In short, theirs is one of millions of spousal engagements that more resembles a war of attrition than a love affair. All of this would be dire enough without the new venue that encloses their lives like the jaws of a trap.

Sanie and Jackson have moved back to the ancestral Bullard manse in bucolic South Carolina. The decaying, spooky property already houses Jackson's two weird siblings, Will and Louise. Will is embarked on a drug-addled slackerism, fleshed out with B&D sex with his girlfriend, while Lousie is pure hermit, flitting through the halls in her nightgown. Talk about in-law problems!

Still, Sanie might be able to cope, since she's a resilient type. But then the "softspoken" whispers begin, a voice without an obvious source. Ghost? Visitor from another dimension? Proleptic fugue? A mean trick? During a vision inspired by Will's borrowed peyote, Sanie seems to see a population of specters haunting every room of the mansion. But once sober, she begins to doubt again. Whatever the case, the voice adds to Sanie's burdens.

Friendly neighbor Frank Dean, a handsome car mechanic and musician, offers some solace at first. But after Dean and Jackson come to blows, even that refuge is gone. Sanie starts to focus on the riddle of the Bullard legacy. A local woman named Janine, who was the girlfriend of Rayfield Bullard, the father of the three siblings, tells about her own experiences at the "vortex" of the estate.

More and more, Sanie believes she should flee. But both Jackson and the house have their claws deep in her soul.

A new twist on an old, uncanny theme

Ghost stories seem to be hip again, as with Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box. In truth, perhaps, they never totally disappeared or lost their allure. Certainly Tim Powers and James Blaylock have done some fine work in this area. The film The Sixth Sense (1999) racked up great box office. Without question, the concept of phantoms returning from the afterlife to assail the living remains a primeval belief, a fearful and hypnotic beacon for humanity. Call it racial survivor's guilt.

But how to make the motif fresh? That's the rub. Shepard chooses to meld his ghostly apparitions with a domestic drama worthy of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). In fact, the portrait of the disintegrating marriage of Jackson and Sanie Bullard assumes the dominant weight in this tale. For the most part, it's a vivid, believable, harsh depiction. Telling his story in the present tense and from Sanie's point of view insures that we will suffer every step of the way intimately with her. Occasionally the accusatory dialogue between husband and wife rings a little too literary, even given Jackson's predilection for anal-obsessive snark. But, even assuming your mileage may vary based on your tolerance for such a step-by-step descent into marital hell, the effectiveness is undeniable, a testament to Shepard's close observation of humanity and deep emotional experience.

Likewise, the supporting cast of characters is deployed with full power and force, and the portrait of Southern small-town life rings authentically.

Finally, the fabled cross-dimensional weirdness that has always been a hallmark of Shepard's writing is far from absent. Sanie's peyote-trip visions are pure Shepardian brilliance, as is the way he describes the ghosts. And his circular intertwining of cause and effect is heady as well.

Sanie's tale is ultimately, after the final page is turned, a little slight: a woman, some ghosts, a bad husband, a weird fate. But while you're immersed in its ectoplasmic toils, you get the full measure of domestic creepiness and occult horror.