punk!" Abbie yelled. She paused, listening to her voice echo in the distance. "If you think you're gonna scare me... you're wrong!"

Abbie listened. Again, there was no response from Tyler. She unzipped her windbreaker, took it off and tied the arms of it around her waist. She whispered to herself, "Come on, Tyler. Don't do this to me."

Abbie walked closer to the rendezvous point where Tyler should have been half an hour ago. Her mind raced with different scenarios of what could have happened. Maybe he was lost. Maybe he was playing a prank on her and hiding behind a tree. What if he had fallen? Maybe he was lying injured in a ditch somewhere...no, not a possibility. Tyler Graham was very athletic. He played first string on the junior high football team. He ran track. He played baseball. There was no way he would be clumsy enough to fall in the woods and hurt himself. Maybe he had just lost track of time.

Abbie took a small notebook from the pocket of her windbreaker and sat beneath the branches of a large oak tree.

As she flipped through the pages of the notebook, Abbie turned and caught a glance of the initials carved in the tree. Dozens of initials, all in individual hearts, covered the "kissing tree." For many, many years, teenagers and adults had carved their initials into the trunk of the old tree. An hour ago Abbie might have considered carving hers and Tyler's initials in this tree, but right now she felt like punching him in the nose.

As she sat beneath the tree contemplating what she should do next, Abbie thought back to her first encounter with Tyler Graham. It had happened on the first day of school in September. What a nerve racking day that was! Abbie felt like her first day in the sixth grade at Albany Junior High had been one small catastrophe after another. She had trouble getting her locker open. She had gotten lost trying to find her second period class. She had been placed in classes with very few familiar faces due to the fact that four elementary schools in town feed into one school for junior high. By third period, she had been totally miserable and ready to call it quits and go home.

Then, it happened. The cutest boy she had ever seen in her whole entire life walked past her in the hall. She had been so taken with him, that she dropped a pile of books to the floor. Lots of kids in the hall stopped to stare or make giggly remarks about her clumsiness. Abbie had quickly come to her senses and stooped down to pick up the scattered mess. Before she realized it, the boy she had been admiring was helping her.

Embarrassed, Abbie had offered a polite, "Thanks," and the boy responded with, "Don't mention it." Abbie had blushed. The boy introduced himself. "I'm Tyler Graham. I just moved here from Florida."

"Really," Abbie had said, trying to ignore the blush she felt on her face.

"Yeah, maybe we'll have some classes together," he’d added.

"Maybe," Abbie had replied.

"See ya round." With those words, Tyler Graham had disappeared into the crowd, leaving a totally smitten Abbie standing still in a hallway of kids scurrying to find their way to their next class. As it turned out, they did end up having one class together - Language Arts with Mrs. Barker. TylerGraham had taken the seat next to her, which had made it very hard for Abbie to concentrate.

Of course, in the weeks that followed her feelings for Tyler Graham went up and down like a seesaw. It didn't take Abbie long to notice that Tyler flirted a lot. He loved to flash his pearly white smile and show off his big blue eyes to every girl he found attractive. She wanted Tyler to like her and just her. But, these were new feelings for Abbie. Until Tyler Graham showed up, she really had not been that interested in boys, unlike her friend Sarah Martin who had been chasing boys on the playground since kindergarten.

Abbie almost died when Mrs. Barker paired Tyler with her for this assignment. She had hoped to be paired with Amy or Renee. Even Kirk would have been better help than Tyler. She knew how this assignment would go. She would end up doing all of the work and Tyler would charm his way out of any kind of responsibility and take half the credit for all of Abbie's work.

The assignment was simple. Pick one of Albany's urban legends that Mrs. Barker had listed on the board, and make a video presentation using interviews and video of the subject. Abbie had let Tyler make the choice. He had chosen the legendary spooky story of Crybaby Hollow. The hollow was located at the edge of town right smack in the middle of a very thick forest. Only a one-lane dirt road cut through it, unless someone wanted to count the creek that was anoverspill of the Tennessee River. Over the creek was an old wooden bridge and according to the legend, if a person stood on the bridge at night and placed a candy bar on the railing of the bridge, he would hear a baby cry.

Abbie and Tyler had interviewed four people and got four completely different stories of "why" they could hear a baby cry. This afternoon was the time to get footage of the hollow and the bridge. Tyler operated the camera and Abbie did all of the narration. After they had wrapped up the closing statement, Abbie suggested that they separate and go ten minutes in opposite directions. She thought they might find something interesting to add to the final shot of the presentation. They decided to meet at the kissing tree twenty minutes later.

Abbie looked down at her watch. It was almost six o'clock and Tyler was now forty-five minutes late. She was already late for supper and would be in big trouble with her mother. "This is great, just great," Abbie said out loud. "I can't believe I'm out here in the middle of the woods waiting on him!"

Abbie kicked a stone and some dirt in frustration. "Now what? Becca, if you could see me now you would be laughing your head off! I'm out here with the cutest guy in school... at the kissing tree with nobody to kiss!" The thought of Becca made her sad. She missed her best friend and would give anything in the world for her to be here right now. Becca had moved to Memphis over four months ago and it had been a hard adjustment for Abbie.

"Okay Kirk, I know what you would do," she reasoned, pretending that her friends were standing there in front of her. "You would walk back to town and let Tyler sit out here and rot." Abbie paced back and forth thinking out loud. "Sarah, on the other hand, you would be carving yours and Tyler's initials into the kissing tree. Becca...Becca, what would you do?" It didn't take Abbie long to come up with a solution to this question. "The same thing I would do. Go find the little punk!"

Abbie got up and brushed off her jacket and jeans. She strolled down the dirt road to the wooden bridge and climbed onto the lower railing of to see if she could see any sign of Tyler. The only thing she saw was the creek and the trees and the birds. But, this was not stopping her. Tyler went that way and so was she!

She stepped down from the railing and walked towards the end of the bridge. As she neared the end of the bridge, her pace slowed and then she stopped, though unsure of why. Abbie suddenly had a feeling of deja-vu. She looked over her shoulder towards the other end of the bridge. A startling image of bright headlights in the dark flashed in her mind. Abbie felt a cold shiver race over her and goose bumps rose on her arms. For almost three years, Abbie had experienced a recurring dream of being chased on her bicycle.

Every now and then something triggered fragmented memories of the dream, but Abbie had never been able to remember the whole thing.

Abbie slowly stepped backwards onto the dirt road. Something about this bridge and the dirt road were strangely familiar, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. As far as she knew she had only been to Crybaby Hollow once before and that was two weeks ago after she and Tyler received the assignment. Her dad had driven down the road and showed her the bridge, but it had been broad daylight.

Abbie shook off the eerie feeling and walked down to the creek. The water in the creek had risen over the past two weeks with all of the rain. Sparkles of sunlight danced across the water as it flowed gently over the rocks that filled the creek.

Abbie followed the creek as it wound its way through the woods like a snake. The more she walked, the creepier she felt. It was almost dark and the last place she wanted to be was alone in the woods at night. She stepped on a large flat rock and stopped to look around. Something in the distance caught her eye. It was a candy bar wrapper. Tyler had been eating a chocolate candy bar when they separated. Was it his?

Abbie reached for the wrapper. She knew it was Tyler's the second she picked it up. The cheerleaders were selling this kind of candy bar to raise money and Tyler had bought one from Heidi Cook after school. "So, he did come this way," she thought to herself. She wadded up the wrapper andshoved it into her pocket. "Litterbug," she said to herself.

Cautiously stepping from one rock to another in the creek bed, Abbie proceeded further into the woods. As she rounded the bend of the creek, Abbie caught a glimpse of Tyler's bright red jacket about fifty feet ahead. He sat on the ground studying something, but Abbie couldn't see what it was. Okay, buster, I'm gonna get you. I'll sneak up behind you and scare you to death.

Abbie took her time and carefully moved towards Tyler. One wrong step and he would know that she was sneaking up behind him. She got as close as she dared, counted to three in her head, and sprang at him yelling as loudly as she could. Startled, Tyler quickly scooted away from the pouncing Abbie. When she landed on the spot where Tyler had sat, she came face to face with the object he had been studying so intently.

Lying in the water was a skull. Unfortunately, Abbie recognized that it wasn't the skull of a dog or cow or other wild animal. It was a human skull and it definitely didn't belong in the creek at Crybaby Hollow.