I think it was Sophocles who said something like, “To him who is in fear everything rustles.” Brother, I tell you, that old Greek hit the nail right on the head. I just got back from doing an autopsy on a fellow who died from two small bite marks on his neck, and do you think we could get him to lay still? Like fun we could. I’ll never forget that sound of his flesh rustling about on the autopsy table. In fact, I think I hear it now, coming from behind the curtains of my study. Listen for yourself. It’s probably just the breeze. Yes, I’m sure that’s it. Nothing but the early spring winds coming through the open window. I’ll go check, shall I? It was the wind! It was trying to steal my fountain pen set, the dirty little fella. Conked it with a frying pan. I apologize to anyone who tries to fly a kite tomorrow, the air is going to be quite still. These are the recordings of Doctor Cornelius Plink. Aside from the one warm breeze, the extreme cold has continued into April. March both came in and exited like the proverbial meteorological lion. People are begging Town Council to do something about the roads being so icy, as automobiles and horse-drawn conveyances alike are slipping about and running into each other. A Town Council spokesman? Spokeswoman? Spokes... thing... it really was dreadfully hard to tell, what with the hood and long sleeves, announced that citizens should take the following precautions to survive the bitter conditions. Citizens are advised to: Think warm thoughts. Do not speak your warm thoughts out loud anywhere where the cold might hear you. Invest in a well-made sweater. Run your water in all of your faucets to make sure it doesn’t freeze in your pipes. Do not be one of those people that try to act like it’s not that cold out in an effort to appear tough. The cold will hunt you down and humble you. If you’re forced to step outside, loudly proclaim that you’re thankful for these cool temperatures, as summer heat makes you feel sweaty and uncomfortable. And whatever you do, do not, do not curse the cold. It will not like it. This weather has been hard on livestock in the countryside. I am not a veterinarian myself, but word has reached me that cows in particular have been displaying malignant symptoms which include lethargy, weight loss due to shivering, and mooing in the key of B Major which, as we all know, is a scale that indicates rage, despair, and jealousy. I went to look at the cows myself, and do you know what I found? That cows are adorable! They have these big sleepy eyes and they just look at you like you’re the most interesting thing ever! I wanted to take them home with me, yes I did, oh yes I did. We’ve done it! By golly and gosh we have done it! We have cracked open the strange language on the parchments Miss Weetamoo liberated from the log cabin in the middle of the woods. It turns out that Miss Weetamoo has an extensive network of scholars and academics around the world to contact about this sort of thing. Why does she have such a network? I don’t know. How did a Native woman, who is a housekeeper by trade, create such a network? I couldn’t possibly say. Why does such an accomplished ring of people put up with Miss Weetamoo’s acerbic temperament? You tell me. God knows I couldn’t get the answer to any of these questions out of the woman herself. What is important is that this collection of accomplished minds was able to piece together the meaning of the strange texts. “Piece” being the key word. It seems that the texts are in fact made up of a number of ancient languages. It is the Tower of Babel in the form of a document. Some of those languages have been lost to time, so we will still have to translate those sections of the texts using the context of the surrounding passages. But we have put together enough to understand the general thrust. The text, taken as a whole, is in essence an invitation. An invitation to an entity we’ve heard from before – B’gnu-Thun. I have no idea if I’m pronouncing it correctly. Not much is known about this fellow, other than he is supposed to be a giant, possess blue skin, and where he walks, blizzards follow. If Mr. Thun is indeed a master of inclement weather, then I fear he is already here. This leaves us with a rather big and obvious question – how are we, mere mortals that we are, going to be able to get him to leave? It seems Miss Weetamoo and I aren’t the only ones who suspect that B’gnu-Thun, or however you say its name, is in the neighbourhood. Signs have gone up around town, attached to light poles and on sandwich boards worn by blind men, with the entity’s name printed in bold blue letters. Capital B-apostrophe-g-n-u-hyphen-capital T-h-u-n. Underneath that, in a much smaller sized font, are a number of arcane symbols that nobody can interpret. Miss Weetamoo and I can only speculate on these bold moves made by the Town Council. Is our government welcoming a cruel blizzard-entity with open arms? One would hope not. After all, it’s one of the government’s duties to protect us from such creatures. It’s right there in black and white in the town charter. Perhaps the arcane symbols are a form of protection, a sort of incantation in glyph form that drives such creatures away, or at least gives it a fairly bad headache. This much I know – whenever I see the name B’gnu-Thun written out I instantly feel even colder than I already am. It makes one wonder – will the summer sun finally drive the big fellow out, or can this big bully keep Arkham locked in a freezing hellscape forever? And more importantly, if Town Council is indeed using the signs to welcome the entity to town, are my tax dollars paying for it? Because I would consider that a gross waste of my hard-earned money. The nights are so cold now that even my old house is complaining. The walls creak. The plumbing groans. The bones of the house, those beams way down deep in the foundation, squeak like giant mice. The curtained windows shudder in Morse Code, using blue language to describe the temperature. I burn wood in the oven to help add heat to the stiff air. It helps, a little, although that heat is soon used up and does not go far past the kitchen walls. Miss Weetamoo has come up from her makeshift room in the cellar, proclaiming it too cold, and has sheepishly asked to be allowed to use a guest bedroom on the second floor. Worst of all the mirrors, oh the mirrors, they line with frost, thickening, thickening, becoming something else, becoming a sort of whirlpool that invites one, lures one in, to dive in head-first and pop up someplace new, someplace wonderful, someplace warm. Oh, I simply cannot take this cold anymore, I must go through the mirror. I must! I must! I must! Well for Pete’s sake. The mirror takes you to Delaware! Dagnabbit! This inhospitable weather has been good for one sector of the Arkham populace – those who sell cold-weather clothing. Requiring more layers, I took myself to Bonhomme Lavergne’s Haberdashery and House of Voodoo in search of additional sweaters and scarves I could layer on myself. But the run on warm clothing has been so severe that Monsieur Bonhomme was completely out of sweaters made of wool. He admitted to me that he was out of quote unquote “normal” men’s clothing, and that he had been forced to order in sweaters from alternate sources. So it was that he presented me with a selection of sweaters spun from the facial hair of convicted murderers. He assured me that the sweaters were all, and I’m quoting again, “now almost completely lice-free.” And if I did happen to find some tiny passengers of the Pediculidae Family, well, all that scratching would just help keep me warm. Additionally, he assured me that the facial hair was strictly harvested from men that had not known the touch of a woman in at least a decade. I asked Monsieur Bonhomme how this would be of any benefit, and he replied that it meant that the hair came from the faces of men who had not been weakened by female impulses. The sweaters came in an array of dyed colours – orange, purple, green, and gold. Natural browns, blacks, reddish-blonds, and greys were also available. I passed on the sweaters. It was just too weird. I admit to my own prejudice, but I would just rather wear material sheared from a sheep or goat’s bottom rather than a convict’s face. I’m not sure what this says about me, and I know I’m being less than practical given the abominable weather, but gosh, the idea of a convict’s severed facial hair constantly rubbing against my neck makes me shiver. And I’m doing enough shivering as it is. How are things going in your end of the world, Dear Listeners? Are you feeling the first warm rays of a springtime sun? Are you frolicking on grass that, until recently, had been hidden under a blanket of snow? Do you have any notion of how one can shoo away a malignant frost entity that might kill off your entire town just by being in its general proximity? I’m open to any suggestions at all at this point, no matter how crazy. Instead of celebrating the Easter long weekend together, people are packing up and leaving town. Or at least trying to. Town Council is having a heck of a time keeping the roads clear of deep snow drifts. If they’re trying at all. Although it’s not like those families would have been able to celebrate Easter in a traditional manner anyway. It’s far too cold for Easter egg hunts, plus the eggs would just get buried in fresh snow. As for going to church, that’s off the menu entirely. All of the religious institutions in town have been completely frozen over. They’re essentially just giant blocks of ice with no way inside. Well, if you ever happen to get trapped inside because of weather so cold it might kill you, then I suggest you try filling that time by reading an amazing medical paper, like the one I’ve just recently finished! Glue your eyes (not literally) to my well-researched marvel titled “Mercury! From Zits to Coughing Fits, There’s Nothing This Wonder Metal Can’t Mend!” And for those of you suffering from syphilis during this weekend’s celebration of the tortuous death and resurrection of Jesus, there’s no better way to say good-bye to those syphilitic blues than with a dose of quintessential quicksilver. Enjoy! There is one thing heating up in this bitter cold – my relationship with my office assistant and nurse-in-training, Miss Commonprance. She keeps using the cold as an excuse to snuggle up to me when we’re alone in the office. Well, to be perfectly honest, we do a bit more than just snuggle. But you just never mind about that. The point is, she wants to take things even further. I know, I am just as shocked as you are. We’re not married. But that doesn’t seem to matter to the younger crowd that Miss Commonprance hangs about with. But we’ve hit a bit of a snag. Miss Commonprance lives in a women-only boarding house run by a woman who has an almost psychic ability to know when a man is within three city blocks of one of her tenants. She’s been absolutely clear with all the women in her home – she’ll kick them right out if she catches any of them, well, doing things best not discussed on these phonographic rolls in case any ladies of a more delicate nature are listening. We can’t go to a hotel in the area, because I am too well-known. Gossip would fly about me and my assistant faster then the icy bits of snow that sting our faces every time we try to brave the outdoors. That leaves my house. But I have a woman secretly living in my house. I refer, of course, to my former housekeeper, Miss Weetamoo. She is under my protection. And together we are trying to figure out what to do about this unfortunate B’gnu-Thun business. You know that we have had no untoward relations, but who else would believe it? But alas, Miss Commonprance’s hints that I should sneak her into my home are becoming stronger by the day. And she’s not exactly the subtle type to begin with. I can’t just throw Miss Weetamoo out for a night. Can I? No, no, of course not. Miss Commonprance does have those incredibly long legs though. That’s not- No, that’s hardly the point. The point is, that I’m running out of excuses to keep her out of my home. I don’t know how much longer Miss Commonprance will accept my refusals before she feels hurt. I’m flattered that she has stuck with me for as long as she has, considering my strange life. I never thought I’d see the day where I would think of the Great War as being the least complicated time of my adult life, but here we are. It has begun. One of the two remaining liquor-running gangs in town was found in pieces. Literally. The grapevine has it that they were hidden at a country estate when they were attacked. But this time, guns and dynamite were not used. Instead, the gang was frozen right through, and then their statue-like bodies were smashed to bits. Chunks of them littered the ground, like some obscure work of high-minded but ultimately demented work of art. The police called me in to see what could be made of the pieces of gangsters, but what could I say? If some other means of death was used previous to their freezing, it would be incredibly difficult to find in all that mess. And so I stood there, over the autopsy table, shifting melting chunks of gangster-meat about like a child trying to put together a puzzle without a picture to use as a reference. One bootlegging gang now stands triumphant, with Arkham as their prize. Will they continue to use the cold of B’gnu-Thun for their own twisted benefit? Will the Town Council side with them? What will this mean for Arkham? Will we ever see another spring? Overnight For Observation was created by Daniel Fox. Daniel is the author of the light-hearted fantasy novel “The Wizard, the Farmer, and the Very Petty Princess”