At Camp Grindlestone arrives newcomer Sarah. Kelly, who would rather be at home with friends, lugs a heavy trunk across the forest floor.
That evening, Kelly, to a small audience, mocks Sarah’s badge-adorned trailmaker vest.
Sarah examines a wall-mounted case, in which three whistles, and sepia photographs of three young girls, are captioned by the legend "Never enter Watcher’s Woods, ever." In Watcher’s Woods, explains Kelly, people get lost without trace. Where is this place? No one knows. It’s said to move, in search of prey. The crazed few who escaped babbled something about "the Watcher," a demon said to guard the woods.
Tomorrow, says Kelly, will be the seventy-fifth anniversary of the disappearance of the girls in the photographs. All that was found of them were their whistles, now displayed with the photos. A sudden squeak from the floor by her feet rouses a yelp of horror from Kelly, who hates rats.
Next day, pairs of two are directed on a search of the woods for specimens. Kelly is none-too-pleased to be paired with enthusiastic Sarah.
On the trail, Kelly wearily entreats a sneaky return to camp. Sarah, here for the full experience, wants to do it right. Kelly, forcibly sent here by her parents, is less enthusiastic. In exchange for permission to go swimming, she offers to show Sarah a pheasant’s nest; directs her through a thicket, and sneaks off.
Some time later, Sarah emerges from the thicket, to realise she’s been had. Meanwhile, Kelly realises herself to be lost. She takes out a compass, whose needle spins constantly. Unseen, the bags placed by her feet fade into thin air. She wanders into a clearing, turns back, and finds her path blocked by unfamiliar pine trees.
Hours later, the sun having set, Sarah continue to make their aimless ways through the trees. A low, thunderously deep voice suddenly calls her name. She follows the sound to a broad tree, on which she lays a hand. Across its bark, their materialises, wreathed in roots, the ashen face of a man. She cries out in fright, and hurries off.
In a distant clearing, Kelly sees a deep green glow. Relieved, she hurries into it, and finds herself face to face with what appears to be, mounted on a pike, the skinned head of a moose. Across the clearing, set with a table, and flaming lanterns hung from trees, is a tall, loose, grey tent. As Kelly approaches, the skinned moose head turns to watch. Beneath Kelly's feet, a net jerks upward, ensnaring her in mid-air. Three haggard, rag-clad women approach.
With Kelly’s wrists bound respectively to two closely spaced trees, a yellow target cross is painted across her torso. The trail makers, held here since 1919, demand to know the location of their whistles. With Kelly unable to tell them, they decide to practise their archery. A flaming arrow passes seamlessly through Kelly’s middle, and lands embedded in a target beyond.
The trail makers believe her to have tricked them into the path of the Watcher, who decided to hold them here until they found their whistles.
...
Sarah, drawn to the green glow of the clearing, cautiously approaches.
Inspired, Kelly offers to retrieve their whistles. The trailmakers convene. With a gesture from one, Kelly’s bonds vanish in a flash of light. As she prepares to walk free, the lead trail maker calls her back: turns out they don’t believe her. A wooden cage falls, trapping her. The lead trail maker ponders what might most scare their prisoner. On sudden inspiration, she retrieves a bucket, and lowers it into the cage. It's teeming with rats. Kelly screams.
Sarah sneaks up behind her, and attempts to open the cage. Too late: the trail makers have noticed. They accept Sarah's offer to get the whistles, but by sunup, lest Kelly be rodent food.
As Sarah hurries back to camp, the voice of the Watcher calls once more. From the forest floor, pops what appears to be a human skull, set with living eyeballs. Lifted by a rising mound of earth, which morphs into an earthen smock, the skull quickly grows flesh to form the branch-wreathed face of the Watcher. He urges Sarah to join him. Sarah flicks on a lighter, and threatens to torch the woods. The Watcher retreats into the earth.
Back at camp, Sarah smashes the glass case, and gets the whistles.
Impatient, the trail makers sharpen a knife. Just in time, Sarah hurries back with the whistles. Not realising to have dropped one in the bucket of rats, she throws two to the lead trailmaker. Displeased to have been tricked, the trail makers magically teleport and tie Sarah to a homemade guillotine. They ignore Kelly’s location of the third whistle, and prepare to lower the blade.
Kelly, out of sheer desperation, forces her hand among the teeming rats. Just as the blade falls, she blows the whistle. The guillotine dematerialises, and Sarah falls to the forest floor.
Overawed, the trail makers blow their whistles, and fade into thin air, along with the rest of their camp. On the ground, a small circle of stones, a trail sign, signifies their return home. In mutual relief and gratitude, Sarah and Kelly hug.
In the light of a recently risen sun, they stumble out of the woods and onto the camp driveway. Behind them, an old-fashioned car pulls up. Its dark-clad chauffeur smiles and salutes. On the roofless backseat, three girls, as seen in the 1919 photographs, merrily salute and wave.
As Sam closes her story, Gary beckons the others into a huddle. He then hesitantly approaches Sam with some difficult news - Sam may be a hard name to pin to one such as her. They happily welcome her to the Midnight Society.
This episode provides examples of:
- The Ace: Sarah, with her impressive list of camping awards.
- Age Without Youth: In 1919, three young girls got lost in Watcher’s Woods. Seventy-five years later, they remain, implicitly in some kind of spectral suspension, but have aged to adulthood as old hags.
- Came Back Wrong: Inverted. After release from their suspension in the woods, the crazed, isolation-hardened trail makers revert to their carefree, childhood selves.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Discussed. Kelly explains to Sarah that the former's been mistaken by the lost trail makers as one of the mean girls who stole their whistle. While she isn't the girl who stole them, she did steal Sarah's whistle.
- Chekhov's Gun: Kelly's cigarette lighter is later used by Sarah to threaten the Watcher that if he doesn't let her go, she will set his precious forest on fire.
- Face Your Fears: Kelly isn't very fond of rats, mice or any kind of rodent. But when the trail makers threaten to kill Sarah for bringing only two whistles, Kelly has to find her courage to get the remaining whistle from the bucket of mice.
- Fire-Forged Friends: While they initially don’t get on, Sarah and Kelly, on saving each other’s lives, hug with relief.
- Foil: Sarah's a go-getter achiever who whole-heartedly came to camp for the experience. In comparison, Kelly couldn't care less about being at camp and is only there because, as she put it, her parents wanted an excuse to dump her.
- Genius Loci: A region of the local forest, Watcher’s Woods, is said to move in search of prey. It does indeed seem to have some teleportation ability.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: Trapped for seventy-five years in Watcher’s Woods, the trail makers seem desensitized to murder.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The trail makers hint such preference.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While Kelly is initially snide to Sarah, this wanes on their enforced cooperation, and they later become friends.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Sort of. Kelly stole Sarah's whistle in order to spite her for being a perfectionist. But later, she's mistaken by the missing trail makers as one of the girls who stole their whistles all those years ago. The trouble is, they don't exactly have restraint on how badly to punish Kelly.
- Nature Spirit: The spectral Watcher, whose face is wreathed in branches, seems to share bodily affinity with his woods.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In order to convince the Watcher to let her leave his domain, Sarah uses Kelly's cigarette lighter to threaten to burn his precious woods. Sarah's normally a "goody-goody" type, so her threatening to start an actual forest fire shows she means business.
- Off with His Head!: The trail makers threaten to guillotine Sarah.
- Scenery Porn: Some lovely shots of the woods.
- Smoking Is Not Cool: Sarah tries to enforce this with Kelly when the latter is caught lighting a cigarette.
- Wicked Witch: The three hags seem to evoke this. They've even got a cauldron.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: The Watcher ensnared the souls of three lost campers, and expresses a wish to acquire Sarah’s, seemingly out of intrigue.
