By donating a box full of strange objects, Professor Childermass gets his young friend Johnny Dixon a summer job at the Gudge Museum. Everything seems okay as Johnny mops the floors and dusts the artifacts. That is, until a sinister man named Mattheus Mergal shows up looking for the one item the professor held back to keep safe-a wooden hand carved by the evil wizard Esdrias Blackleash. If Mergal gets the hand, he'll be able to bring back his long-dead relative and their sinister powers will be