Gunnar_Runar_Ingibjargarson

1869: Nonni and Manni live near a small village on the coast of Iceland with their mother (Sigrid) and grandmother. Their father boarded a ship headed overseas before 8-year-old Manni was born, and the family has been awaiting his return.

One day a stranger named Harald comes ashore with the sad news that Nonni and Manni's father has died. The family begins the mourning process, and Harald helps out on their farm in return for board. The boys form a bond with him, and begin to look up to him as a father figure. A local businessman, who is quite smitten with Sigrid, becomes increasingly irate about the situation.

A rich farmer in the village is murdered. Harald is blamed for the incident, and decides to flee into the mountains. Nonni and Manni are determined to help keep him safe and prove his innocence. With the help of a friend, they locate a secure hiding place.

As might be expected from any 12-year-old, Nonni devises several trips to the hideout with his little brother. They put themselves into peril by doing so, and the story progresses with several life-threatening close calls.

Dr. Joyce Reardon (Nancy Travis, previously the title sociopath in So I Married an Axe Murderer) resides at the bottom of the faculty barrel in the psychology department at a university in the Pacific Northwest. Joyce is a lecturer on parapsychology working under a department head (David Dukes, Gods And Monsters) who thinks Joyce's research is smoke and mirrors, and would terminate her if she didn't have tenure. Joyce believes her express ticket to academic stardom is a century-old mansion in downtown Seattle known as Rose Red, which, according to local legend, has devoured 23 people since World War One. Six years have passed since Rose Red's last supernatural manifestation, but Joyce has convinced the present owner—her boyfriend Steven Rimbauer (Matt Keeslar, Leslie Neilsen's nephew in Mr. Magoo)—that she can "awaken" Rose Red and document its haunted status. Strapped for cash and ready to let developers plow the old homestead under, Steven agrees to allow Joyce and a hand-picked team of psychics spend Memorial Day weekend in Rose Red before the wrecking ball reduces the decaying monstrosity to haunted rubble.