It was one of the ancient Greek philosophers, perhaps Aristotle, who once said that we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence isn’t a single act, but a routine or habit. In that case, I am becoming excellent at screaming in fear and hiding behind solid objects.

These are the recordings of Doctor Cornelius Plink.

Glass exploded. Bullets cracked, impacting, splintering the wall behind us. Bottles shattered. We all dropped to the floor and covered our heads. I believe we instantly all came to the same conclusion – the Riverboat Boys had found where we were hiding the one man who might know how to send their pet entity, B’gnu-Thun, back to the pit of damnation from whence he came. Or maybe it’s a vacation destination spot on another planet. What do I know? As long as it was gone.

I was instantly shivering as the cold of the outdoors invaded through the broken windows. Wooden splinters from the chewed up window frames tumbled down on my head. I saw the guinea pig, who was suffering from the cold worse than I was, and I gathered him close to share my body warmth.

Then I heard a curious tinkling sound. I didn’t understand what I was hearing until I looked back over my shoulder. It was Miss Weetamoo. She was on her feet, crouched, picking up pieces of window glass, throwing them back out through the open window frame. Even though the glass was cutting her hands, it didn’t seem to effect her accuracy, because I heard one cry of pain from outside, and then another.

The gunfire stopped. In the next instant, Miss Weetamoo was running past us to dive out through the window. By the time I got to my feet, there were more cries of pain, and then silence.

The guinea pig and I cautiously peered out the window. Four gangsters were face-down, staining the snow red with their blood, Tommy Guns lying beside them.

Hooty and Mr. Taleb joined us, and all four of us looked out at Miss Weetamoo, standing triumphant over her vanquished foes, her dark black hair waving like a flag of victory. Hooty asked “What is she?” A question I still have no answer to.


This might be it, Dear Listeners. The last chance I’ll ever have to check in with you. Tell me something wonderful about your lives. Have you welcomed a new life into the world? Is your garden starting to come up? Have you recently defeated a gigantic entity that threatens to destroy the world, and if so, did you find it easy? I’d really like to hear about that last part.


We were now hunted people. This had very much become an “us or them” situation.” For once, Miss Weetamoo and I were in complete agreement. We needed to put an end to the story of the Riverboat Boys. I fetched my pistol. Mr. Taleb, weak as he was, could not come with us. Which meant we would have to bring the scrolls back to him.

Hooty offered to hide him in her boarding room, keeping him secreted both from the gangsters and from her hawk-eyed landlady. What’s more, the guinea pig wrote that he would stay with them and keep them safe. I’m not sure what help he could possibly offer against blood-thirsty and power-mad bootleggers, but any port in a storm.

We were trusting Hooty with the fate of the world. A woman who had betrayed me. But what other choice did I have?

We boarded up the windows to my office as best we could, and then split up. Once again, I found myself driving along slippery roads (kindly cleared by Bishop Tantrum) in the direction of the closed summer resort that lay outside of town.

Was I scared? You bet your bottom dollar. What could I possibly do if they managed to once again summon B’gnu-Thun to their side? I doubt even Miss Weetamoo could offer any resistance to such an entity, despite her bizarre strength and speed. She spent the car ride wrapping her glass-cut hands in bandages, pulling the bandages tight without a wince. I don’t believe any of the cuts were to the bone, but they certainly looked painful. Hooty had asked the right question about Miss Weetamoo – what was she? A question for another time.

Hiding the car in the woods with fallen branches had become a routine for us now. With the way the snow was falling, we’d be lucky to be able to find it on our way back. It would likely just be one more snow-covered mound along the side of the road. But there was no time for fuss. We hurried through the woods, stomping our way through the deep and unbroken snow between the trees.

And then we were there. The resort. The wind was blowing snow in off the lake, directly into our faces. I had to turn my head. My eyes watered. I looked At Miss Weetamoo and saw that she was grinning. She was enjoying this. No. Not enjoying. Loving it. Yes, she was loving this situation. Thriving in it. If I had been able to hook her up to some electrical cables, her energy would have powered the whole city. A child waiting for Santa Claus could not have been more delighted.

She’s seriously weird.

Surely the Riverboat Boys would be on their guard since our last visit, in which we stole away Mr. Taleb and, I suspect, Miss Weetamoo had either seriously injured or possibly even killed a number of their gang.

Sure enough, a shot rang out from the main building. I was so cold, I wasn’t sure if I’d feel the impact. I’d just know I’d been shot if I suddenly dropped face first into the white stuff.

Since I didn’t drop, I ran to my left, diving for cover behind something covered in snow. I hoped it was solid. I heard the crack of more shots, but the howl of the wind made it difficult to tell if they were coming for me or for Miss Weetamoo.

Speaking of which, I looked back and discovered that I had lost track of the young lady.

More shots rang out. I took that to mean she was still alive, at least. Sitting here was doing no good. Plus, the gangsters might be sneaking up on my position, and I couldn’t hear them over the wind. It was time to move.

So move I did, in a crouched run, then upright, sprinting as best I could through snow up to my knees. I made it to the wall of the main building of the resort. I slid up and peeked through the window. I was outside the main kitchens. I tried the windows and found them locked. 

I smashed my way through with the butt of my pistol and climbed in, falling down over some industrial-sized sinks. The noise of my entrance  alerted one of the gangsters. A skinny fellow with a large forehead burst through the swinging kitchen door, a Tommy Gun at the ready. He never got the chance to fire it, because I put a shot in his chest.

The chap dropped instantly, lights on, lights off. That was the first man I had deliberately killed since the war. I stood over him for a moment, wishing his life had led him to some other junction. The sounds of gunfire snapped me back to the present. I stopped lamenting, and focused.

I moved on as before. Except now I had a Tommy Gun.

I moved into the large dining room. This was a place of happiness, where families would gather and eat together after a long day of sailing and swimming. Noses would be burnt, hair would be lightened. The children would verbally fall over each other in their race to tell their parents what they had done with their day.

Now it was a place filled with a deadly racket as I aimed the Tommy Gun at three bootleggers I found inside and let them have it. I had never used a Tommy Gun before, and the recoil nearly bucked the damn thing right out of my hands. But I brought the barrel back down and let the gun finish doing its job. This time, I did not pause to mourn over my victims. The world was at stake. Not the best time to become maudlin, if you ask me.

Onward. Out of the dining room, into the main reception area. A large man popped up from behind the heavy wooden counter. He had the drop on me.

But then Miss Weetamoo was there, bursting out from the hallway that led to the ground floor rooms, and she hurled something so hard that it embedded itself in the side of the man’s head. His eyes rolled up, and then he dropped, banging off of the counter before he hit the floor.

I went to exchange my Tommy Gun for his, since I didn’t know how many rounds mine had left, and saw what she had hit him with. I think it was the top of a bed post, broken off at about two feet in length. I can’t imagine having enough strength to throw something like that hard enough for it to go through somebody’s skull. I wondered if she would let me examine her musculature for a scientific paper later, assuming we survived all of this.

She held up a canvas rucksack and said she had found the scrolls. The originals, that is, not a copy like those we had found in the remote cabin in the woods some months back. We started for the front exit, and I had to put down another fellow who happened to get in our way. I didn’t think I‘d ever get that smell of cordite out of my nose. Or the sight of the faces of the men I’d killed out of my mind.

During all of the proceeding, something had been worrying me. I mean, aside from the horrific violence and the potential frosty end of the world. I had not been able to figure out what it was until we were almost outside. Then it hit me – last time we had been here, the gangsters had been quick to call forth B’gnu-Thun to come to their aid. I had been able to hear the chanting even over the inclement weather. I had heard no such chanting this time.

And then I knew why. The whole building shook... and then did it again. And again. The shaking becoming more pronounced each time.

I hadn’t heard the Riverboat Boys calling B’gnu-Thun this time, because he was already there.

From the wide-eyed expression on Miss Weetamoo’s face, she had come to the same conclusion. Neither of us said anything. We didn’t need to – the only choice was obvious. Run like H-E-double hockey sticks. So run we did. As best as one can through such deep snow.

The earth-shaking footsteps gained on us. We weren’t going to make it back to the woods, never mind all the way back to the car, not with that giant on our tails. So I spun around and raised my gun. 

Miss Weetamoo stopped, turned back, and got ready to fight by my side, but I told her to carry on. The world, as I’ve said many times now, was at stake. God bless her pragmatic heart, she nodded without further argument. She looked like she wanted to say something more to me, but then she turned and ran, holding the bag of scrolls over her head like she was wading through a river.

That left me alone with the weather and the Tommy Gun and the giant shadow that darkened as it came through the storm.


Overnight For Observation was created by Daniel Fox. Daniel is the author of the noir thriller “Front Page Fatale.”