Overnight for Observation Episode 1 - The Doctor Is In I want you to know that the stars are real today, and they are beautiful. [removed] Testing... Salutations, listener. My name is Doctor Cornelius Plink. That’s Plink with a “p” as in “plank” not a “b” as in “behavioural”. I am a general practitioner in Arkham, Massachusetts. If you are listening to this phonograph then I am likely dead. Or I’ve just lent it to you. - I made a house-call to Bishop Tantrum yesterday. He stopped screaming for a moment, long enough to ask if his mother is still alive. When he was given the unfortunate news that she had passed two years prior, the Bishop replied, “Good”, then resumed his screaming. - On my way back I passed through the Angledog neighbourhood. Do you know the Farthingale House? They’re looking to tear it down again. Of course, this is their thirteenth attempt over the past 20 years. City officials have the whole block locked down on account of their trying dynamite this time. I do wish them luck, but we all know how the kerosene attempt went. - I stopped for lunch in Levi’s Delicatessen. I should have known better. It is no fault of Mister Levi’s vittles, which I consider to be of exceptional quality. No, it is because his establishment has the misfortune to sit across from that damned Town Hall. No, not that Town Hall. That’s for tourists. The other Town Hall, the real one. The one with all the muted screams. I don’t know how they get anything done in there. It turns my stomach. I suppose I shall have to start asking for my lunch to take with me. - Speaking of Town Hall, there’s a movement to ban the “Encyclopedia Terrorificus” books. If you know me, you know that I am dead-set against any sort of censorship. And yes, I know, the books made that Childers boy’s limbs fall off, but how many people have read those books and haven’t lost so much as an eyelash? I am willing to go with the fully-limbed majority on this one. - Here is something to think about when the thunder rolls and the rain falls like it’s running out of time, and you’re squinting and your palms are sweaty gripping your steering wheel because you know you have only a split second to react if something gets in your way and all the fat-cats, all the owners of the world, are high and dry in their pool-side palaces, just know that I finally found out what that weirdly shaped tower out near Wenham Lake is for. Mind control my friends, mind control. They pump us full of the desire to take lower wages and spend all our time hating each other instead of noticing- [removed] - Salem is having its annual Spring Fling Festival. It seems like a jovial time. I was handed a flier to the festival by a pretty little peach... hold on... Well, I’ll be. It says that if one wants to avoid being this year’s offering then you should leave a tricycle on its side near the pothole on Dock Street. It would be appreciated if the handlebars have streamers. - Howling blood cults sacrificing wayward hitch-hikers to their likewise screaming howling god... I tell you, I just don’t know. - I remember my grandfather used to take me fishing in the Hangman’s Brook, back when I was knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper. I never much liked fish or fishing, but I did it on account of liking to spend time with the old boy, you know? We’d anchor out in the river with just the sound of the running water and birdsong and the whirl of our fishing reels and he’d spin me some yarns. He told me this one story of how when he was a little boy, he would get up early to train a bunch of crows to harass the local farmers, on account of them being racist and grandfather being part Huron. He’d feed the crows little bits of bread and seeds and nuts in exchange for them tearing up the farmers’ corn and wheat and cabbages. Well, one day the crows got their heads together because they wanted a real payday, so they grouped up and wouldn’t you know it? When my grandfather went out that morning what did he find but a baby lying there in the yard, carried there by a murder of crows. Needless to say, he panicked. It was bad enough that his pet crows brought him a real human baby, but it was a white baby kidnapped by an Indian boy. So what did he do? Why, he grabbed the baby right up and held it up to the crows and he told them straight to their little crow faces that they had better take that baby back right quick or it was going to be his brown hide for sure. At first, nothing happened, but grandfather was concentrating so hard, and was so worried about how that baby’s parents were feeling right at that moment, that maybe his gods, I mean the old gods, the ones that had been with his people for over ten thousand years, not that Johnny-come-lately from the Bible, well maybe, just maybe they took pity on that boy and the crows understood and whisked that infant right back home. All of which just goes to show that if you really wish for something, it just might come true. Or that my grandfather was a gigantic liar. I mean, Jesus, Grandpa. - It is my civic duty to let you all know that some pranksters have been swapping out the road signs along Route 1A. I was on my way back from a medical conference in Ipswich, “Lobotomies For Fun and Profit”, and the road signs, they just went black. Next thing I knew, I was in Delaware. Again. And you know what I think about that place. - An acquaintance of mine who prefers to remain nameless, practising out of Seattle, he decided to pay a visit to some of the low women that ply their trade along Water Street. Rumours had reached him that they were, one and all, some of the most beautiful women to ever walk God’s green Earth. I cannot confirm these rumours, as I do not partake in such vices. My friend found these ladies and later came to me to relate how beautiful they all were. He almost cried. A grown man crying over the beauty of women, if you can believe that. He said they were astonishing in their physical virtues, once you got past the gills. However, he said he didn’t partake of their surprisingly reasonably-priced services for two reasons. The first reason was that the Bible in his glove box began to smoke and the edges of the pages began to curl up, like someone was holding a match to them, while he was in the proximity of the aforementioned beauties. The second reason was that there was a storm that night, and in the brief searing flashes of lighting he swears he saw a temple, seven stories tall, made up entirely of the skulls and pelvic bones of men. That was enough for my friend to mash his motor right on out of there, and bang on my door at twelve oh-seven in the morning. Still, I’m curious... just how beautiful do women have to be to make men weep? Sometimes I get a dreadful urge to go and find out. - Ladies and gentlemen, could you do a fellow citizen a kindness? If you feel the need to proclaim your love of The Yellow King, could you please do it off the party line? I really need the line to be clear in case of emergency calls. Thank you. - So you’ve been hearing all about me, but how about you all out there? How’s your day? How are your loved ones? Does anyone have a child entering school for the very first time? How about one graduating from university, be it our own proud M.U., or another of the fine institutions of higher learning around the world? Did you get a new puppy? And if nothing happy has happened to you yet today, I hereby give you permission to make it happen. Tell me about yourselves. - Those jokers swapping out road signs are still at it. I was on my way back from interviewing for an assistant nurse in Salem when the next thing I knew I was in a hell-scape where the roads are paved in the literal pulsing flesh of not-quite dead tax cheats and the air is filled with this kind of ash that I’m pretty sure was made of eyelids, and some beast with the scream of something that is truly lost was hot on my tail but I could not see it in my rear-views and then I took this off-ramp, downshifting like an absolute wizard, and then I was in FUCKING DELAWARE AGAIN. Also, I did not find a suitable nursing assistant. - A piece of the sky fell and nearly hit me in the head when I was enjoying one of Baek Hyeon’s hot-dogs at his stand near Town Hall. Not that Town Hall, the other one. Now hear me loud and clear, I’m not saying hail fell, I mean a piece of the sky itself. It was a brilliant day, cerulean blue over head and there I was enjoying one of Mister Hyeon’s jumbos with everything on it, or is it Mister Baek? I’m not exactly sure how you say Korean names, but I’m trying to learn. He told me his name means “Virtuous Brother”, so that’s nice. Anyway, don’t you know it but there’s this weird ripping sound overhead and then thunk! there’s a piece of that cerulean blue sky just lying there at our feet. It’s about the size of a dinner plate, jagged around the edges. If you look up on a clear day you might just be able to spot the place that it fell from, although it’s hard to pick out when the sun’s bright. So, if anyone knows who I should return this piece of sky to so we can get things patched up, I would surely appreciate hearing about it. - I’m back from a surgery consultation in Bolton. On the drive back I passed a stand with a sign that said the proprietor was selling “Snake Milk”. Naturally, I have one or two questions. - Well, I was transported to Delaware yet again. And yes, I am starting to lose feeling in my fingertips and gain it in my eyeballs from all this teleportation. But the joke is on those sign-switchers this time, because I deliberately changed the location of a lecture I was giving, “Cocaine and Wine, The Keys To An Energetic Nervous System”, a smash hit, by the way, to Dover, the capital of Delaware. Take that, you unknowable portals through space and time!