Manchester-by-the-Sea Public Library

Universal harvester, John Darnielle

eng

no index present

fiction

Universal harvester

947147125

John Darnielle

Jeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa, a small town in the center of the state. This is the late 1990s, and even if the Hollywood Video in Ames poses an existential threat to Video Hut, there are still regular customers, a rush in the late afternoon. It's good enough for Jeremy: it's a job, quiet and predictable, and it gets him out of the house, where he lives with his dad and where they both try to avoid missing Mom, who died six years ago in a car wreck. But when a local schoolteacher comes in to return a tape, she has an odd complaint: "There's something on it, " she says, but doesn't elaborate. Two days later, a different customer returns a different tape and says it's not defective, exactly, but altered: "There's another movie on this tape." Jeremy doesn't want to be curious, but he brings the movies home to take a look. And, indeed, in the middle of each movie, the screen blinks dark for a moment and the movie is replaced by a few minutes of jagged, poorly lit home video. The scenes are odd and sometimes violent, dark, and deeply disquieting. There are no identifiable faces, no dialogue or explanation -- the first video has just the faint sound of someone breathing -- but there are some recognizable landmarks. These have been shot just outside of town. As Jeremy investigates, he becomes part of an impossible search for something someone once lost -- and would do anything to regain