I hadn’t thought about Lunvail in years. The city was far enough to forget, with its cracked sidewalks and its endless noise. I had a job, an apartment with leaky pipes, and a girlfriend who left me for someone with a Tesla.
You could say I was getting used to it, the life that’s too loud and too cold to make you feel anything, until the call came. Mom’s gone. You can’t outrun a call like that.
Lunvail isn’t a place you leave easily. It has this way of holding you in its grip, like the rusted iron of the old bridge that cuts through the fog and the trees.
People talk about the town like it’s a ghost story, a place where the air always feels damp, even on sunny days, and the ground seems to remember every footstep taken on it. They say if you stand at the edge of town and look out, you can see the fog rolling in long before it hits. It’s like the town’s breathing, pulling you back every time you think about leaving.
The bridge itself—Lunvail Bridge—is a relic, old, paved path that looks like its barely holding itself together. It spans the Wyrmbrook River, but it feels like it stretches to nowhere, reaching out to something darker, something older. If you’re heading out of town—taking the back roads, going to the edge where the woods get thick and the houses stop—it’s the last thing you see before the world starts to fall away.
But if you’re from Lunvail, you know the rule. The one you never question, even though no one tells you why. You honk twice before you cross the bridge.
Two long, drawn-out honks.
It doesn’t matter if you’re alone or if it’s the middle of the night or if the fog’s so thick you can’t even see the headlights in front of you. You honk. Twice. And then you go.
The drive back felt like falling through time, past old gas stations and boarded-up stores, past the edge of town where the trees start to close in on the road, where it gets darker, colder. The air in the town always felt heavier than anywhere else, like it was holding secrets, and the fog… the fog was thicker than I remembered. I had to slow down, the road barely visible beneath the dense mist that wound through the trees like a living thing, wrapping around the car, pulling me toward the bridge.
I saw it then, the Lunvail Bridge. It looked smaller somehow, even more fragile, pavement is patchy and there are holes to fill here and there.
The kind of bridge you’d expect to fall apart after the next good storm. But it stood there, silent in the fog, waiting for me. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d crossed it. Probably some night long ago when I was still a kid, when things felt… safer.
I pulled up to the bridge and paused, staring at the darkness ahead. A part of me told me not to do it, so I didn’t.
I honked once and felt like a rebel.
It felt silly, the sound bouncing off the fog like it was swallowed by the earth. But maybe there was a rule for a reason. Because the lights went out.
One second, I was driving, and the next, everything disappeared. The engine sputtered and died. I twisted the key, panicking, but nothing happened. The world around me went completely dark, save for the faint shimmer of the river below, an abyss I couldn’t see. I felt like I was trapped in a black hole.
The silence pressed in, thick and suffocating. Not the quiet of a peaceful night. This was different. This was alive.
And then I heard it. Tap-tap.
A soft knock on the passenger window. A polite tap, like someone asking for permission to come inside.
I froze. My breath caught in my throat. The tapping came again, louder this time, and I couldn’t move. My hands were glued to the wheel. I turned slowly, as if the world was moving in slow motion. And there, against the fogged glass, was a hand—long fingers, crooked, like something that didn’t belong in the world. The knuckles bent at odd angles, like a child’s drawing of a hand, twisted into shapes that made my skin crawl.
Tap-tap. I couldn’t breathe.
My fingers found the horn, and I slammed it. Twice. Hard. The sound rang out, shaking the stillness. The tapping stopped. The engine roared back to life. The lights flickered, blinding in their sudden brightness, and I didn’t think—I just hit the gas, tearing forward, not even looking back.
The tires screeched as I shot across the bridge, the fog pushing at my windows, as though something was trying to pull me back.
When I reached the other side, I slammed the brakes, heart hammering. I looked back at the bridge, my hands shaking as I gripped the wheel. The fog shifted behind me, like something was moving through it, and that’s when I saw it.
A figure. Standing in the middle of the bridge. It was hunched over, twisted, its limbs far too long, and its head angled at a grotesque angle. It didn’t look at me. It looked past me, as if waiting for something else. Something worse.
I glanced in the rearview mirror, my breath coming in ragged gasps, but the headlights of another car were coming from behind me. Another soul on the bridge, blissfully unaware of what stood between us and the town.
The car kept coming. No slow down. No hesitation.
The figure moved. It unfolded, stretching, cracking, like a broken marionette being pulled by invisible strings. It leapt, no—it flowed—onto the car’s roof in one smooth, impossible motion, disappearing into the fog. The car didn’t stop. The headlights never faltered as they crossed the bridge, heading toward the unknown.
They didn’t honk!
I sat there, numb, my fingers still clutching the wheel. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. The fog started to peel away from the bridge, like a curtain being drawn back. The world went quiet again. Too quiet. But the car after me was able to pass the fog.
“So silly of me,” I felt cheated by my own self that I panicked when I didn’t honk twice and created mirages out of fear. It wasn’t until later, when I reached the edge of town—past the last house, where the trees were so thick they looked like shadows—that I saw something in the side mirror.
The scratches on the passenger window where I heard the tapping. They were deep, too deep to ignore. And they weren’t random. They spelled out one word, sharp and jagged, etched into the glass with a precision that made my stomach drop:
Next.
I didn’t understand. Not until I looked down the road, back toward Lunvail. And that’s when I realized. The fog had been waiting.
And the toll was never for the bridge. It was for whoever crossed it next. Now I keep wondering…
…what happens to the next car that passes the bridge, since the car after me didn’t honk?