Kevin Lucia has written over 20 books in his career. His short stories have appeared in many venues, with the likes of Clive Barker, Peter Straub, David Morrell, and Robert McCammon. To learn more, visit kevinlucia.substack.com.

Kevin Lucia has written over 20 books in his career. His short stories have appeared in many venues, with the likes of Clive Barker, Peter Straub, David Morrell, and Robert McCammon. To learn more, visit kevinlucia.substack.com.

Joey Leonard's Last Horror Movie Marathon by Kevin Lucia

In Clifton Heights NY, Showbiz Video, the last video rental store in the Adirondacks, is finally closing its doors for good. Though cinephile and store manager Joey Leonard has anticipated this moment for years, he's still crippled by the loss. The store's now-deceased owner has willed him the entirety of the store's horror movies, and all Joey wants to do is drown his sorrows in booze and escape into a familiar, comforting ritual: a weekend horror movie marathon.

However, among the tapes willed to him, he finds a strange home recording which he initially passes off as a low-budget "found footage" movie. As he repeatedly watches it, however, it works an insidious change over him, fracturing his perception of reality and revealing to him a blasted and terrifying version of the world he knows.

So, get comfy on the couch, pour yourself a drink, and pour another one for Joey, too.

It's very likely this will be his last horror movie marathon.

CURATOR'S NOTE

The closing of a video rental store inspires grieving manager Joey on a marathon watch of its horror selections; but mixed in with those VHS tapes is what seems to be a "found footage" film, that might be something far worse. – Mike Allen

 

REVIEWS

  • "This is such a fun, fast-paced horror. The horror and suspense builds so well with a shocking ending, the story is so well rounded and complete considering this is a novella. Everything is tied up by the end, a perfect slice of cosmic horror!"

    – Sharon Joy Reads

  • "The pace of the entire book is lightning fast with hardly any downtime. Yet, there is careful attention to character and Joey is a believable flesh and blood person facing life crises on multiple fronts."

    – Steve Carroll Writes

  • "This one right here is a must-have! The main character Joey is so relatable that he draws you into his world with him. Thank you for the ride and want to go again; that ending had me seriously contemplating existence!"

    – Dead Tree Trophies
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Maybe it was a trick of the sparse light. A shadow. But on the TV, in that square, something shifted. Light and shadow fluctuated, coiling and writhing in the center of the square, where Joey somehow knew all the voices whispering their numbers were combining, in one place.

"Funfzig. Sechsundfunfzig. Sechzig. Siebzig."

Like the Spanish numbers, he thought this sounded German, but he didn't know any German, so he didn't know what numbers they were. The new voice - of a high-pitched boy, maybe age nine - spoke clearly at first, though just as flat and robotically as the others, and was easy to distinguish from the jumble of voices filling the center of the square inside the four poles. However, this voice also blended with the rest until the only thing Joey could hear were the throbbing, pulsing sounds of commingling voices muttering numbers in many different inflections all at once. Forming a language. An old language. A language truer than anything man knew, which spoke to something inside him, making him feel even higher, as if he was drifting free from the world.

Flickers of light and shadow in the square inside the poles pulsed and throbbed as they coiled, growing larger, spreading, filling up the square, becoming something. What exactly Joey couldn't tell, because the thing refused to maintain any fixed form his eyes could perceive.

Even so, something was taking shape. Whatever it was called to Joey in a tongue he'd never heard before but somehow understood. In the center of that swirling, twining mass of non-light and non-dark, a great eye opened and blinked, but it wasn't a human eye, or anything he could conceive of, really. It wasn't like any eye he'd ever seen, and he didn't understand how it was an eye, but it was, and it looked at him. Impossible, because he was watching this on a television...

but it didn't feel like that

it felt like he was there

in that room

with the muttering voices and their strange numbers washing over him

...but the great and inhuman eye which wasn't shaped like an eye at all opened and looked at him, out of the TV screen and at him, and into him. Through him. And not only did it see everything, it mirrored what it saw in Joey's eyes and he saw everything. He saw the skin of the world peel back to reveal the glistening, pulsing, throbbing innards of the universe sliding and coiling over one another.