Alex Mitchell doesn't have the slightest interest in the auction his mother drags him to after a disastrous day at junior high. Antiques are her passion, not his-yet somehow, when they head home, he's the one clutching a Civil War bugle. When Alex blows the horn, he sets in motion a train of events that will destroy his home town of Oak Bluff, Arkansas...unless he can figure out the secret of old bugle in time, and, with the help of his new friend Annie Parker, evade the gang of bullies out to get him, her, and the haunted horn.