Sing a song of violence, a city full of weird, families full of tough guys, pulling the others’ beards. When the egg was opened, the city caught on fire... Now, wasn’t that a rotten egg, to throw us on the pyre?

These are the recordings of Doctor Cornelius Plink.

Miss Commonprance teased me that my clothes were somewhat old-fashioned, that I dressed like a man three times my age. Personally, I don’t see what’s wrong with wearing clothes until they’re thoroughly worn out. Waste not, want not, that’s what I say. However, I must admit a quiet desire on my part to please the lovely young woman, so I went shopping for shirts yesterday.

I took myself to Bonhomme Lavergne’s Haberdashery and House of Voodoo. I must admit, I tend to stay with the boundaries of the clothing section of the store when I pay a visit. Monsieur Lavergne is a most charming gentleman, but the voodoo half of his store features such things as pickled snakes in jars, snake-skins dangling from fishhooks, and snakes offering samples of exotic-looking snacks on silver platters. As I have a low-tempo phobia of snakes, I content myself with the racks of shirts and pants.  

Much to my surprise, Monsieur Lavergne did not greet me with his usual smile, but brightened when he learned that I was on the hunt for a new button-down shirt or two. He showed me to some brightly coloured numbers with white stripes and collars, and told me they were half off, and very becoming on a modern-type man.

I was all set to pull out my billfold, but perhaps I was a bit slow, because Monsieur Lavergne became somewhat flustered, which was most unlike his usual smooth style. This is a man who almost sings when he talks, but at that point, there amongst the shirts, waving off a python offering suspiciously yellow hors d'oeuvres, he began to stutter and stammer, and his smile became as slippery as the snakes. 

He assured me that there was nothing wrong and that he was in the pink of health, he just truly wanted to emphasize how splendid I would look in these particular tops. 

His peculiar direct approach to this sale made me waver, at which point he began to practically beg to buy the shirts and take them out of his store because he had made a terrible mistake and they wouldn’t let him sleep and mon dieu he was just so tired...

Anyway, I picked up six splendid shirts for a measly four and a half dollars. What a deal!


July 4th just passed. The birth of this country is not celebrated in Arkham as it is in other places. In Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, even that place Delaware, it’s a time for fireworks and hot dogs and rippling flags proudly bearing the stars and stripes.

But here, in Arkham, it’s a very different story. Here, dear listeners, July 4th is a dark day, a quiet day. A day when everyone stays inside. Because July 4th is the day when the Town Council holds its annual parade.

Oh certainly, people have tried to witness the Council in the bright July sunlight. But all who have tried have regretted their foolish decision. The ones that went blind got off easy. Others have had their teeth fall out. Some had their ears not just fall off, but explode off the sides of their heads as they heard the drumming of the band that nobody has ever actually laid eyes on.

There was even a story from before my time here about a man named Paul Selwyn who tried to march alongside the hooded forms of the council members. Word has it that he quite enjoyed himself, and said the council members were actually quite funny once they let down their guards, and that for days afterword he was happy as a lamb.

But then, about a week after the parade, Mister Selwyn started to cough up black stuff. Tar, to be precise. It dripped from his eyes, ears, nose, and other places as well. His last act in this world was to walk the parade route backwards, paving over the cracks in the roads  before he expired alone under the hot July sun.

The city’s populace took that as a final warning. Ever since, everybody has locked their houses up tight as the parade drummed its slow winding way through the streets.

All that being said, I’m Canadian by birth, so... whatever.


There’s a button in my office. Miss Commonprance found it this afternoon, as she was cleaning up. This button sits on a narrow shelf beneath the cabinet where I lock up my medicines. It is not the kind of button one finds on a shirt, no, this is the kind of button one finds on a tractor or perhaps some kind of cotton-threshing machine. This button is very red, perhaps offensively so.

What is so interesting about this button, aside from its overly aggressive redness, is that it wasn’t there yesterday, or the day before that. I would have noticed. It’s that red.

It seems to be not so much secured to the narrow shelf as it is a part of the shelf. As if it somehow grew there, like a bizarre fungi. I cannot seem to remove it, at least not without damaging the shelf, which I would prefer not to do, since that shelf and I have a long history together.

Miss Commonprance, being of an adventurous nature, desperately wants to press that button, that button with its obsessive red-itude. But I said no and urged caution. One does not simply press strange buttons that appear out of nowhere.

Still, I can’t stop thinking about what that button might do. I see it in my sleep. It’s like that cruelly red button has pressed itself into the back of my eyelids. And in my sleep, I reach out a shaking finger...  


The church-chompers have been at it again. The bite-marks are now bigger than the size of my clenched fist. If these are the same chompers who did the damage last time, and one couldn’t be blamed for thinking that they were, then they are growing at an extraordinary rate.

What happens when they run out of churches and synagogues to feast on?


- I perhaps left the impression that citizens of Arkham don’t get the chance to celebrate Independence Day at all. We do, albeit not until the following weekend. However, it’s a subdued affair. There are no fireworks because they scare the clawed humanoids in the sewer system. And the band in the gazebo in the park at Federal and Armitage, you know it, you love it, can only play the B-flat note. Still, we all manage to gather and wave tiny flags at each other listening to that one note drone on for four hours non-stop. And then most people get an ice cream cone, so that’s nice.


Oh. Town Council has just outlawed ice cream. Hope you like B-flats.


Does your town’s police force fashion musical instruments out of bones? Didn’t think so.

The force came out, in, well, force during the citizens’ delayed Independence Day celebration and joined the band in the gazebo. There wasn’t much room up there once they all piled in, let me tell you. Police offices tend to take up a lot of space if their shoulders are as wide as their bodies are tall. On the plus side, they added a variety of percussion to the B-flats, so it was a pleasant change from the usual.

I suspect though that they were actually there to make sure nobody enjoyed any ice cream. The ribcage xylophones and pelvic bone drums were just a cover. 


My goodness, more smuggler violence last night. Plenty of gunfire, as per usual, but there was also something else.

See, word has it that one gang invaded another gang’s warehouse where they were hiding their liquor shipments. The gang that owned the warehouse, they let loose with their hand cannons and filled the air with lead wasps.

But the other gang, they didn’t fire guns at all. Instead, they whistled. And things, things that were assuredly not trained dogs, attacked.

There were no survivors on the side of the first gang, the ones with the guns, the guns being apparently highly ineffective.

They were filled with holes. This much I know first-hand, because I was brought in to do autopsies on over a dozen dead men. But once again I was at a loss to categorize what had actually killed those men.

They died from bite wounds, that much is sure. But the bite marks were unlike any animal I had ever studied. 

But do you know what they were like? Yes, that’s right, the bites taken out of the sides of the town’s churches and synagogue.

I find this quite alarming, because it has been well documented that once something from the animal kingdom has tried human blood it never thirsts for anything else.

I just listened to the last bit I recorded on this phonograph. Why am I still recording information that I have been forbidden to share? It’s not like Town Council is known for mercy. If I get caught...

You may recall that I caught Miss Weetamoo listening to my recordings. She knows all. And I fired her. How long until she rats me out to get her revenge on me for letting her go?


I was called in to the hospital to witness the last moments of one of my patients, Mister Winston Isinglish. Mister Isinglish was one of the very first people to sign on with me when I moved to Arkham, and has cursed me for it ever since. “Why, why won’t you just let me die and leave this hellscape behind?” was his usual greeting for me when he came in for an appointment. Keep in mind, he was in perfect health for a man in his nineties, and I think he just enjoyed having someone to complain at.

In fact, he was in perfect health for a man in his thirties. His perfect health was really weird, now that I think about it. I’d ask him his secret to such vitality at such an advance age, but, you know... gkkkkk! 

At any rate, in his very last moment, he let out a sigh, his eyes rolled up to what one assumed would be the heavens, and addressed his long-gone wife Iris, telling her that he was finally on his way to her loving arms, and that he hoped she didn’t mind that he had grown so old and wrinkled.

Imagine my surprise when I happened to glance up and saw that the late Missus Isinglish, who had died at least fifty years previous, was in fact there, stuck to the ceiling, looking down at him. She looked as she must have at the time of her death when she was still a young woman. By the look on her face, she wasn’t too thrilled that she was going to be stuck with a ghost that looked like a withered apple for the rest of eternity.

Ah, love.


More news from the warehouse fight. I heard a police sergeant say that the mystery woman made another appearance. Except the police still think it’s a man. Either way, what could she have possibly hoped to have done to creatures that eat stone and brick as a late-night snack? 


There’s something outside my house making a weird call. Perhaps one of you could identify it for me? Damned if I know.


Never mind. The call wasn’t outside my house. It was my house. Is it calling other houses? What happens if one responds? Was it a mating call? Or perhaps a territorial call warning other houses to stay away from my lot of land? Was it a call of distress meant to inform me that the gutters need immediate cleaning? I fear we shall never know.


Sometimes I don’t understand women at all. At the office last evening, just before we were about to close up for the night, I commented that Miss Commonprance was learning medicine at an extraordinary rate, all while keeping my office running at an efficient clip. She became quite overwhelmed by her womb-based emotions, and teary-eyed, threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. She then told me that I was a quote unquote “real nice fella”, and that she wished she had known men like me existed ever since she was a little girl. All this because I paid her a slight compliment.

I find myself somewhat eager to find out what would happen if I paid her an even larger compliment. As an experiment concerning the behavioural sciences, of course.


I had quite a scare last night. I was settled into bed, just dozing off, when there was a knock at my back door. The knocking jolted me awake. I had the same thought that you are probably thinking right now, that it was the guinea pig with the enlarged brain bringing another wounded hamster or mouse for secret treatment.

Down I went, carrying, as always, my heavy candlestick holder for protection. I looked out the window that gives a view of my backyard and the fence beyond, but as per usual, I could see nothing from that angle.

So I opened the door, expecting to see a tiny furry face looking up at me. Instead, a whole human body spilled onto my kitchen floor.

The visitor wore a wide-brimmed dark hat and a long dark trench-coat. A red scarf covered what little of their face was revealed under the hat.

As you can imagine, I was quite startled by the sudden entry, and I stumbled back. The visitor flicked out a hand and grabbed my ankle with surprising strength. In fact, I thought this fellow’s grip was going to crush my ankle, it was so strong. It was like wrestling with a gorilla.

I finally managed to pry my ankle free and found that the hand had smeared blood on my skin and my slipper. Frightening visitor or not, as a doctor I had a duty to offer aid to an injured man.

Except when I pulled off the hat, looking for a head injury, long dark hair spilled out in a sweaty wave. The skin beneath was a pain-paled brown. I pulled down the red scarf and saw the face of Miss Weetamoo.

Her last words were, “Help me, please,” before she fainted away from the pain.


Overnight For Observation was created by Daniel Fox. Daniel is the author of the highway horror novel “Mash Your Motor!”.