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Everything around Walden, Virginia disappears—nothing but inky darkness surrounds the town. But something dwells in the darkness, and those who go into it never return—and the last thing that anyone hears is their terrified screams. No one can get in. No one can get out. There’s no electricity or phones. The town remains in a permanent state of night.
Robbie Higgins and his girlfriend, Christy, try to make sense of what’s happened. Christy believes that they’re all dead and living in some kind of purgatory, but Robbie doesn’t think so. For a while, they live as best they can in a town filled with people who are trapped and growing increasingly more violent. When supplies run short, so do tempers. Then they began to look for someone to blame—and they have their eyes on Robbie. But when Robbie and Christy began fantasizing about how to kill each other, they desperately seek a way out of the darkness.
Authors Brian Keene and Stephen King must have had the same story idea pop into their heads around the same time (Keene even mentions The Mist in this novel). I’ve yet to read Stephen King’s The Mist (or see the movie), so I can’t compare the two, but I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed Brian Keene’s Darkness on the Edge of Town. It’s always interesting to see how characters will react in unusual circumstances, and the characters in Darkness on the Edge of Town react in a creepy and highly entertaining way.
The author chose to focus on the characters rather than on what was in the darkness. However, there are a couple of particularly chilling scenes, when the characters encounter people from their past—either those who are long dead or those that they’ve lost contact with—ghosts that try to persuade them to walk into the darkness.
Eerie, unpredictable, and just plain unsettling, Darkness on the Edge of Town will tempt you to leave a nightlight on when you head to bed—that is, if you can tear yourself away from this novel long enough to get some sleep. And the ending, when it comes, leaves you only with hope and little else.
If you’re in the market for a great horror novel to read, I highly recommend giving Brian Keene’s Darkness on the Edge of Town a try.
