Kate Mandell was a young schoolteacher who takes a job as a live-in governess and tutor at the isolated Fairchild Estate. Before leaving for the estate, she visits her mother, Darla Mandell, who is confined to a mental institution and suffers from severe delusions and painting obsessions. Kate's hair is a blondish color, cut short almost like a bob. She tutors Flora Fairchild, and now deals with Flora's older brother, Miles. Kate's age isn't stated, but she is a young adult. Her relationship with Miles is.. complicated.

Flora Fairchild is the younger sister of Miles Fairchild, and is the girl that Kate Mandell tutors. She generally appears as a sweet, imaginative, and delicate young girl, yet frequently alternates between innocent vulnerability and unsettling, creepy behavior. Having lost her parents in a tragic accident and grown up isolated in a massive, crumbling estate, she lacks normal peer socialization. She displays deep-seated anxieties—such as a conviction that she will die if she ever sets foot outside the grounds of the estate. She often talks to or interacts with figures and presences that are not physically visible to others around her. Her relationship with Miles is passive. Flora has long, brown hair and brown eyes. She is seven years old.