They say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Awkward, if you’re in a wheelchair.


These are the recordings of Doctor Cornelius Plink.


Do you make lists? Are you a list-maker? I certainly am. Big believer in lists, that’s me. For example, I write out every item that I need to acquire from the local market. But not only do I write out my grocery list, I then refine it, making a second version of that list organized by sections of the store. Why, I’d bet all the money in my pocket versus all the money in yours that I’ve saved hours thanks to the efficiency of my lists!

However, recent events have made me question if I want to carry on with this habit. Strange items have begun to appear amongst the ranks of fruits and vegetables on my lists. Here is the list I wrote for last week’s trip to the market:

Bread, doughnuts (if they’re in season), pork tenderloin, person who won’t be missed, rack of lamb, goat’s blood, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, fennel, wickedly curved dagger that will hurt a lot, lettuce, carrots, apples, canned tuna fish, a location where screams will not be heard for miles around, and a cheese of some kind.

I simply don’t remember adding some of these items. The handwriting is mine, although it becomes more haphazard and rushed when it comes to the more questionable entries. I assure you, I am most certainly not in the market for human sacrifices. And fennel is absolutely disgusting. I’d rather suck on a well-used shoe.


Ha! I’ve done it again! You know by now that I’m rarely given to trumpeting my own successes, but I must admit I’m simply delighted with my latest medical paper: “Friendly Phrenology – Small Head? Don’t Worry, We’ll Still Find Something Useful For You To Do!” If this one doesn’t finally crack open the doors to the New England Journal of Medicine I’ll eat my own hat!


Hockey goes wonderfully well. My legs remembered how to skate in a far quicker fashion than I had expected. My stamina is up, my belly is slimming down, and my stick-handling is progressing at a pleasant clip.

The fellows I play with are all upstanding chaps. A good fun lot, all out just to have a good time in the company of their fellow man, with very little competitiveness to mar the spirit of camaraderie that extends like a fine mist between us all.

There’s really only one thing that puts a damper on our weekly games. The ice screams and bleeds as we run our ice skates up and down its length. Worse still, everyone swears the screaming sounds like their fathers.

We’ve tried switching ice rinks. No luck. The screams and blood follow us wherever we go to hold a game. 

For most of us, it’s been an uphill battle to overcome reacting to that sound. Except for Cole Platzner. He seems to take great delight in really digging his blades into the ice, laughs out loud when blood bubbles up from the new cuts in the ice made underneath his feet. He yells out, “Take that, Dad!” multiple times per session. 

It’s fairly disturbing, and throws a number of us off of our game. Children are no longer encouraged to come watch their fathers play. What was once a wholesome gathering of men seeking some exercise and companionship has become a trial of watching a man work out his hatred for his father on some innocent and unsuspecting ice.

On the other hand, my goodness can that man drive a puck home. His wrist-shot should be studied by professionals. He might have violent resentment towards his pater familia, but boy oh boy, is he ever handy to have around when you’re down two points in the third period.


So, I must discuss last Tuesday night. Miss Weetamoo found a possible location of the mystery man that the bootleggers smuggled into the country. How did she find such information? I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. She did deign to inform me that he was being moved from location to location every night, so that it was imperative that she get to him that night, before she lost track of him again.

She simply insisted on going after him. I insisted that she stay and relax, because, as per usual, she was risking re-injuring herself, although by this point she’s fairly well healed. She’ll have scars for sure, but as near as I can tell her internal organs are all in fair shape. It’s just a matter of time making sure that every bit of her that was injured is allowed to heal to full health. But, being a creature composed almost entirely out of bullheaded stubbornness, she insisted on venturing out over my objections.

Did I go with her? Of course I did. At least she hadn’t snuck out this time, so I had the opportunity to offer my companionship. I insisted that if she tried to go out alone, I would physically restrain her. She seemed to find this quite amusing, and patted my cheek. Impossible woman.

There was a hitch in the shape of a beautiful leggy woman that I was supposed to meet for a date. I had to call up Miss Commonprance and call off our rendezvous, one which I had been quite looking forward to. Miss Commonprance has the unique and quite wonderful ability to get me to, in her words, untie my knots, which I believe is her way of saying she knows how to get me to loosen up. She also has the ability to tell when I’m lying to her, so I told her that I was concerned for the well-being of a patient, which was true in its way, and I suppose true enough for Miss Commonprance to accept it as a reason for my cancellation. She teased me about making sure my patient wasn’t too cute, which hit a bit close to home, because I think that it can be objectively stated that Miss Weetamoo is a physically attractive woman, even if she does have the personality of a paper-cut.

Spring has yet to make its appearance here in Arkham, so we bundled up and ventured out into a Massachusetts winter night cold enough for the snow to squeak under our feet. We had to drive southeast, about half the distance to Martin’s Beach by my reckoning. Miss Weetamoo had a hand-drawn map spread across her lap, and would occasionally use a flashlight to keep track of our position. 

She eventually called for a halt, and had me turn the car around, then pull off the road entirely, so that we could cover it with branches from nearby evergreen trees. She pulled the branches off with ease. I tried one and had to give it up as a lost cause. I suppose she was able to find older trees where the limbs had dried out.

We crossed the highway and bounded into the forest. Or at least, Miss Weetamoo bounded. I, on the other hand, did a good job of finding every low-hanging branch with my face. It was pitch-black in between those trees, yet Miss Weetamoo seemed to have no trouble at all with her navigation. In fact, she was so quick and silent, moving like a sleek animal, that I lost sight of her on multiple occasions until she came back for me. Finally, she became so annoyed that she grabbed my had in that surprisingly strong grip of hers and led my onward until we saw the log cabin.

She urged me to drop down on my belly beside her, and then we slid up on a rock to look down at the layout. Peering over the edge, we saw a remote log structure, well-maintained, that I supposed to be a hunting lodge. However, if it was a hunting lodge, it belonged to someone with some money behind them, because it resembled a small, well-appointed home more than it did a simple shack for hunters to take shelter in.

Smoke was curling up from the chimney, flickering orange fire or lantern light danced around the edges of the curtains. Miss Weetamoo nudged me and pointed. At first, I couldn’t make out what she was indicating because of the dark, but then I saw it, or to be more precise, I saw them. Three men with Tommy-guns doing circular patrol routes around the structure.

I felt quite foolish, not having thought to bring a weapon with us. I was a veteran of a war, after all, the Great War at that, and my pistol had become my closest companion. I had become lax in my acknowledgement of the world’s violence while living in Arkham, and perhaps deliberately so. So there we were, defenceless, within a snowball’s distance of at least three well-armed men.

Well, that was that as far as I was concerned. We would have to turn back. I turned to whisper as much to Miss Weetamoo, but she had turned at the exact same moment, and our faces almost pressed together. I expected to see my fear reflected back at me in her native features, but instead I saw... excitement. Call it a feral sort of joy. She reached up and turned my head so she could press her lips next to my ear. She told me to wait here and, if she rescued the kidnapped Middle Eastern man, to get him to her grandmother and brothers if she should fall. Before I could object, she was gone, slipping away into darkness, my ear still warm from her breath.

I don’t know how to describe what happened next, because I could barely see it. One moment, there were three men circling the log house. Then there were two, the third man not reappearing from around the far corner of the building. Then there was one.

This last ignorant chap was marching around the close side of the log house, stamping his feet, his hands tucked under his arms. He was upright, then there was a blur that came up behind him, then he was down on the ground. When the blur came to a rest, it was Miss Weetamoo, bending down to pull the gun away from the man’s limp form. I believe she broke it down and tossed the pieces in different directions. She turned and gave a cheery wave up in my direction, then crept around the far side of the house, out of my sight.

There is no way for me to explain to you properly what I had just witnessed. I mean, that man was up, then he was down, lickety-split. If you’ve listened to any of my previous phonographic rolls, you’ll know that I have born witness to a great many odd and terrible occurrences during my years in Arkham. But in a way, this was the most disquieting, because in this instance it had been caused by a woman I had known, or thought I’d known, for years. Perhaps it was akin to the shock of finding out your father had a whole other family in another town. Or that your mother was actually from Venus. It was all so very strange.

I didn’t have long to contemplate Miss Weetamoo, because gunfire erupted inside the house. I could see the flare of the gun muzzles around the edges of the curtains. I jumped up and began to rush down, naturally filled with concern for Miss Weetamoo. How foolish I had been to let the woman give me instructions. 

I ran around to the front of the house, but skidded to a stop when the door opened. I was out in the open. If someone came through with a gun, I was done, the easiest of targets. 

But it was Miss Weetamoo. She looked at my raised fists and gave me her smirk, something that she knows enrages me. I moved forward anyway and checked her, looking for wounds. She seemed quite unhurt. In fact, if I recall correctly she wasn’t even breathing at an accelerated pace, in spite of the fact that she had certainly just been the target of an astonishing amount of gun fire. I asked if there was anyone inside who needed my medical assistance. She assured me that there was nobody still within my help.

She also told me that our mystery man was no longer on the premises. However, she was confident that he had been there, and been put to work. She held up some documents I couldn’t make out in the dark, and said they were partial translations. She suggested we go before more bootleggers showed up to relieve their compatriots. 

I followed her back through the woods. Watching her back as she moved easily between the trees, I had to wonder... just who had I had in my home these past few years?


The bitter cold continues to take a toll on the city. Last night a water main froze up completely and then cracked down by River Street. Normally, this could be counted as anything from an inconvenience to an outright disaster, but since it occurred along River Street, the trouble is contained to the warehouse district.

That area of the city is where the warehouse workers and the infamous prostitutes of astonishing beauty ply their respective trades. Or would be, if most of their numbers didn’t disappear over the coldest winter months. I suspect they all go off and hibernate. I point to the gills on their necks as evidence.

Burst water-mains can of course cause some significant damage. They burst through and buckle the road, cause massive ice slicks, and deprive homes of fresh clean water. That being said, I think it’s the wind that causes me the most unease. Or, to be more specific, the voices one can faintly hear singing within the wind.

What are they singing? I couldn’t say. The lyrics are faint, and possibly in a long lost language. Who is singing? I couldn’t begin to guess. Everyone who hears them is as clueless as I am on that score. Perhaps most worrying, are they singing to someone, or something?

My goodness, I wish spring would make an early arrival.


Is it warmer where you are, Dear Listeners? I certainly hope so. I hope you are hearing the first robins of the year. Hopefully, you’ve had your first day where you could go about without a heavy coat. With any luck, you didn’t just discover that your house-keeper for many years is capable of shocking violence which she commits with a smile. Oh, and flowers. It would be nice if your flowers are starting to bloom. Do let me know.


The singing in the wind has become clearer over the past day or two. While we citizens are still in the dark about who is doing all that eerie singing, or why, we have at least clarified that the tune is Wendell Hall’s “It Aint’ Gonna Rain No Mo.” So that’s nice.


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