Ryan has been plagued with nightmares since the night his sister Amy went missing 8 years earlier after playing the game "Bloody Mary." Amy had stumbled onto a website on the Internet (www.marked4mary.com) about a witch called Bloody Mary and a game to summon her evil spirit. Now a senior in college, Ryan is reaching a mental breaking point from the years of stress and guilt from his sisters disappearance. His girlfriend Rachel frustrated herself at Ryan's emotional distance and self pity, calls for help to a former professor of Ryan's, Father O'Neal. Father O'Neal is both a priest and a archaeologist who decides to help Ryan end his tormenting grief by using his detective skills and wit to figure out what exactly happened to Ryan's sister, and uncover the truth to the Legend of Bloody Mary
Steve Moore is sixteen and lives with his younger sister, mother Cheryl and her boyfriend John, in a modest house in Bakersfield, California. An abusive and often intoxicated man, John rules the household, and though his attacks on Steve result in emergency hospital visits, Cheryl's loyalty is to her boyfriend. To protect her relationship with John, she "ditches" her son, having him arrested and locked in a correctional "mental" facility, before coercing her older brother Burt, who lives in Hollywood, to take him. Steve quickly discovers that Burt cannot even provide temporary lodging, but an administrator at his new high school directs him to a shelter for runaway kids where he soon learns to navigate his way.