Wisdom is the child of suffering. Suffering is a child of circumstance. Circumstance wants to start seeing other people, because this just isn’t working out. Better luck next time.

These are the recordings of Doctor Cornelius Plink.

Here we are at the crisp, brand new start of another year. Oh, there are so many things I want to accomplish with my next twelve months. I want to truly dive into an artistic pursuit. I want to swim in the deep waters of a physical activity. I want to learn how to keep bootlegging gangsters from accosting me at work and at home in an effort to find out if the mystery woman that has been plaguing them has come to me for medical help. Oh! And I’d really like to take a flying lesson. Planes looks like so much fun!


If you’ll recall, at the end of last year my housekeeper, Miss Weetamoo, asked me to look into a mysterious shipment arriving in the warehouse of one of the bootlegging gangs. Sheer nonsense, of course. True, I am a veteran of the Great War, but that hardly means I’m the type to don a high-collared jacket and a low-brimmed hat and go skulking about the shadows of warehouses filled with violent men. If anything, my experience of the war has made me quite risk-averse.

I did it anyway. Why? Because I’m a damnable fool, that’s why. I suppose it was because Miss Weetamoo practically begged me to do it. For a woman as stiff-necked and proud as Miss Weetamoo to beg for anything, it must be important. So off I went.

The warehouse is located by the railroad tracks to the west of town, not so very far from Miles River. I parked my car quite a ways off, nestled in the woods, and made the rest of the way on foot. Was I being quiet? Oh yes sir, as quiet as a respectable mouse in church.
The warehouses were quite heavily guarded, just as I expected. The gang was, after all, at war with another gang over who controlled the illegal liquor trade in the area. But I suppose you could say luck was on my side, because there was a heavy snowfall that night, just shy of a full-on blizzard, and it masked my approach.

The inside of the warehouse was bustling as workers broke open crates of booze, redistributing the bottles to smaller boxes to be shipped out. New Years’ Eve was fast approaching, and I’m sure the speakeasies in the area were all clamouring for supplies.

I am not ashamed to say that I was terribly afraid during all of this. It’s a wonder I didn’t shake the boots right off of my feet! I was sure that at any moment some thug was going to turn the corner into the aisle I was in, and that would be the last that anyone heard of Doctor Cornelius Plink.

Yet despite my fear, I saw it. The mystery shipment. The thing that Miss Weetamoo was so desperate to learn about.

There was one corner of the warehouse that was guarded by a ring of men toting tommyguns. They faced outwards, keeping all the warehouse workers at bay. Surely, if there was anything beyond the ordinary, well, at least as ordinary as such a warehouse could ever manage, then it was in that corner.

I climbed up on a stack of crates and slid forward on my belly until I could see past the guards. At least this I could do well; I had done plenty of belly-slithering back in Europe, let me tell you.

There, in the corner, was a crate that was about the size and shape of a coffin. Two men, one large, one lean, were working at it with crowbars. They wrestled off the lid and reached down inside and pulled out...

A man. They had shipped a man. A dark-skinned little fellow, dressed more or less in rags. Middle Eastern, maybe, or perhaps from the northern shores of Africa. His hands and feet were tied, and I winced at the thought of how long he must have been kept in such a condition. His hair was grey and messed, creating a crazy sort of halo about his head. I also noticed a rather extravagant moustache, also grey, that might have been quite magnificent if he had been allowed to maintain it. Now it, like his hair, was a wild mess, giving him the look of a man who had just received a strong electrical shock.

Then, there was a call behind me. The voice of a man, raised in alarm. I looked back and realized that I had most likely left a trail of water, from the snow melting off my shoulders and hat, all along the warehouse’s wooden floors. A trail that would lead the bootleggers right to my current position atop the stacked crates.

I could not go forwards, for the ring of men with tommyguns would surely see me. Left was out, because men were packing boxes with bottles on that side. To my right, the big double doors were open, the back of a truck being loaded with the redistributed boxes. 

I had nowhere to go but behind. I slid backwards along the crates, quick as I could, banging my knees every time there was a change in height from one stack of crates to the next.

The alarmed voice, now joined by others, came parallel with me, down on the floor below. It would be a mere matter of too-short moments before they saw where I had climbed up onto the stack.

And then... there were the noises.

They came from my left. I thought at first some strange new automatic weapon was being fired at me. Then I thought a large vehicle was having some kind of mechanical trouble. Then I realized what I was truly hearing...

Chewing. I was hearing chewing. From what seemed like multiple mouths. Dozens of them. Perhaps even a hundred.

The men who were hunting me heard it too. As did the warehouse workers and the men with the tommyguns. 

The foreign gentleman who had been pulled from the crate began to scream. I didn’t understand the words, perhaps because they were in a foreign language, or it might have been because of the gag in his mouth. I did understand the emotion behind the words though, that was universal – pure, unadulterated panic.

It was clear – our foreign visitor knew what the chewing sound emanated from long before any of the rest of us did. But it didn’t take long for us to find out.

Gaps began to appear all along the entire west wall of the warehouse. The yellow-white light from yard-lights began to shine through the new holes in shafts filled with blustering snow. And then we saw... them.

They were... well... I don’t know what they were. I suppose you could say they most resembled caterpillars, or perhaps armoured slugs, but they were the size of human children. Worse, they had the distorted faces of human children, albeit ones with impossibly wide wet mouths with large square teeth that chomped gleefully at the wooden walls. The whole time, they made a terrible keening noise, like hungry infants who hadn’t been fed in days. They sounded like they would never stop eating until every lick of wood in the place, and possibly the men contained within those walls of wood, had been entirely consumed.

Panic grabbed hold of the warehouse workers. Not that you could blame them. That keening noise felt like broke fingernails plucking at my very nerves. Did I hightail it out of there? You bet your bottom dollar I did, right alongside the very men that had been hunting me just minutes before.

I heard those tommyguns go off as some of the warehouse men fought back. I don’t know if they were effective, I had no desire to stick around and find out. As for the man pulled from the crate, I don’t know if he made it out safely. I hope he did, he seemed an innocent in all of this.

What I do know for sure is that if Miss Weetamoo ever begs me for anything ever again, she can expect a great big “No thank you!” from me.



Once I got home I had myself two good stiff shots of brandy while Miss Weetamoo, seated in my favourite chair, waited for me to tell her what I had seen. When I finally got to the big revelation, that the gangsters had imported a human being of all things, Miss Weetamoo said, and I quote, “Huh...”, and then went down into the cellar to bed.

That’s all I got. A “huh.” After all that. I walked into a warehouse full of well-armed thugs, was nearly found out, got the information she wanted, survived horrifying building-eating slug-beasts, and my great reward was a single mostly disinterested syllable. 

I am so glad I fired that woman. Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go lay down in my bathtub and shake for a while.


Miss Commonprance came by the house and invited me to celebrate New Years’ Eve with her. At first, I wasn’t sure I should accept her invitation, because she is my employee. But she insisted, saying that she would take care of all the plans, and that really she was doing this because she was scared that I was going to turn into a “stuffy old man.”

She told me to dress up nice and leave my “boiler” behind as we would be “ankling it” downtown to watch some fireworks, followed by a trip to a secret “box” for dancing and libations.

Quite frankly, I didn’t understand half of what she was driving at, but I do fear I am becoming a stuffy old man before my time, so, with some reluctance, I agreed.

Miss Weetamoo was hidden in the kitchen and heard the whole exchange. She had been preparing some of her butternut-squash soup, an absolute favourite of mine. But when Miss Commonprance left, Miss Weetamoo said her wound was hurting her too much to cook and she took herself back down to her spot in the cellar.

That’s fine. I didn’t want her soup anyway. So there.


Say chums, do fireworks in your town or city spell out the words “Obey,” “Capitulate,” and “Question nothing, your Town Council knows what’s best for you” when they go off? Just wondering.


I must say, I had a splendid time with Miss Commonprance. In her parlance, we had quite a “blast” at the “drum” dancing to the crooning of a “top-shelf canary,” and that many a “tomato” was checking me out, envious that Miss Commonprance had brought such a “cake-eater” in on her arm.

As the night progressed, we “dipped our bills” in many libations of “corn”, which I believe was actually bourbon, followed by glasses of “champs-skis” as the clock struck midnight. At that point, Miss Commonprance declared out loud that I was her favourite “croaker” in the whole wide world, and planted a kiss on me that, I must admit, left me a bit light-headed.

It’s that last part that has left me in a bit of a state. Was that kiss merely part of the drunken revelry of a New Years party? Or did it mean something more? I fear I’m going to be even clumsier than usual at the office when we reopen, which of course will give Miss Commonprance more ammunition to tease me with.


While it is indeed a new year, the Town Council continues in its old ways. For example, a flier was just pushed through my mail slot with such force that it caught fire and I had to stamp it out with my bare foot.

I believe I can still make out the bulk of the writing around the singed parts. Let’s see what we have here...

We, the citizens of Arkham, have been instructed to not make any wishes at all between January third and January ninth. Anyone making wishes during that period will be arrested and forced to do community service, which will mainly involve squeezing the pus out of the various sores found on the Town Council’s corporeal forms. Anyone who sees a shooting star and desires to make a wish upon it during that time will just be out of luck.

That’s a tough break for anyone blowing out birthday candles on their birthday cakes this month. Still, I’m sure Town Council has a good reason for making such a demand of the people. Or at least a reason. “Good” is so very subjective around these parts.


Speaking of wishes, I want to wish all of you listeners a fine New Year while I have the chance. What did you do to celebrate at the stroke of midnight? Or are you the type to prefer a quiet night in? Did the fireworks in your town form words that demanded that you keep tabs on all of your neighbours’ habits and pastimes? Whatever the case, I hope the coming year is a happy one for you and yours.


Miss Weetamoo came to me this morning and stated that we simply must find the man the bootleggers smuggled into Arkham. She fears he is the key to something, and that whatever he unlocks, it will prove most destructive to our town.

I must admit, I think she is right. Those thugs brought that man here for a reason – either to increase their illicit liquor sales, or to destroy the rival gang of rumrunners. Either way, it could mean trouble. Deadly, deadly, trouble.

I’m also now worried that Town Council might look at this whole situation as Miss Weetamoo wishing to know more about the mystery man. As if we didn’t have trouble enough.

So, will I stick my neck out once again to help my strange housekeeper peel back the layers of this mysterious onion? I suppose we’ll have to find out together.

Until the next phonographic roll, I bid you farewell.


Overnight For Observation was created by Daniel Fox. Daniel is the author of the western horror novel “Hag’s Trail.”