Page 74 of The Little Shop of Curiosities, The Music Box Part 2

“That tends to happen around me,” I mutter. Sam takes a step closer to my side.

She’s right. The air feels charged with electricity, making my skin prickle with awareness. The figures don’t move, don’t speak, don’t give any indication of sentience at all.

“These aren’t spirits,” Sam rumbles in a low voice.

“No.” I study each face in the circle. “They’re echoes.”

“Echoes?” Riley replies.

“What these men did was so momentous that they must’ve left an imprint on their surroundings,” I explain as my gaze lands on one figure in particular. “Like a camera recording everything and replaying it on an endless loop. People like you and me and Sam are able to see and experience those echoes.”

“But why?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Sam answers.

I continue to stare at the masked figure directly in front of me. I know exactly who he is. My gaze drops to his misshapen mouth with a chunk of his lip missing and the scars left from being unevenly sewn back together.

“Harrison?” Sam says quietly.

“That’s Dr Whyte,” I murmur. Then I turn my head and point to another man three seats down from the doctor. “That’s Judge Maycliffe, and over there is Bishop Fairchild.”

“Then this is⁠—”

I meet Sam’s gaze. “These were the members of Dr Whyte’s Demon Club.”

“This was where they met?”

“One of the places, yes.”

“Sorry, did you say demon club?” Riley says, and as I turn to look at her, my eyes are drawn to two figures standing beside her in the doorway.

She follows my gaze and yelps in surprise, hurrying into the room to stand beside Sam, who instinctively pulls her behind him.

“It’s alright, they’re only echoes too,” I tell her.

Both figures emit that same strange green glow and are semi-transparent, but they aren’t members of Dr Whyte’s club. I have no idea why I know that, but I am certain.

Neither of them wears a mask. The man standing in front is also dressed in an evening suit, but he seems to be watching the proceedings in the parlour with a kind of amused calculation. He holds a whiskey glass to his lips as if he’s about to take a sip, frozen in that one moment of time.

I think I recognise him. He bears more than a passing resemblance to Judge Maycliffe, to the extent that I’m willing to bet this was his brother. Simon Maycliffe, I think Sam said his name was. The one who inherited this house after the judge’s sudden demise. If I’m right, that would mean he knew about the Demon Club but wasn’t necessarily a part of it.

The man standing behind him is harder to identify. He’s dressed in black and his face is cast into shadow so I can’t make out any of his features, but he seems to be whispering in Simon Maycliffe’s ear. Peeking out from beneath Simon’s cuff, on the hand that’s holding a glass to his lips, is a mark on his skin, something that looks like a cross, maybe, or an ankh. I can’t really tell because it’s partially obscured by his sleeve.

“This is giving me the creeps,” Riley murmurs. “I’ve never seen so many of them at once.”

As the words leave her lips, the image glitches and disappears, leaving us once again in a gutted room.

“Fuck,” Sam mutters. “I think we should get out of this room before we trigger them again.” He turns to Riley. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

She nods, her eyes still darting around the room nervously. “The kitchen. It’s also a bit of a mess, but we can at least have a cup of tea.”

“Sam’s right,” I agree, considering. “We need to get out of this room.” There’s a good chance it’s my powers or my connection to Cordelia and her demon that’s probably turbo-charging the paranormal echoes here. Hopefully, it might be a little quieter in another part of the house, one that hadn’t been the scene of a demonic club’s meetings and supernatural murder.

“Follow me.” She heads back out into the hallway and leads us to the kitchen at the back of the property.

There’s a makeshift table, a couple of chairs, and a paint-spattered stool set up in a space that holds a cooker, a fridge, a microwave, and only a couple of kitchen cabinets. Everything else has been partially demolished—disassembled cupboards stacked in a corner, the tiled splashback smashed and scraped off the wall to fill a paint-stained bucket, and holes of varying sizes in parts of the plasterboard.

Riley insists we sit while she makes tea, and since the mundane task seems to calm her, we do as she asks. The seat I occupy has me staring at a wall where a large hole in the plasterboard exposes a formerly concealed doorway. I don’t need to ask what it is—this is the door to the cellar where the judge had kept Tobias chained to a wall.