They say that many hands make light work. In Miskatonic University, the reverse is true. They’ve lightly made many hands. Now they’re not quite sure what to do with them, especially since they’re so aggressive. 

These are the recordings of Doctor Cornelius Plink.

It appears that a Town Council member has gone rogue. This fellow held a press conference at the slippery iced steps of Town Hall, the real Town Hall, the one that gives you wicked indigestion, by standing on a small wooden box. As reporters slipped and slid and fell all around him, he wrote out declarations on pieces of paper stuck on a clipboard, and then thrust them into the air for all to see. Nobody is quite sure why he chose this medium of communication, since he actually has a nice public speaking voice.

At any rate, this fella had taken it upon himself to tell us that we weren’t actually experiencing strange bitterly cold weather that had lingered all the way into June. “It’s not that cold at all!” he wrote in a pleasing cursive, complete with an emphatic exclamation point. 

He continued on with a strange word salad that contained words like “environment,” “natural cycles,” and “it could be colder,” all of which were meant to make it sound like he had scientific evidence backing him up. But if one cares to wade through his gibberish, he clearly does not. 

To close off the press conference, he started to strip off his suit, revealing bathing garments one would normally expect to find on a gentleman putting in an appearance at a beach in the midst of July. They were certainly not the proper attire for a man representing the civic government in below-freezing temperatures.

Apparently, he immediately began turning blue, and nobody could read his clipboard papers anymore because he was shivering so hard that he could no longer write proper letters. Personally, reading about this in the newspaper, I had to wonder if he had been either bribed or coerced by the bootlegging gang known as the Riverside Boys to put on this ridiculous display.

Either way, Town Council clearly did not approve of this conference. A half-dozen men in papier-mâché goat masks emerged from City Hall and grabbed the shivering man and carried him inside. Multiple accounts say there was a single scream followed by a red-hot flash and the unmistakable stench of sulphur. 

I hope the poor fellow is at least warm now, wherever he is.  


Right. So. The office. Miss Weetamoo and I, transporting the wounded fellow from the Middle East, had returned to my office since the chap would be far too easy to find at the hospitals in the area. We had burst through the rear door to find Hooty stealing morphine.

Which means that Hooty simultaneously discovered that Miss Weetamoo and I were not bringing a man, suffering from an obvious gunshot wound, to the hospital. I find that’s the kind of thing that tends to raise suspicion in the observer.

Miss Weetamoo moved to capture Hooty, but I held her back, leaving the next step in Hooty’s slim hands. My faith, shattered though it might have been by the morphine theft, was at least rewarded in this instance. Hooty sprang into action, clearing off my medical examination table, fetching hot water and bandages, and assembling what surgical instruments I had about the place.

The conditions for the man’s surgery were not ideal. For one thing, he had lost a frightening amount of blood, and I had no way to replenish him. Second, I had a limited supply of surgical tools, seeing as how I am not a surgeon. Third, the lighting was too dim for me to properly inspect the wound. Fourth, my two lovely assistants were glaring daggers at each other across the patient. And fifth, I am not a surgeon. 

On the plus side, I had more than my fair share of gunshot experience from the war. And the Goddess of Fortune gave us a small nudge in the right direction in that the slug did not seem to have splintered as it entered the man’s shoulder. I was able to pull it out as one piece, leaving no shrapnel behind. Or so I hope, at any rate.

But the gentleman is far from being out of the woods. For one thing, his body is going to be under a tremendous strain thanks to all of that lost blood. For another, there is always the chance of infection. And of course there is the whole bit about how a bloodthirsty bootlegging gang is probably now hellbent on assassinating him, so that he cannot aid us in stopping their plans for what quite possibly might be world domination.

Call it fifty-fifty that he would survive the next few days.

After that, we had to hurry to clean up my office, wiping up all the blood, disposing of bloodied bandages, resetting everything to its usual place. I couldn’t just close up shop on account of a shot foreigner. This was a doctor’s office after all, and people like to have such places remain open for service. Plus it might have been a tad suspicious if I didn’t show up for work the night after someone assaulted the Riverboat Boys’ hideout.

We got everything shipshape just in time, hiding our unconscious guest in my office as Mrs. Willikins brought her boy, Eric, in for a consultation at eight-thirty in the morning. My office had been exceptionally busy the past few months. Which is the kind of thing one expects when one is under a vicious cold spell woven by a gigantic supernatural entity.

However, the Willikins boy was not suffering from exposure or frostbite or any other cold-related affliction. No, it turned an eye had grown in the palm of his hand. It was quite active, and glared at me from under heavy lids. But the boy was not seeing through it, so the question of just who or what was giving me the stink-eye remained unanswered. 

So, once again I performed a surgical procedure, my second within twenty-four hours. Mrs. Willikins insisted that I do the procedure myself instead of taking up my suggestion that she take the child to the hospital. You know, the building where they keep actual surgeons. She said she hadn’t trusted the hospital ever since the birth of the boy, when they had led Mrs. Willikins and her husband into the infancy ward, waved a hand, and said, “Go ahead, pick one. They’re all the same, really.” Fair enough, Mrs. Willikins. Fair enough.

To be honest, even though I was quite tired and afraid of what the Riverboat Boys might do, I was grateful for the non-stop work. Because it kept me from having to have a necessary conversation with Hooty. Which, of course, I was obliged to have, once things finally settled down.


I’ve had it out with Hooty. It seems that she has a bit of a gambling demon on her back. And she now owes an undisclosed amount of money to some rather unkind people. Hence the morphine thefts. She was paying back her debt in pilfered drugs. My drugs, meant for my patients.

We were at quite the knife’s edge, weren’t we? We had caught Hooty stealing drugs, but on the other side of the equation, she had seen us traipsing about town with a man who is probably very much wanted by the Riverboat Boys.

Hooty was quite apologetic. There were many tears. And promises that she wouldn’t tell anybody about our mysterious patient. 

But I come down on the side of Miss Weetamoo in this. Hooty is not to be trusted. Miss Weetamoo has implied that we silence her, permanently. She has signalled this idea by drawing a thumb across her neck, making strangling motions in the air, making stabbing motions in the air, and making a gun out of her fingers and thumb and firing it in Hooty’s direction behind her back.

I was bitterly disappointed in Hooty. I had taken her under my wing. And, of course, I had become romantically entangled with her. And now I did not know if that romance was legitimate, or just her way of getting at my drug supplies. 

Still, I wasn’t willing to do away with Hooty, no matter how much Miss Weetamoo might insist. So I did the only other thing I could think of. I had her call the owner of her debt and invite him to my office.


The weather winter has continued to pile up. Snow falls like it’s late for an appointment. The Town Council has taken a new tact for clearing the roads. Previously, they were using snow plows attached to the fronts of full-sized trucks. However, as of this morning, I’ve seen they’ve gone with a more ecclesiastical approach.

Bishop Tantrum came by, easily identifiable by his continuous string of screams. He was waving a crucifix in front of him, and in between the screams, reciting scripture. Did it work? Boy howdy! The snow scrambled to get out of his way like the waters of a certain sea making way for a fellow named Moses back in the day.

It’s surprisingly effective. I haven’t seen this much blacktop since last October. We’re going to need more holy men if they intend to clear all of Arkham’s streets though. And priests and rabbis tend to run into bizarre accidents around these parts. Still, if you’ve taken holy orders, the Arkham Town Council would like to speak to you. I hear the benefits are quite good. Safety is not guaranteed.


As Miss Weetamoo and I prepare ourselves for what we hope is the final confrontation with the Riverboat Boys and their pet frost-blasting entity, I can’t help but look back at my life and wonder if I’ve made good use of it.

I think I have. I am, of course, a doctor, and I’ve literally saved lives. I receive Christmas Cards and birthday cards and Easter cards and protective charms and protective necklaces and protective potions and also that one box of chicken feet which might also have been protective or might just have been meant for some kind of stew. They are all tokens of gratitude from people I’ve helped.

And of course, I did fight in the Great War against great evil. Traipsing about in the muck of the trenches, cowering in fear as artillery shells whistled overhead in seemingly unending barrages, crawling for three endless light-less days through those strange tunnels I fell into in France, the ones with the strange pictures drawn on the walls of a giant being with tentacles on his face and a disposition for eating people out of boats like they were being served up on silver serving trays. I hope all of that counts as being a positive in the ledger of my life.

I suppose my biggest regret is that I did not have a child. If I’m honest with myself, perhaps I was hoping that was a conversation I’d be having with Hooty one day in the not-so-distant future. But that’s over now, I’ll never be able to trust her again, and trust is the thing in a close relationship, isn’t it? Not a thing, but the thing. 

I just realized that I sound like a man who does not expect to come back alive. Or dead. Like a man who doesn’t expect to come back at all. I have to shake this attitude off. Of course I’ll come back. I have so much more I still want to do in this life! Go on more bike rides! Attempt more poetry! Research, write, and publish more medical papers! 

Oh! And I want to try one of those Baby Ruth candy bars. They look delicious!


Before we carry on, let’s refresh our palettes by talking about you, Dear Listeners. I hope to enjoy a blossoming spring season vicariously through you. All of your snow must be gone by now. Can you see the green grass of front lawns? Can you hear the sweet sound of birds in search of a mate? If you’re preparing to confront a potentially world-ending supernatural entity, are you able to do it in a light spring jacket? That would be nice.

Oh! And lilacs! Have your lilacs bloomed? I love the smell of lilac. It is the odour of life renewed!


There was a knock at the door. It was not a patient. It was not even a human. It was the guinea pig from the library. 

If you have not heard some of the previous phonographic rolls, the guinea pig used to be a regular old Cavia porcellus, who lived out his days in a glass enclosure in the children’s section of the Arkham library. Throw in a scientific mishap here, a bit of supernatural peculiarity there, and voila, I was now confronted with a guinea pig who had a large pulsating brain that had pushed its way out of the top of his skull.

Naturally, I was quite curious about what had happened with the furry little fellow since I had last seen him. Was he even more intelligent than ever? How was his ongoing war with the local demon-worshipping frogs and toads proceeding? How on Earth had he managed to take over the local numbers racket?

But time proceeded at its usual pace, and I was unable to ask any of these questions. Instead, I invited him into my office for a man-to-pig conversation, devoid of pleasantries, directly to the point. I told him that I knew Hooty had been stealing morphine from my office to pay off her debts to the pig’s organization. How much did she owe, and what would I have to do to get her out from under his... well, not his thumb, because he didn’t have one, but out from under his shadow.

The guinea pig was quite intelligent, but he had not developed vocal cords to match his brain. I loaned him a small chalkboard and a piece of chalk. He stood on my desk and scratched away his response.

The sum that Hooty owed him was, well, considerable enough to shock a small gasp out of my mouth. It wasn’t quite enough to ruin me, but it was damned well close enough. 

Seeing my response, the pig erased the board and scratched out more letters, saying that I would pay it anyway. He could read humans well enough now to know that I cared about Hooty, and would do this for her regardless of the cost. And, damn his inky little eyes, he was right.

He wrote out something else though – a compromise. He would forget the monetary debt, but in exchange, I would become the doctor for his army. If the weather ever warmed again, the war with the amphibians would recommence, and there would be casualties. I had already taken care of one of his soldiers before, and if I continued to do so, Hooty would be left alone.

I was, in a word, bought.

Perhaps, in the future, I will wish I had just paid the critter off. But I had enough worries heaped up upon my plate that such an agreement seemed like small potatoes.

Plus he was just so darn cute, scribbling away, holding that piece of chalk like a drunk man holds onto a telephone pole. Adorable!


Our patient woke up! He came stumbling out of my office, extremely pale, sweaty, and very weak, but speaking impeccable British-accented English. He said his name was Nasir Taleb, originally from Cairo, Egypt. He had been trained at Oxford to be an archaeological assistant. He had worked for multiple European-led expeditions throughout the Middle East.

Best of all, he said that on the scrolls that had been used to summon B’gnu-Thun, there had been a method to send him back to wherever such an entity called home. 

Just as we urged him on to tell us more, the Riverboat Boys struck, and my windows exploded inward in a hail of bullets. 

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