In this terrifying original novella, Bram Stoker Award–winning author Elizabeth Massie provides a chilling prequel to the forthcoming horror movie Playback, starring Christian Slater, Alessandra Torresani, and Toby Hemingway, in which a group of high-school students accidentally awakens an evil that possesses its victims through video.

But the dark curse dates back to turn-of-the-century New York, and begins with a grudge surrounding the birth of film itself. While fooling around with the movie camera invented by his murdered grandfather, a rich young playboy is overcome with bloodlust—and sets out to kill one of history’s most beloved figures.

In Playback: Light and Shadow, heads snap and cameras roll, giving a whole new meaning to the term “slasher film.”

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Daryl Gregory's Raising Stony Mayhall.