I’m imagining you, Dear Listeners, conjuring up a picture of you in my mind. You are listening to this in the future. How far in the future? How could I ever say? But you are living in a world without wars; nobody will ever launch another one after the Big One we just endured. Perhaps every family has their own automobile. Perhaps those automobiles can fly. Every one of you has your own private phone line, no party-lines in the future!

I hope the future is a happy place for you. I hope you are living a life full of potential and wonderful choices. 

But on the off chance that the world is a darker place, a limited place, at least you can cherish this thought – at least you’re not living in a town that taxes you for looking at rainbows. Ten cents a peep! It’s piracy, I tell you! Sheer robbery!

These are the recordings of Doctor Cornelius Plink.

Ads on billboards around Arkham are becoming particularly aggressive. I was driving back from a consultation in Salem when I saw an ad that proclaimed in thick bold letters, “Black Vein Gasoline – You’ll Never Fit Properly Into A Bathing Garment, So You Might As Well Spend The Money On Premium Gasoline Instead!” Now I’m thoroughly depressed, and quite conscious of my body’s shortcomings. On the plus side, my automobile is purring like a kitten on a lap.


Miss Commonprance has been expressing concern over my quote unquote “tightness”. Her neck rubs have become more frequent, but she says it’s not enough. She laments the closing of the Knees Up Dance Hall, as there are no longer any quote unquote “juice joints” where we can “throw on our glad rags” so we can “go on a toot” and drown ourselves in “giggle water”.

I’ve come to realize that we now live in an age where we appreciate youth culture over the mores of our older generations. And perhaps that’s a good thing; after all, it was the old way that got us mired in the war. 

Still, it’s a strange thing, having a conversation about “dipping our bills” with another adult. I think it’s stressing me out more trying to keep up with Miss Commonprance’s vernacular. 

However, she is trying to help. But how am I supposed to appear more relaxed when I’m stressing out over how to achieve that very same relaxation? Miss Commonprance isn’t wrong, I really could go for a nice glass of “giggle water” right about now.


I have news about the impregnated bootlegger. Horrific, violent news.

If you’ll recall, I was hunting about town for him. Concerned for his health, and fascinated from a scientific point of view. I was too late.

It happened at the park. Of course it did. I should have known. You know the park I mean, the one at Federal and Armitage. The one with the curious patch of dead earth. The one where gang violence has erupted before.

It happened again. Last night.

A volcano of gun violence erupted amongst the trees and the playground. According to nearby residents, there was so much gunfire that it sounded like a war. I suppose I should be thankful that I live far enough away so that I heard none of it – war sounds are likely some of the very last sounds I’d ever care to hear again.

I’m getting all of this news second-hand, mind you. I slept through it all. However, I was called to the morgue in the early hours this morning, because there was much work to be done.

The fight took place around the dead patch of earth. Why bootleggers are so interested in it, I could not say. There was no secret stash of whisky or champagne found buried in it. In fact, nothing was buried in it at all. That was plain for everyone to see on account of the giant hole that now exists where the patch of earth had once been. So... curious that these gangsters would fight over it, again. Even more curious is that the hole seemed to have been created by something inside the ground. In other words, something burst its way out.

Apparently, scientists from Miskatonic University are currently crawling all over that hole, probing and analyzing like ants on fallen ice cream. 

The gunfight spilled out into the surrounding neighbourhood, gangsters becoming involved in running gunfights that blazed their way not only around houses, but sometimes right through them, as bootleggers kicked in doors in search of cover.

And this is where the whole incident becomes even more curious. Because I’ve had it from a couple of Arkham police officers, mainly through grunts and nods and hand gestures, that someone else was there. Someone fast and strong. Someone who dashed into the middle of those gunfights in the middle of those houses and saved not just one, but multiple innocent families from being torn apart by Tommy-gun fire. There is no identification of this person, as he was wearing a mask, but today there are dozens of Arkham city residents that would like to shake his hand and offer their thanks.

As for me, I’ve been down in the city morgue. And it was here that I finally ran into our infected gangster friend again. He was quite dead. He was quite dirty, covered in dirt. And the blisters on his skin, the ones I thought might be egg sacks? They had all burst open.

It’s my conjecture that he had been deliberately buried in that bizarre patch of dead earth. To... incubate. I believe his “babies” were deliberately cultivated. I suppose this was the work on one of the bootlegging gangs. The other caught wind of it and were willing to risk open warfare in order to stop the whole affair.

Which leads one to wonder... what were they so scared of that they were willing to create a storm of bullets over it?

The police want me and scientists from Miskatonic University to analyze the dead impregnated gangster. I will do my best over the next few days, working alongside my colleagues from the university. Perhaps we can put a name to this enigma.
I imagine the police and city officials wouldn’t appreciate me making a phonographic record of this. I suppose I will have to hide this recording for quite some time.

So, let me just say to those listening to this in the far off year of... I don’t know, 1953... If you are facing something unknowable, something horrible, something monstrous... this might be the night it was born.


Imagine you are a newcomer to Arkham. Perhaps you moved here for the town’s long history and quaint old-fashioned architecture. Perhaps a job opportunity brought you this way. Maybe you were lured by an invisible siren's call that brought you here almost against your will, but you were powerless to resist.

Whatever the case, you’re here now.

Warnings reach you – beware! There are violent bootlegger gangs active in the area. You become wary, but really, interactions with violent men are things that happen to other people, not you. Not plain, everyday you.

But then the worst happens. Gunfire erupts in your neighbourhood. Bullets plunge into your clapboard siding, knock shingles from your rooftop, shatter the window in your newborn’s nursery. Violence does not care that you’re just an everyday bloke, a plain John Smith-type that just wants to go to his job and raise his family in peace. No sir, violence does not play favourites at all.

Bad men with bad guns doing bad things crowd into your neighbourhood, your block, and then into your home. They fight each other, and do not care what happens to you or your family. In fact, some of these men, brutes that they are, seem to relish the idea of hurting the innocent. It gives them pleasure. It excites them.

You and your family are about to be hurt, to be maimed, to be killed, all because you like Arkham’s quaint architecture, because you took that job with it’s measly $2000 a year pay bump, because you could not resist that siren’s call.

But then, out of nowhere, comes a single person, an individual, who teaches those gunmen a lesson. Beats them, bruises them, kills them, chases them from your home. And in so doing, saves your family.

Would you like to shake that mystery man’s hand? Would you like to thank him for giving you something you thought you had lost to this town... hope?

I know I would. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I have an ally. Or at least I could have an ally, if only I could meet this other gentleman who seems to share the same values that I do. It would be nice to have a sidekick, someone to aid me in my fight to protect the citizens of Arkham from Arkham itself.

I hope I find you one day, beneficial stranger. I hope we become friends. Man to man, I feel like I could use one right about now.


The moon was especially full last night. Fat and heavy, hanging low. The man in the moon, that ancient comical face, was looking down at us. He seemed quite shocked about what he was seeing, and seemed to be directing me to something with his eyes, the way a tied-up and gagged hostage will try to direct one to the dark corner where their captor waits in ambush.

Heed the moon, people. That old man has seen things we can’t even imagine. 
 

There was a tapping at the back door of my house last night. I investigated, carrying my trusty heavy candlestick holder for protection. Seeing nothing through my rear-facing windows, I ventured to open my door. To my surprise, it was the guinea pig from the library, the mutated one with the giant brain that has pushed out of its skull to pulse weirdly and wetly with a strange new form of guinea-piggish intelligence.

He was carrying a limp form on his back. A mouse. The mouse had been cut along its left side, and had been bleeding badly. Well, as much as a mouse can bleed.

The guinea pig is incapable of speech... well, so far, anyway. But I immediately understood the situation – he wanted me to save his mouse compatriot, a wounded soldier in the war with the toads.

It had been years since I’d worked on a mouse. And when I had, it was back in dissection classes (a fact I did not relay to the anxious guinea pig). But I did my best, administering a tiny amount of brandy to the little patient, then cleaning and sewing up the fingertip-sized wound, while the guinea-pig paced out in the hallway.

I emerged from my home office about an hour later, and informed the guinea pig that I thought the patient was likely to survive. He rushed forward and shook my index finger with his paws. I do believe he would have shoved a cigar in my mouth in gratitude if he could, but that would have been ridiculous. I don’t smoke.

He seemed concerned that he couldn’t take the mouse with him, but I assured him his little compatriot was in no condition to be moved. Finally, the guinea pig nodded and I let him out the way he had come in. I expect him back in a couple of days.

And yes, in case you’re wondering, I do know that my life has become quite ridiculous in some aspects.

It’s going to become even more ridiculous when I try to keep Miss Weetamoo from killing the mouse when she starts to clean the house tomorrow. She is going to throw such a fit.

I was enjoying a lunch at a booth at Levi’s Delicatessen. If you can, get in and try the Reuben sandwich. It is an absolute gastronomic non-kosher delight.

A man I’d never seen before slid in across from me. He wore a trench-coat sprinkled with the spring-time shower going on outside. The collar was pulled up to hide much of his face. His hat was pulled down low over his eyes. His hands were stuffed in his pockets.

He asked if I was Doctor Cornelious Plink. I replied that indeed I was, and asked in return if I could be of some service to the stranger.

“No,” he said, and stated that he in fact was there to render a service unto me. “Things are coming,” he said, in a surprisingly high and nasally voice, that I had never experienced before. Things that I should be ready for.

Now, most of you are probably thinking that I should have considered this individual to be some sort of crank, that he was “screwy” as Miss Commonprance might say. But, I live in Arkham. “Screwy” is just another name for “Thursday” here.

The man told me that if I cared about the people of this town, I would have to learn how to deal with injuries and illnesses that they didn’t teach me about in school. That they didn’t teach about in any school, save maybe Miskatonic University.

And how, pray tell, was I supposed to learn about these mystery ailments. 

“Look for the library,” said the man.

Which is nonsense. I didn’t need to look for the library, I know exactly where it is. I go there quite often.

The man shook his head at me and leaned forward. “Not that library. The other one.” And with that, he slid out of the booth.

I also stood and blocked his exit. There was something I had to know. “Are you the man that saved all those families during the shoot-out?” 

He looked me in the eye, and then surprised me by shaking his head no. Then he stepped around me and was gone.

It wasn’t until I returned to my seat that I realized that not only had the man dumped yet another mystery in my lap by mentioning this second library... he had also stolen half of my Reuben sandwich. What did he do, just slip it in his pocket? That’s really unhygenic.


Hmm... well! It seems I, and everyone else, was somewhat in error. I was treating a young lass of no more than 6 who shall remain nameless. She received a cut cheek during the gang fight as her bedroom window was shattered during the gunfight. Not to worry, the cut was not serious, I was merely checking to insure that it had not become infected.

The girl corrected me on a major point. I had assumed that the mysterious benefactor that had saved all those families during the gunfight was a man. However, this girl received a hug from the masked stranger and assures me that it was, in fact, a woman.

How was our young patient so sure? Because the masked stranger had, and I’m quoting here, “Big badonkers” that the girl had felt while being hugged.

I... I don’t know what to think. I imagine you’re as confused as I am. A... woman? It can’t be... right?

Also, where does a six year-old learn the word “badonkers”?

I’ll leave you all pondering these questions. Until next time...


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.”