I need you to do something for me.

As soon as you are able, I need you to go find a store that sells used books. Goodwill might work, but you’re best chance will be in a store where the selling of pre-owned literature is it’s raison d’être.

In this store you’re going to look for a certain book. I cannot tell you the title, nor the author, nor even the subject matter. I can only tell you what the book looks like, and hope that this description alone is enough to guide you.

The best places to search for the book are literature and poetry, though you could just as easily find it elsewhere. The book is a reasonably sized paperback, perhaps a little taller or a little shorter than your hand from wrist to fingertips. It’s pages will be slightly yellow at least at the edges, though sometimes the yellowing takes over the entire tome. The smell will be that expected “old book smell” that belongs to a memory you can’t quite recall from a place you’ve never been.

The main thing to look for is the remnants of the books previous owners. Inside there might be a note: “From X to Y with love, wishing you all the best this Christmas.” If you’re lucky a chapter or more will be riddled with notes scrawled in #2 pencil.

I want you to buy this book. It shouldn’t set you back more than $4-5. Buy this book and read it. Read it somewhere comfortable, with a cup of fresh coffee or a glass of smooth whiskey or whatever beverage you feel best suits the book you now hold.

As you read it’s worn-out pages I want you ask it something. Ask why Michael from Wisconsin felt so compelled to put HELLSTAR in his private library, a thing for which he has a special custom-made seal. Ask why the unknown person reading Interview with a Vampire felt so struck by the line “It is the experience of another’s life for certain, and often the experience of the loss of that life through the blood, slowly. It is again and again the experience of that loss of my own life,” that they felt the need to underline it, and only it? Then ask through how many hands did these venerable volumes pass on the way to yours? How many more are in its future?

If the book has any answers, it will bestow them upon you only under the condition of absolute secrecy. Keep them and cherish them. They are a precious secret, shared only between you and those with whom you are now invisibly linked.

When you are done, do whatever you wish with the book. Keep it, donate it, gift it. It’s yours after all. All I ask is that you ensure it one day reaches another pair of hands, that the chain be allowed to continue. Maybe even leave behind your own little mysteries. You’ll make someone happy if you do, I know it.