I grabbed the pencil again and rubbed the lead around the letters. I didn’t understand what it meant but my stomach dropped and a shiver ran down my spine.

  DON’T

  TRUST

  HIM

  I released the rug by moving my leg, and it rolled back over the mark. I stared at the ominous message for another couple moments. I flipped the notepad closed and looked at the cover. It was a girly one, with different sized pink and purple hearts covering it. Not the type of thing John would probably use. I flipped back to the message and thought about who could have written it. I took the pencil and rewrote the message myself.

  The handwriting matched.

  I wrote the message.

  I had no recollection of writing this. Who was it referring to? Why would I write that? Who did I write it to?

  I passed my hand over the revealed message and felt the impressions of more writing to uncover at the bottom edge. I used the pencil again.

  Flour

  I ran to the kitchen, placed the pad down, and pulled the flour container from the cupboard. I pulled off the lid and grabbed a slotted spoon from the drawer. I swirled the spoon back and forth through the flour, pulling up a spoonful of flour a few times. I couldn’t feel any resistance that didn’t just feel like flour through a slotted spoon.

  I stuck my hand into the jar and felt nothing but flour between my fingers. In desperation I overturned the flour onto the kitchen island granite top. Ensuring the container was empty. I examined the outside. The transparent plastic revealed no secrets. I used both hands to push the flour around. The container wasn’t set on the counter entirely and in my concentration I knocked it to the floor. A puff of residual flour billowed into the air. There was nothing but flour. I rubbed handfuls between my fingers. I tasted what coated the tip of one of my fingers and tasted nothing but uncooked flour.

  Turning towards the flour coated rubbing, I stared at the message again.

  Flour

  I looked up towards the ceiling, wracking my brain for what it could mean. A yellow box caught my eye.

  Flour

  The vintage ceramic dry good containers on top of the pantry, yellow with hand painted labels.

  Salt, Sugar, and Flour.

  I scrambled on top of the counter adjacent to the pantry and grabbed the container. The lid slid off and shattered on the floor. Still standing on the counter, I tipped the jar towards my face and looked inside.

  There was a piece of paper.

  With the jar tucked under my arm I got down from the counter. I placed the jar on the counter and pulled the paper out.

  It was a folded white piece of paper ripped from a notebook.

  I slipped my finger between the folds. Opening the second fold and revealing the message was like lifting a weight off my shoulders. I couldn’t read what was written fast enough.

  Before you do anything else, you must be alone.

  If you are not alone, replace this note and restore it to its hiding place. Revisit this when you are alone. DO NOT TELL JOHN.

  When you are alone, recreate the note in the pad of paper by rewriting the message with a pen and burn the top piece of paper. Replace the notebook in the drawer.

  To stay strong and sharp, add 3 cups of salt to your electrolyte drink mix.

  If you fail to follow these steps, your life will be in danger, Annabel.

  You are not crazy, and you are not sick. There was no accident.

  Where is your family?

  Who were you before you met John?

  Who are you really, Annabel?

  You know it does not add up. If you must, replace the note and return when you can’t accept it anymore.

  Each paragraph was written with different ink types and colors. As if written at different times.

  Maybe I was worse than I thought. Maybe I was delusional. Maybe I had paranoid episodes, and there was a sick part of me that did not trust John. I would have to show him when he got back. I did all the cooking. He rarely came into the kitchen, except to take out the trash through the back door. He would never find this without me. He didn’t know how bad it was.

  I ran my fingers over the letters, undeniably written in my hand by a me I did not know or remember, but I felt inexplicably drawn to.

  I turned the note over in my hands and on the back were two words written large in the center of the page in my handwriting.

  Red Sky

  I knew exactly where the next step in this scavenger hunt would lead me.

  What would be there when I got there?

  I left the kitchen, headed down the hallway towards the front of the house, and turned up the stairs. I could feel the flour stuck to the bottoms of my feet as I climbed to the bedroom.

  I sat at my vanity and couldn’t help but look at myself in the giant mirror for a moment. I looked harried and tired. My hair was a mess. My lipstick faded. There were circles under my eyes, flour stuck to my cheek.

  I turned my eyes towards my makeup. There in my tray of everyday wear items was one of my black plastic tubes of lipstick. I picked it up and found the shade name on the bottom.

  Red Sky

  I looked around the tube. The case was shiny and cool. The surface was unmarred. I opened the tube and extended the tube of lipstick. It was a cool deep red. When I looked closer, the edge was misshapen. As if something had shaved off some of the side. With the tube turned towards the light, I looked into it. There was something lining the inside of the lid. I grabbed my tweezers from the vanity and pulled it out. It was a piece of paper. Lipstick smudged the ends of my fingers and the vanity as I unrolled and unfolded it .

  Salt makes you stronger.

  Moon blessed salt gives you strength he cannot wipe away. It lies with the other skies.

  To make more, set a jar of salt out overnight during the full moon.

  Use it wisely. We will need it.

  Goosebumps prickled across my skin.

  Moon blessed salt and gathered strength.

  The other me believed in the occult. My curiosity was winning over logic though. Where was the salt? Other skies…

  I opened the drawer in my vanity where I kept my backup makeup and things I used less often. After a couple swipes through the sealed packages, I found a container I didn’t recognize. It was a vintage glass Avon jar filled with coarse ground salt. I opened it. The salt smell was overpowering. I was so thirsty. I hungered but not for anything I should eat. I was overwhelmed. The coarse chunks were pinched between my fingers and straight to my tongue without a second thought. The sensation of the salt dissolving in my mouth was exquisite. I closed my eyes in bliss. In my mind’s eye I could see the salt moving through my blood, fortifying my body, sharpening my mind.

  I opened my eyes and saw myself in the vanity mirror again. My eyes were more alert. My cheeks had a little color. The circles under my eyes faded. I regained some control and shut the jar. After a moment the salt smell faded and I felt more myself, but the vitality I saw in the mirror seemed to stick.

  I was losing it. I needed to find out as much as possible and show John so we could figure out what happened to me when I created this unhinged scavenger hunt.

  Was there another step? I turned the lipstick note over.

  On the back was a single word.

  Uneven

  Uneven was a very vague clue. Maybe it was indicative of how wild my fantasy had become, that other me believed I would be able to follow a scavenger hunt with such an unhelpful clue.

  Uneven

  I could not deny however, that there was one visual hovering in my mind at the word. I would go and see, and there would be nothing, and I could know that this was truly madness. It had no rhyme or reason and did not actually lead anywhere. It was fool’s gold. It was alchemy. It was impossible.

  I returned back downstairs and into the living room, in front of the unused fireplace. There was something wrong with the chimney and we never used it, or really needed it. Crouched down, I brought my eye level to a brick that had never lined up correctly and always caught my eye when I sat in this room.

  The back of the chimney wall was stained black with soot from the previous tenants, presumably. We actually kept cast iron logs in the wood holder, to keep the fireplace from looking empty and sad. In the fake wood and along the floor was ash. Soft ash that turned to dust against my fingertips. The directions of the first note had instructed me to recreate the invisible note in the notepad and burn the top page. I attempted to estimate how many pages would create this much ash. How many times had I done this? How many times had I set about gathering evidence of my alter ego’s crimes, only to get swept up in the madness?

  When I could tear myself away from my harried thoughts the mislaid brick was all I could see.

  I reached out to trace the edge of it. The masonry was cool against my fingertips, black soot smudged with ash. At the corner, the brick wobbled slightly. I pressed it again. It was loose. I reached out with both of my manicured, but lipstick-stained, hands and dug my fingertips into the tiniest lip of the brick that was sticking out. My fingers strained and lost purchase. I tried again, focusing on my fingernails. The texture of the brick scraping against my nails set my teeth on edge. The brick finally started to loosen and I could use the pads of my fingers to grip. The brick came free of the wall. The recess into the wall was a black hole. I climbed into the fireplace, over, atop, and around the metal logs. Scraping my shins and thighs to get a better look. I saw nothing in the hole. I poked my sore fingers around the recess and found nothing but the rough edges of brick and mortar. I examined my hand. There was a bit of that blue-purple sheen around a couple of my fingernails. A closer examination did not reveal any more. Where had it come from?

  I climbed out of the fireplace and looked at the brick. There was no more of that blue substance on the brick in my hands. In the back, there was a slender groove, smaller in diameter than a pencil, with something white wedged into it. I pried the white object free. It was a dense cylinder of rolled paper.

  The brick discarded, I found the edge of the paper and unrolled it. It was another note.

  To understand what has happened to us, you must believe something unbelievable.

  Magic is real.

  It has been used to hurt us, and it can be used to fix what is wrong with us.

  The magic follows this format. 3 symbols and one source of power, in an unbroken circle, created and joined with intention.

  Draw this to see for yourself.

  In the empty space add some ash for power.

  A flame for outcome.

  A hand for direction.

  A blue jay for color.

  Remember we have sacrificed so much for the knowledge. Protect it with your life.

  There was a circle reminiscent of the rubbing in the floorboard. I blinked.

  I was still looking at the symbol in the note.

  It wasn’t exactly the same though. The top left was blank, where the ash would go presumably. The top right had a flame; the bottom right a hand; the bottom left a bird, the blue jay if the note was to be believed.

  I rubbed my finger in the soot from the fireplace and sat back to draw the symbol on the floor.

  A circle the size of a dinner plate centered between my legs. I created my horizontal and vertical lines to break it into four segments. Then set to work on the symbols. I didn’t consider myself much of an artist, but the images I thought would be a poor approximation at best were eerily similar to the note’s sample. I reached in and pinched some ash between my fingers.

  I leaned over the symbol to smudge the ash into the empty section. As soon as I had swiped once I was startled at the intense heat on my chest.

  In the center of the symbol was a blue flame. There was a blue fire. There was a blue fire on the hardwood floor. Fire! I scrambled back until the couch was at my back. I kicked myself around and turned to smother the flame with a throw blanket. When I turned back towards the fire, blanket in hand, it was gone. There was a scorch mark in the center of the symbol. The symbols in the burned part of the floor were etched into the hardwood as though I had carved them with a knife. Cautiously I reached towards the black mark. It was still very hot, but not injuriously so. What had caused the flame to go out? A smudge in the bottom right corner caught my eye. I checked the bottoms of my feet. On my right foot was a smudge of black soot joining the flour. I had broken the circle and the flame had gone out.

  The state of the living room floor settled over me. John was not going to believe this, that magic was real. Hopefully that discovery would take the sting out of the ruined hardwood. Maybe there was a spell for that as well.

  Looking at the fire spell, if that was the right word, I had trouble wrapping my head around it. I couldn’t help but think about the symbol I had found on the floorboard. Had I “cast” that spell too? Who is the “we” and “us” referred to in the notes?

  Where was the note? A moment of panic gripped my chest. Had it been burned with the magical fire? As I hopped up on my knees I heard a crinkling and saw it slightly crumpled between my knee and the floor. I picked it up with a relieved breath and held it to my chest. I couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing this to the end. I couldn’t call this all a delusion if magic was real, but I was also afraid of how I had used magic without remembering. Had I cast a spell on John? Had I cast a spell on myself? Was it why I was sick?

  I couldn’t remember feeling sick after creating the fire. If anything I felt… stronger. More steady. Less feeble. Less sick.

  How far did this rabbit hole go? And what would be waiting for me at the end?

  I un-crumpled the note clutched to my chest and flipped it over to the backside, hoping for another clue. I was not disappointed.

  Hair

  I had a secret I had never shared with John, or a single other soul. He had gifted me a locket for my birthday. I couldn’t help but think of the old Victorian custom and the locket’s namesake tradition to keep a small lock of your lover’s hair in the locket. In the night while he slept I took my tiny tailor scissors and snipped the smallest lock of his hair from the back of his head. I tied it with a piece of thread and hid it behind the picture he gave me.

  There wasn’t another person in the universe that knew this. I took the necklace off from around my neck and popped it open to examine the inside. I expected the small bulge behind the picture on the right of us holding hands, but not the warp of John’s picture on the left.

  I used my fingernail, sore from the brick extraction, to lever out the picture. There was blue around the edge of the picture, this mystery stain I kept finding everywhere. In the locket, wedged behind the picture’s tiny frame was a square of white. I used my nail to lever that out as well. It was a very compact note. I unfolded the note with unsteady hands, shaken by its proximity the entire time. Right below my literal nose was evidence of this double life I had been living, my secrets and false reality.

  Annabel, do you see it yet? Do you see what he has done to us?

  We know he has the spell book. We do not know what he still intends to do with it. We have lost so much progress to its use, but we could not alter or steal it without alerting him.

  His workshop in the basement is where the grimoire is kept. But you must follow these steps to access it covertly…

  I took the paper to the basement door. I never had any occasion to go down there. It was his personal space, just as the kitchen was mine, but admittedly with less privacy.

  I don’t know why John would have such precautions. I believe I would know if my husband was casting spells in the basement. Maybe I was the one leaving sigils around and leaving traps on doors I didn’t need to enter. I consulted the note again.

  Remove the hair from the door frame without breaking it.

  My eyes traced the edge of the door for the supposed trap, and there in the top corner, almost out of reach was one of John’s blonde hairs taped to either side of the doorframe.

  I untaped one side delicately with the edge of my fingernail and at the last second the fine strand of hair snapped. My fingers were filthy and there was now ash, soot, flour, and the blue-purple residue on the sticky side of the tape. I had been careless. I could probably wash my hands and re-tape the hair with fresh—

  No. It was already happening. I was getting swept up in the notes. I was slipping away. I didn’t need to re-tape anything. I was gathering as much as possible to show John, and we could figure this out together. I hoped.

  The deep breath I took steadied me. I could do this. I tried the door and it rattled against the lock.

  Take a pencil with an eraser.

  Use the left sigil to unlock the door.

  I took my pencil and drew the sigil on the door above the door handle. A circle and four quadrants. A keyhole, a key, an open door, and the smudge of ash, soot, and the oil slick mystery substance on my fingers in the empty spot. The lock shot open so fast it sounded like something cracked. When I turned the handle for the door it did not return to level after. It was broken.

  I opened the door. John could help me replace the door handle later. I stepped onto the top step, and used the pull chain on the stairway light. The illumination fell down the stairs and disappeared into darkness. It smelled musty and stale.

  When you enter the stairway, look at the poster just inside the door frame. Lift the bottom corner without the tack and break the circle of the sigil there with the eraser.

  There was a singular poster on the left wall. An old advertisement for Ivory Soap. There was no thumb tack in the bottom corner. I lifted the corner slowly. Two sigils looked back at me, side by side, like some perverse mirror.