I went into this short story with high expectations. I’m a big fan of Calvin Demmer’s work, this dude can make flash fictions feel like novellas, if you know what I mean. This story flew past, possibly a little too quickly, but still had all the elements needed to convey a great horror tale.

A journalist decides to take up a story on an infamous bridge that people in the town regularly hurl themselves from. Her late colleague was investigating it before he killed himself – although he was never the kind of man to do such a thing, was he? Hmm, a coincidence perhaps?

So this suicide bridge is something of a local phenomenon. Sylvia, being all young and keen, is convinced she can get to the bottom of these travesties.

After arriving she finds the locals very reluctant to talk to her. She visits the bridge for herself at dusk (not a good time to do it – check the title) and has a deeply unnerving experience there. Although she survives the ordeal she realises these deaths were almost certainly not self-inflicted. It seems there are spirits residing around this bridge, and they’re certainly not the happy-go-lucky ones, oh no.

After questioning the father of one of the bridge’s victims, she is directed to another survivor of the infamous bridge. Laura is in a wheelchair after the the crippling injury she suffered at the hands of this bastard bridge. She convinces Sylvia that action is needed to stop this thing for good.

But as the story unfolds, Sylvia realises not every one is telling her the whole truth. Things don’t end well, but for who, I’m not saying.

In a strange kind of way this story felt too short. It wasn’t that things needed clarifying, no, I got all the information I needed to thoroughly enjoy it. But if this was expanded upon you’d have one superb full-lengther on your hands.

But if that’s my only complaint then there was certainly not much wrong with this creepy story. Once again Calvin Demmer captures the scares and twists, and delivers them in such a short space of time it’s kind of difficult (and annoying) to work out how he did it. Although not novel length, there were enough ideas there to make me think I’d just read a longer story.

Categories: book review

Tags: book review, calvin demmer, death, ghosts, horror, short story, suicide, the town that feared dusk, unnerving