Lucius Shepard’s Softspoken: Not Your Average Ghost Story.
NO MAJOR SPOILERS
Lucius Shepard’s 2007 Southern Gothic novella Softspoken follows Sanie, a young aspiring writer with marital problems, from Chapel Hill in North Carolina to her husband’s childhood home- a decaying antebellum mansion in the South. In this little town, Sanie is a complete outsider and it is soon revealed that the move was a result of Jackson’s determination to better focus on his career. After all, hers doesn’t matter.
Apparently not concerned with privacy, the couple move into the house which already inhibits Jackson’s brother and sister. Bored with her new domesticated life, Sanie starts hearing voices calling out her name, which become more frequent as her marriage unravells. In an attempt to stall making any decisions about her current situation, Sanie focuses on discovering the source of the voices, whilst also unearthing the secret and disturbing history of her husband’s family.