I was fourteen years old, the first time I met Shaggy Sinclair.
I’d have a tiff with some boy that I can’t even remember the name of, and my friend Saige had come out to try and cheer me up.
She was a bizarre but kind girl, with a crazy explosion of blonde hair erupting out of her head, and a friendly smile almost always painted across her lips.
Saige came from a family of laidback hippies, and it was beyond easy for her to get her hands on booze and ciggies, which was how we found ourselves chilling in the local park, getting smashed on cheap vodka, as the night grew dark and darker.
We were sat on a rusty old bench, drinking and chain-smoking like no tomorrow, whilst I ranted and raved about whatever worthless guy had pissed me off that week.
“Reckon I can do a handstand?” Saige laughed, her voice slurred by the touch of far too much liquor.
“Maybe three swigs ago,” I teased, “but not now, you bloody boozer.”
My mate did her best attempt at a handstand, and ended up in a clumsy heap on the ground.
“I’d like to see you try, bitch!” she shouted up at me, as I stood over her, drunkenly giggling.
A fifteen-minute contest of terrible, humiliating “acrobatics” somehow led to us clumsily clambering up onto the roof of the abandoned community centre, and dancing about like idiots, getting more and more drunk on our terrible vodka.
Rixbrook, the village we grew up in, was a shoddy little trash pile of a suburb, tucked away near England’s east coast. It hadn’t so much “fallen on hard times” as it had been forever ensnared in poverty and collapse, run by a council that was more interested in taking bribes than helping their constituents.
The community centre was a holdover from a short-lived attempt to reduce youth crime in the area, that had now been reclaimed by creeping grass and a tide of ravenous rust. Climbing onto the roof of a building that was barely standing was an absolutely moronic idea, but we had long since past any semblance of sobriety.“I BET I can still do a cartwheel!” I proudly boasted, whilst Saige blasted Fall Out Boy from her phone’s speaker.
“Like hell!” she shouted back, battling to be heard over the distorted vocals of Patrick Stump.
I steadied myself, took an awkward run-up, and plunged straight through the decaying roof of the community centre.
I don’t really remember the fall. I just remember my entire body screaming in panic, every single cell of my being lit up with burning dread, and then the sound of my own bones crunching as I slammed into the cold ground below.
All around me was darkness, save for a few stray beams of light that bled in through the hole that I’d fallen down.
I was vaguely aware of Saige screaming, but when I tried to turn my head to look up I found that my nerves weren’t responding.
Everything was becoming muggy and hazy, like I was looking at the world through a veil of mist, and that’s when I felt a hand resting on my shoulder.
“Poor little butterfly,” a cool, easygoing voice whispered in my ear, “that was quite a tumble.”
“Who’s there?!” I demand, trying fiercely to look at the newcomer, but failing miserably.
“Probably best your necks all busted,” the smooth-sounding stranger told me, “folks don’t like what they see when they look at me.”
A rush of cold terror went skittering through my spine, like a startled spider scuttering up a drainpipe.
“P-please help me!” I sobbed, tears dribbling down my cheeks, “I can’t move my neck, I can’t feel my -”
“Not long now, little butterfly.” I felt the figure stroking the back of my head, and gently running his fingers through my hair.
“What do you mean?!” I demanded, “who are you?!”
“My name is…Shaggy Sinclair,” he paused midsentence, as if he were still deciding on what his name was, or had momentarily forgotten, “and you are in an awful scrape, Lenore.”
I was so gripped by panic and anxiety that it didn’t occur to me until later that I hadn’t told him my name.
“Have I broken anything?” I asked him, my voice jittery with fear, “I must have broken something!”
“The clock is ticking, little butterfly,” he told me, in a manner so nonchalant that he sounded as if he was discussing the weather, “I can save you, but it will come at a price. Are you ready to sign your life away?”
“Oh god…” my voice had faded into a shaky whisper, “please just help me. I’m - SO - fucking scared…”
I felt a hand grasp hold of my own, but whoever it was attached to was just far enough outside of my vision to register as a far-flung blur, skirting around the edges of my eyeballs.
“A life for a life, Lenore,” Shaggy Sinclair told me, “you wanna die down here, or shall we shake on it?”
I could barely make sense of what Sinclair was saying, and I was so wound up with hysterical terror that I was scarcely in a sound enough state of mind to respond.
Or at least that’s what I’ve always told myself. That’s the version of the story that I repeat over and over again in my head, in a desperate attempt to smother the biting little voice that eats away at my soul.
The other version of the story is that, in that brief moment, as Shaggy Sinclair took my hand in his, I was offered a fleeting glimpse of clarity, and I knew - EXACTLY - what I was agreeing to.
Who’s to say which version is true? My mind is such a frantic jumble of thoughts and feelings that it probably looks like a badly made plate of scrambled eggs at this point. I have no idea where the lies end and the truth begins.
“A life for a life.” I whispered back.
The next thing I knew I was sitting in a clinically white room, with a head that felt like it had just been forced through a woodchipper.
Perhaps “clinically white” doesn’t really do it justice. This place was so overwhelmingly, revoltingly white that it made me feel nauseous. Not so much “crisp white” as “you were just about to drift off to sleep, then someone shone a torch right into your face”.
I quickly became aware that there was a woman sitting opposite me, with tired eyes rimmed by thick wrinkles, and hair the texture of frayed rope.
“Where am I?” I asked, “wheres Saige?”To my delight, I realised that my nerves were responding to me, and I could once again move my limbs.
“You had a really horrible shock, Lenore,” she said sympathetically, “it’s not unusual to disassociate during times of crisis.”
I spotted a nametag pinned to her chest. It read “Doctor Doshi”.
“Wheres Saige?” I repeated, my voice growing firmer and more irate.
Doctor Doshi’s face sagged with sadness.
“She didn’t survive the fall, Lenore,” the doctor told me, “I’m truly, very sorry.”
Nobody believed me when I swore that I had been the one who’d fallen through the roof, not Saige. Nobody believed me when I shouted and screamed about the mysterious figure offering out Faustian bargains. Nobody thought I was anything other than a hysterical, mentally ill kid, who was struggling to process trauma.
All the fuss that I kicked up did get me a considerable stint on a young person’s ward, though, followed by a month spent in a private psychiatric facility, once mum decided that the NHS weren’t cutting it.
We never had the money for private medical care, and I dread to think how my mother managed to scrape together enough funds to keep me there for a whole month.
That was just the sort of person my mum was, though. She would do absolutely anything for her children.
My brother Edgar didn’t want anything to do with his craaaaazy sister, and dad was too busy plugging his new twenty-something girlfriend to remember that he had kids, but mum came to visit me every other day, sitting on my soft medical bed, and gently holding my hand.
“It’s all my fault, mum,” I remember sobbing to her, “I’m the reason Saige is dead.”
She squeezed my hand, and kissed me on the forehead.
“Don’t you - EVER - go thinking things like that, Li Li,” she told me, “you were never - ANYTHING - but a great friend to that poor girl.”
If only she’d known what utter bollocks that really was.
I spent the longest time suffering from nightmares. Not creepy little dreams, where you wake up feeling a bit flustered, but truly horrific glimpses into a world of visceral dread, where everything feels far too real, and terror burrows its way deep into the fibres of your soul.
Those nightmares always ended with me watching Saige go tumbling down into a deep, dark maw of unflinching blackness.
Once I’d been discharged from private care, I moved back in with my mum and my brother. I just about managed to finish my exams, and over the course of the next few years I wound up studying classics at a university far, far away from the cruddy old town of Rixbrook.
I was on enough prescription meds to kill an elephant, but I actually managed to keep my shit together, save for those nights when sleep didn’t take me, and the dark things went scrambling around in my skull.
My course was full of smug, shit-eating know-it-alls, and I wasn’t particularly popular with my peers, but I didn’t need to be. I just needed some stability, and that’s what uni gave me.
I should have known that Shaggy Sinclair wasn’t done with me.
One night I came home and collapsed into my cramped little student bed, the world spinning with the heavy rush of too much booze.
The whole of my Hellenistic Poetry module had gone out for a few drinks at the pub, and we’d eventually ended up at some tacky club, about eight rounds later. Things had actually been going pretty well, until I got thrown out for explosively chucking my guts up all over one of the sofas.
I got all snuggled up, when my phone started to buzz like an overly-enthusiastic vibrator.
Speaking in a horrifically slurred rendition of English, I answered the call, and hear my mum’s voice on the other end.
“Do you blame me?” she asked in a quiet whisper.
“Blame you for what, mum?” I was stunned back into something slightly more akin to sobriety.
The bizarreness of her question baffled me.
“For all that poison in your head,” she replied, in a shaky tone that told me she was fighting back to tears, “I made you, and I made you broken. Do you blame me for that?”
“No, mum,” I tried my best to reassure her, still more than a little drunk, “no, I don’t.”
I could hear her breathing slip into sharp, ragged wheezes.
“Why don’t you try and get some sleep, and we can talk about this in the morning, mum?” I managed to sputter out.
It took a few minutes of makeshift counseling, but I managed to calm my mum down, mostly using techniques I’d picked up from my incredibly unpleasant adventures in the wonderful world of mental health problems.
I told her I loved her, wished her goodnight, before hanging up once I was sure that she was settled.
My body then seemed to remember that I’d glugged down an ungodly amount of alcohol, because things start to slip in and out of focus.I was laying on my back, my vision quivering and whirling, when I heard the singsong of that cool, velvety voice that had never left my nightmares.
“How was your call with mamma, little butterfly?” Shaggy Sinclair whispered, “I think she’s real worried about you.”
I sat bolt upright, adrenaline surging through my body like electricity through wire, and glared at the formless silhouette that was sitting at the far end of my room.
He was masked beneath the cover of a lampshade, like a victorian lady hiding under the shadow of an elegant umbrella.
One hand stretched out, and I made a dive to hit the light switch above my bed.
“Careful now, Lenore,” Sinclair warned me, “I told you before - folks don’t like what they see when they look at me.”
Part of me wanted to hit the switch, to flood my room with light, and expose this revolting monster, but another - more powerful - part of me was petrified at the thought of what I may see if I could truly look upon the thing that called itself “Shaggy Sinclair”.
Some primal instinct kicked in, from deep within the bowels of my lizard brain, and I felt like a prehistoric savage, cowering in the presence of cruel and terrible beast.
Fear triumphed over rage, and I sat back down on my bed, keeping the room veiled beneath a cloak of perpetual shadow.
“Good call, little butterfly,” Sinclair let out a soft, musical chuckle, “some things are best left unseen.”
“I was starting to think you weren’t real,” I admitted, in a dismal mumble, “I was hoping you really were just stress-induced psychosis.”
Another calm laugh rumbled out of the darkness.
“If only that were true,” Sinclair replied, “but you can’t escape your guilt that easily, Lenore.”
I could feel my pulse beating faster and faster, whilst the air in my mouth became acrid, and hard to swallow.
“Why are you back?!” I demanded, fueled by anger and fear, “wasn’t last time enough, you heartless fucking - MONSTER - ?!”
A cold, icy silence fell over the room. My flesh broke out into goose prickles, as if I were lost in the middle of a wintery storm.
“It’s a lot more peaceful when you’re dead, little butterfly,” Sinclair said eventually, “there’s nobody there to hurt you. There’s no stress, or pain. There’s not a whole lot of anything, really. Just quiet.”
“Why are you telling me this..?” I asked.
“I want you to know that Saige isn’t suffering. She isn’t burning in some sulfur-stinking inferno, or soaring over bright white clouds,” Sinclair continued, “do you like sleep, Lenore? Saige is asleep forever now, and all of her worries died when she did.”
I felt sick. My head was reeling with nausea, and a cavernous pit had just opened up, right in the pit of my stomach.
“Leave me alone,” I pleaded meekly with the silhouette, my voice falling to a frail whisper, “please, just leave me alone…”
“As you wish, but you know the price. Remember our deal?” he replied cooly, “your mamma loves you very much, little butterfly.”
In spite of all of the unmitigated terror that was furiously pumping through my body, I fell asleep almost instantly.
When I woke up, daylight was bleeding through my shutters, and Shaggy Sinclair had vanished without a trace.
My mobile was ringing with the shrill wail of an electric banshee.
I answered the phone, and heard the despair-stricken voice of my brother Edgar.
Mum was dead.
Unless you’ve lost someone you love, you can’t even begin to understand how much it hurts. You can’t comprehend how your very soul is ripped apart, and stricken with wounds that will never truly heal.
I loved my mum with all my heart, and now she was gone. Thats a kind of agony that words just can’t encapsulate.
Carbon monoxide poisoning had snatched my mum away from me, and I had no idea if it was accidental, or if she’d chosen to take her own life.
All I really knew was that Shaggy Sinclair had claimed another victim.
It’s one thing to lose someone dear to you, its another to know that their death is entirely your fault.
That’s the sort of pain that cuts down into your bones, and sticks to you like a cancer, burrowing through every fibre of your being, and turning your insides into rot.
Some of you will end up feeling such a pain,and for that I am so profoundly sorry.
My mum’s death is how my brother and I ended up living together again, for the first time since we were little kids.
We’d inherited her old place, and moved in amidst the perfectly preserved remnants of a life that had been cut short.
The decorations that mum had picked outlined the walls, that tacky sofa that she should have thrown away years ago was plonked down in the middle of the living room, and her unfinished copy of “Woman Eating”, by Claire Kodha, still sat on the coffee table, with her silly bunny bookmark slipped between the pages, which would never again be moved.
That was where I was living the third time I spoke with Shaggy Sinclair.
The stink of stale coffee filled the apartment, clinging to the air, with the noxious potency of mustard gas in a damp trench.Wincing, I grabbed another handful of the pills, and popped them into my mouth, washing them down with a splash of cool water.I could feel my head spinning, and throbbing. The inside of my skull pounded, as if it were being struck again, and again, and again by a stroppy child with a drumstick.Erazolam always helped with the headaches.I wasn’t exactly sure - WHAT - Erazolam was, but I thought it was some kind of dubious benzo, which had been pulled from the market for one reason or another.
Whatever had happened, one of Edgar’s mates was still able to get them, on the sly, and at that point I was pretty much a xerox of a person, shoddily held together by a combination of energy drinks, Erazolam, and cigarettes.I knew that my lifestyle wasn’t healthy, or even remotely safe, but I always figured I could kick my bad habits once life stopped treating me like its own personal punching bag. If things never improved, then I reckoned the unholy trinity of black lungs, volatile heart, and mushy brain would kill me before I could better myself, and at least that way I could scrabble together some meagre parody of happiness in the time I had left, thanks to my triumvirate of paralyzing addictions.
“Look what I found in the bargain bin,” Edgar called over to me, holding up a battered-looking DVD case ,”it was - LITERALLY - a pound.”
I cast a glance his way, and saw that he was brandishing a well-worn copy of “The Lost Boys”.
“Absolute steal!” I grinned, inspite of my headache, “man, I haven’t watched that in years.
“I’ve got nothing happening, if you fancy a movie night?” Edgar smiled as he spoke.
I’d always had a strained relationship with my brother, and I very much appreciated him putting the effort into trying to build on the little mutual ground that we had, like our shared love for spooky films.
“I’d really like that,” I replied, “just give me some time to clear my head, then we can pop it on.”
“You’re eating maggots, Michael!” he called after me, as I made my way into my room, and carefully shut the door behind me.
I collapsed back onto my bed, my mind reverberating with tremors of palpitating nausea. I felt like the first foreboding vibrations which foretold the inevitability of a cataclysmic earthquake.Groaning, I shoveled another load of Erazolam into my gob, and tried my best to de-stress.
After fifteen minutes or so of uptight breathing, I could feel myself slipping into that familiar state of cool, floating serenity.
From out of the rippling oceans of my subconscious, my mum’s old, vintage radio came flickering to life.
Static and electricity crackled, as a dull, calming light dribbled out into my bedroom.
“Welcome back, my beautiful little butterflies,” the deep, soothing voice of Shaggy Sinclair trickled out of mum’s radio, “I’ve got a little nighttime quandary, which I’d like you all to ponder.”
The calmly-spoken man took a brief moment to clear his throat.
“How much of your life do you legitimately enjoy?” the radio crinkled and crackled, like popcorn simmering in a pan, “every weekend? Every other weekend? Do you even get a moment to breathe, amidst the smothering repetition of work, killing your loved ones, and staring gloomily at your ceiling?”
I felt a broiling surge of unease quivering in my gut.
“The people you want to spend your time with are scattered all over the world, and you’ll be lucky if you see them once in a blue moon, whilst you get older, and life gets crueller. All that you’ve got to look forward to is closing doors, crumbling health, and the choking tide of disappointment.”
Sinclair’s voice was muffled by the fizzling of mum’s old radio, yet it somehow felt like he was in the room with me, nestling in the shadows, mere inches out of my view.
A sharp, sudden rush of anxiety shot through me, and I could have sworn something was creeping through the darkness.
“Do you even…like anyone?” Sinclair asked, “I don’t mean in a romantic way, Lenore, I mean in general. Is there anyone that you can even actually halfway tolerate? When you - DO - get those rare opportunities to see your “friends”, do you honestly enjoy their company, or are you just trying to fill your meagre free time with something other than self-destruction?”
“You’re not real.” I hissed through clenched teeth, trying to sound braver than I felt.
“Ain’t I?” a harsh laugh echoed out of the radio, “I’m the realest fella that there ever was, little butterfly. I’m the only real certainty in this fiendish freak show that you call life.”
Before my brain could make sense of what was happening, I found myself standing over the edge of an enormous, unfathomable pit.
What stretched out below me wasn’t just darkness, but a complete and utter absence of anything. It was a cavernous abyss, as infinite as the sprawling void of space.
The air around the pit was cold, but in a strangely comforting way, like a brisk seaside breeze, or a frosty chill on Christmas morning.
I could feel myself being pulled towards the cavern, all of the fear and anxiety in my body quietly melting away.
Shaggy Sinclair’s hand was on my shoulder again, but this time it didn’t scare me. It felt reassuring.
“Let go, little butterfly,” he encouraged me, in his soothing voice, “You’ve been on borrowed time all these years. Ain’t you sick of the struggle, and the pain? Just let go.”
My feet moved further and further over the edge of the cavern.
All my life I’d felt as if I’d been painstakingly scrabbling to stay afloat, but the waves just kept on getting stronger, and I had such little strength left in me.
I wanted so fiercely to just stop thrashing about, and let the tide swallow me up.
“Would it be such a bad thing to go to sleep?” Sinclair asked me, “you know what the price of pushing on will be.”
I could feel my feet shuffling forward.
“Of course, once I’m done with you, Edgar will be next on my list.”
My body froze up instantly, rooted in place as if I had been entombed within a casket of frigid ice.
“W-what did you say..?”
A dark, terrible laugh rumbled out of Shaggy Sinclair, like the roar of an avalanche, on its way to tumble over a mountainside, and bury anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in its path.
“Didn’t you know that all contracts are rigged in the favour of the ones who hold power, little butterfly?” I could hear the twisted grin in Sinclair’s words, “you need to learn to read the fineprint, and ask the right questions. Did you really think I’d be satisfied with your soul alone? No, the darkness is hungry, and the ravenous void is not so easily satiated.”
I took a step back from the pit, watching it almost instantly fade away.
“I won’t let you have him!” I snarled back at the monstrous silhouette, summoning up every ounce of defiance that I had inside of me.
I felt like I was spitting right in the face of God.
“More will die for your rebellion, Lenore,” Sinclair replied, “the longer you keep your sad little parody of a life chugging along, the more innocents I’ll guzzle down like wine.”
“Fine,” I snapped, “but Edgar is off limits.”
The shadow man let out another murmur of sadistic laughter.
“Very well then, little butterfly,” he chuckled, “our deal endures.”
Suddenly, the darkness was gone, and I found myself standing alone in my room once more.
Without wasting a second, I pushed my way back into the living room.
“You ready to go to Santa Carla, sis?” Edgar called merrily over.
“I’m leaving,” I told him, battling tooth-and-nail to keep my voice cold and emotionless,”work want me to move nearer the office, and I need to get there ASAP.”
“Oh.” came his reply, the hurt that marred his tone making my heart feel as if a knife had plunged right into it.
“Sorry, bro,” I muttered, moving past him, and heading out of the flat, “shit happens.”
I left mum’s old flat behind me, and ventured out into the night. The heavens were open, and an ungodly torrent of rain was pouring down from the lilac sky above.
My clothes were soaked through, sending my flesh into gooseprickles, and turning my hair into damp straw.
I pushed on through the rain, listening to the crashing boom of the clouds above, and the ethereal howling of the late-night wind.
I kept on walking through the darkness, my shoes filling with water, making each footfall a wet and heavy splash.
I didn’t know if I could ever repair my relationship with Edgar, and that made my soul ache in a way that I can’t describe, but I knew that he was safe, so long as I kept on dancing to Shaggy Sinclair’s Faustian tune.
Others would die, but I’d spared Edgar from suffering like I had. It wasn’t the victory I longed for, but it was the best I could manage.
We’re all slaves to tyrants, in our own way, be they the rich and powerful, or the inhuman things that make their home in the unexplained edges of the supernatural world.
All any of us can do is try our best to look after the ones we love.