Steve is a successful businessman in Dallas. One day he receives a letter from his old friend Eric in Sweden. Eric is overstrained and threatens to reveal a crime that they committed as children. Steve realizes that he has to go to Sweden and help Eric. Steve's wife Linda insists on coming too. Something she will deeply regret. When they arrive in Sweden they find Eric on the verge of insanity. He raves about their old teacher, who was burned to death in a mysterious fire many years ago. Steve and Linda become involved in Eric's world of illusions. Soon it gets impossible to distinguish between dream and reality. They are more and more affected by an evil force from the other side. The trip that should have been a vacation to Sweden becomes a one way ticket to hell.

In Los Angeles, photographer Peter Mitchell learns that he has inherited a palatial estate in Sweden from his unknown relative, Annie Holst. He, his girlfriend Sarah, and her deaf son Dennis, head overseas to decide whether to live in the property or to sell it. But when they arrive, they find the locals offer a chilly reception whenever Annie's name is mentioned. It turns out that Annie had lost her son some 50 years ago in a tragedy at the nearby orphanage where she had placed him temporarily, due to circumstances beyond her control. But she had continued to see her son even after his death. Now, young Dennis is drawn to the derelict orphanage, and to a new friend who only he can see. And Peter must solve a decades-old mystery of how the orphans died before his family faces a similar fate.