There are ghosts in the town of Staywater, the kind that will sit at the end of the bar and chat with you, if you have the inclination to do so. This book isn't about them.

There was a monster in the swamp near Staywater, the kind that would bring great floods to the town and sweep its prey into the stagnant waters -- until two cousins battled the beast and slew it under the nonexistent bridge it called home. This book isn't about the monster, either.

Cherie Priest's The Toll is about the monster's ghost, and the memory of the bridge. The monster is dead, but not powerless, and while it no longer commands the floods, it still can use the bridge as a lure. And, every baker's dozen years or so, it fishes for prey. People go missing and never are found -- with enough regularity that Staywater developed a reputation for having its own serial killer.

Titus and Melanie Bell are on their honeymoon, and for reasons neither of them seems to understand, they've decided to spend it camping in Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia. Then they cross the seventh bridge -- a narrow, ramshackle structure that seems out of place and time -- on a highway with only six bridges, and Titus wakes up in the middle of the road, their car idling nearby, and Melanie has vanished. So, too, has the bridge.

The story builds to a slow boil, with Priest introducing readers to the strange town of Staywater and its stranger residents, such as Dave, the local bar owner who has no memory of escaping the monster's clutches 13 years prior; Jess, Dave's girlfriend and bar waitress who knows more than she's telling about the incident; and the foundling orphan Cameron, raised by two elderly cousins, Daisy and Claire. Meanwhile, Titus tries to find his wife while convincing the local constabulary that he had nothing to do with her disappearance.

It's a tense narrative, and readers will be creeped out and unsettled, not outright scared, by the tale. You certainly will be left guessing how the situation will be resolved.

Unfortunately, the denouement let me down. (Slight spoilers ahead.) I truly love Daisy and Claire's "solution" that allows them to do things their octogenarian bodies could never sustain, but the climax is more physical than psychological; I expected something more than what, supernatural trappings aside, amounted to a brawl in the swamp. Priest supplies unsatisfying resolutions for several key characters, leaving readers with too many questions about the novel's conclusion.

I truly enjoyed this book and had a hard time putting it down ... but the end felt like maybe someone else wrote the final chapters while Priest moved on to something else.