Letters From A Dead World

Book summary

Delve into David Tocher's spine-chilling collection, where the boundary between life and death blurs. Experience tales of a telepathic teen, a grieving man's haunting visions, and the consequences of deceit for a fraudulent psychic. Infused with a Canadian touch, these six stories will confront and unsettle your deepest fears.

Excerpt from Letters From A Dead World

By the time you read this I'll be dead.

Cendatha-Six has only reached stage one, and hopefully, I can delay stage two a little longer. The others here haven’t been as fortunate as me; by now, they've all kicked the bucket, cashed in their chips, gone belly-up. You get the idea.

As I type this, I’m watching my fingers to make sure I hit the right keys. Truth is, I have no sense of touch anymore. How do I describe it? Numbness would be too kind a term. And my face. Oh, damn, my face. I can no longer look at my reflection. My skin has turned grey, and my eye sockets have darkened, but worst of all is my tongue. It tastes like rotted meat, and when I saw it in the mirror earlier, it looked like a purple slug, slick and glistening, that dangled from my lips.

The parasite fights for control of my mind, its thoughts spreading across my own, and soon, it'll be impossible to tell the difference between the two, like trying to distinguish shadows from substance in the darkness. Once my consciousness is submerged, stage two will begin.

I'm sitting in Colonel Farnsworth's office at Fort Sandleford, a secret defense and research base in the Red Deer River Valley, the heart of the Albertan Badlands. On the desk are piles of Top Secret folders, stuffed with documents written in what my dad would have called "acronym-ese" if he were still alive.

Since I’m a civilian contractor's son, I shouldn’t be in here. You can only get in through biometric identification, but don’t worry, I’ve got that covered. Farnsworth's severed thumb is tucked safely in my shirt pocket.

Cendatha-Six needs hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, plus fifty-nine other components to survive. Only two things comprise these elements in equal proportion. One of them is dirt. That's why I have sacks of gardening soil piled up on the floor. I've been scooping handfuls of it into my mouth, chasing with water. My life depends on it. You see, unlike the secondary source, dirt is lifeless. It barely nourishes Cendatha-Six, keeping it weak.

I refuse to feed on what it really wants. On my part, that would be an act of self-destruction.

Before I tell you any more about what’s going on, you need to know my background.

My name’s Tony Olsen, the only child of Brad and Leslie Olsen. My dad had served briefly in the armed forces and had been honorably discharged. Afterward, he earned his Master of Science degree in Environmental Science at Cedar Dawn University. He had also met my mother there. As far back as I can remember, my dad had stayed in touch with his buddies in the military. In fact, on the third Monday of every February, he brought my mom and me out to Canadian Forces Base Kensington to celebrate Family Day. There would be face painting, sports, and a big barbecue. The adults would talk grownup stuff amongst themselves and all of us army brats would go off and play together. But most importantly, for me at least, was the father-son bonding tradition that my dad and I shared each year under the supervision of his long-time friend, Major Robert Neville: we would go out to the range and practice shooting live rounds.

I’ll never forget the day when my dad handed me a machine gun for the first time. I was about twelve.

“Son, this is your new friend. I’m gonna show you how to fire this baby.”

I learned that the weapon was called a C9 LMG. Dad showed me how the ammo box slid underneath and attached to the bottom, then he pointed to the feed tray and the cover and made me practice feeding linked ammo into it.

“Pull the ammo slightly outta the box,” he insisted, “If it ain’t flush and the feed cover ain’t secure, this baby’s gonna jam. Take your time.”

I then learned how to aggressively pull the cocking handle back to load the first round into the chamber. He explained how to deal with a gun jam, and how to change the barrel so it wouldn’t get too hot.

At the pull of the trigger, the gun roared to life, and a hail of bullets sprayed downrange. The noise and the recoil shook twelve-year-old me to my very core.

“Short bursts, Tony,” he said with a laugh, “or else she’ll jam up and warp.”

Dad had a lot of respect for the Canadian military. He had a soft spot for weapons too, especially the C9, and I believe he wanted me to feel the same way about them.

On the other hand, my mom—a tie-dye wearing bohemian chick with a Joni Mitchell vinyl collection—was a painter with a Master of Fine Arts degree. She never used a physical model, but instead, she retained a memory of something she’d seen, and used her brush to impart it to canvas. She always said that a still small voice told her what to paint and gave her imagination the visual details. Everyone, including me, thought she conveyed her subjects' essence and made us feel inside her artwork.

My dad, who stood over six-feet tall and wore thick glasses, also had a love for nature. This made him the great environmental scientist that he became after leaving the service.

As for me, their qualities were entwined to my DNA, giving me a gift I at first feared, then learned to rely on. I'll say more about this gift in a minute.

You might find it funny, but I’ll tell you what my dream in life was. I wanted to have a family of my own one day and give my folks lots of grandkids. They had both lost their own parents early on. So, the three of us were all we had. I wanted to see Brad and Leslie grow old and happy, surrounded by a bigger family than they could have ever imagined. They deserved it.

I was fifteen years old when my father was working for the BC Government, investigating the decline of the caribou population so he could help the province determine if there would be a need for a five-year wolf cull. That’s when he received the phone call from Colonel Farnsworth which changed our lives forever.