Chapter 3: Visitor

Joan and Holly approached the Tellithun Library, seeking new information on The Devil’s Rain. They walked through the large glass doors and stopped suddenly.

“Where do you think we should go first?” Holly asked with a whisper, respecting the inherent rules of the library.

“Well, I was thinking there may be a section with religious texts that we could look through,” Joan suggested, surveying the countless rows of shelves in the library.

Holly nodded her head and they began to walk through the main aisle of the library towards the front desk. A woman sat there, intently focused on a book she was reading.

They approached her quickly with various questions in mind but narrowed their thoughts to what may provide the most useful information.

“How can I help you?” The librarian said, looking up at them with an annoyed look on her face. Her temper already seemed less than ideal.

“We were just looking for the section where we could find religious texts,” Joan explained, keeping her composure.

The woman glared back at her and sighed, making Joan cringe at her unfriendly attitude. “Were you really looking? You just walked in,” she said condescendingly with an irritable tone. “They’re right behind me on those shelves.” She swiveled around in her chair and pointed to the shelves behind her.

Joan was incredibly irritated at this point, and she forcefully fought back her own aggravation. Her face lit up red as her frustration rapidly built up.

“Thank you so much!” Holly exclaimed with just a bit more volume than the librarian considered acceptable. The librarian then rudely rolled her eyes, lifted her book to her face, and continued to read.

With anger still illuminating Joan’s face, she looked down to the librarian’s book, Runaway Husbands: Diserted Wife's road to renewal and revival. With a slight smile, Joan thought to herself, Well, I guess that sums everything up.

The woman lowered her book and glared at Joan again, visibly upset that they were still standing there. As an immediate response, Holly quickly grabbed Joan’s arm and they rush over to the book section they were interested in.

“Did you see what book she was reading?” Joan asked, giggling unwillingly as they began to browse the assortment of religious texts.

“No. I didn’t notice. What was it?” Holly responded as she reached into the bookshelf and pulled out an interesting text.

“Runaway Husbands: The Abandoned Wife’s Guide to Recovery and Renewal,” she giggled again while continuing to look through the books.

“That’s not really funny. That’s kind of sad,” Holly said with a sigh as she flipped through pages of the text she found.

“What’s that?” Joan stared at the wordy pages as Holly flipped through them. Holly then looked up at her and showed her the cover of the book.

“Demonic Rituals 4th edition by Edgar Wood.” Holly flipped the book back around and continued flipping through the pages. It had a lot of words but there were also some very interesting illustrations of strange symbols, creatures, and apparently spells.

“Do you think the rain is some kind of a ritual?” Joan asked curiously, returning to her own personal search for information.

“No idea, but this can’t be a bad place to start.”

Holly stopped flipping the pages at something she found particularly interesting. There was an illustration of a sword and a bow and arrow. The page was captioned “Demonic Weapon Summonings.”

She began to read the pages to herself, finding her own particular interest in it as it did not seem to have any correlation to the rain. The weapon summoning occurs after an individual undergoes a demonic partnership (the agreement that allows a demon to share their host’s body with them). Often times, it may take up to a few weeks before the host is able to perform the weapon summoning. However, once they are able to, they will forever be able to even after the demon leaves their body. This is one of the most permanent and exciting rituals an individual may partake in.

“What are you reading about? Did you find something interesting?” Joan said with a hint of excitement in her voice. She then began to read the text to herself and cringed with confusion.

“What does this have to do with the rain?” Joan demanded, looking directly at Holly with uncertain hand gestures.

“Probably nothing, but I saw it, and I thought it was interesting,” she responded innocently, but Joan was not thrilled.

“Stay focused, Holly. Let’s look for a different book. This doesn’t seem like it’ll have anything to do with the rain anyway.” Joan took the book from Holly’s hand and placed it back into the shelf.

Holly looked up to Joan with a fake “sad puppy” frown and lightly stomped her feet like an upset child.

Joan smiled and shook her head, trying not to acknowledge Holly’s playful behavior. She had a task to complete, and she wanted to take it seriously.

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“Fine,” Holly said as she continued to look through the available texts.

They continued searching and skimming through seemingly relevant books but not finding anything particularly interesting about the rain.

“There’s a book on Native American curses,” Joan said with a shrug and a gesture that implied that it may not be the most helpful text, but it’s something.

“Well, Enrique did say that weird Native American curse was on the menu,” Holly stated with an equivalent shrug as Joan opened the book and began to skim through it. There were plenty of illustrations, so finding something about the rain would probably come with an easy to notice picture.

“Right. Let’s see what we can find then.” There was a lot of information about various curses such as revival of the dead, plagues, and massive insect swarms, but so far, there was nothing about blood red rain.

After a few minutes of searching through this book, Joan stopped at a page that had an illustration about rain and alerted Holly to come and look at it.

Holly sat her book about Norse Mythology and Aliens down and rushed over to Joan as she began to read the text out loud.

“It says here that this is called The Rain of the Snake. During the Tuscarora war, the Tuscaroras protected their land from the British invaders by releasing a curse on the land called The Rain of the Snake. The rain was potent with venom similar to the cobras. When it came into contact with the skin of British soldiers, the rain with seep into their bodies, allowing the venom to settle in,” Joan didn’t seem pleased with the information and shook her head with disapproval. She then shut the book angrily and placed it back on the shelf.

“Hey!” The librarian called out to her. “Don’t be so rough with my books or you’ll be buying me new ones.” She then shook her head angrily and continued reading her book.

Joan angrily faced her and threw up an agitated middle finger and an ugly cringe while she was focused on the book. The librarian noticed her in the corner of her eye and looked over, and Joan quickly dropped the finger, hoping she didn’t notice.

The librarian shook her head again, returning to her book without any further acknowledgment, leaving Joan uncertain as to whether she noticed.

“Well, we haven’t found shit,” Joan said with apparent frustration.

Holly looked over to her with a concerned look and gently rubbed her shoulder. “Don’t be upset Joan. We’ll find something sooner or later,” Holly smiled brightly and continued to lightly caress her shoulder.

“It’s not even that. I just want to punch this bitch and I hate that I can’t.” Joan moved over to a nearby table and sat down with her hand resting on her forehead. Holly soon followed after her and sat down.

“Well, you can’t punch everyone you know,” Holly said softly as she started to rub her back in a friendly manner.

“Why not?” Joan asked jokingly.

“Well…” Holly began to gather her thoughts. “I guess because people don’t want to be punched!” She laughed quietly, looking down at Joan’s face which seemed to be cooling down.

“Well she definitely wants to get punched,” she said as she looked over to the librarian. “Just look. The way she talks all smug, ‘Did you really look!?’” She mocked her. “Well, nobody wants to come in here wasting their time trying to find something. I was trying to be efficient by just asking someone that already knew! Obviously, I didn’t really look! UGH! She makes me so mad.”

“SHHH!!!” The librarian rudely hushed Joan from behind her book. This agitated her even more, and she was definitely ready to fight her.

“GRRRRRRRRR AHHHHGHHHGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!” Joan grumbled as quietly as she could, trying not to grab the librarian’s attention again.

“Okay okay. Let’s just check out a couple of these book and we’ll—” Holly paused. “Okay better yet I’LL check out a couple of these book and you can go blow off some steam in the basement. You can punch the punching bag around, lift some weights, and I’ll start dinner. How does that sound?” She tried tirelessly to keep Joan calm and rational in this situation, hoping more than anything that it would work.

“Fine. Fine. Fine. Fine. FINE! Let’s get out of here now.”

Holly quickly got up and grabbed two books from the shelves that she found interesting and that may have more useful information in them. As she started to walk towards the librarian, she noticed another peculiar book that she must have looked over before. From the spine of the book, she read the name, The Devil's Uprising. 

The title alone drew her to reaching out to it. As she gripped the spine of the book, she noticed that it felt cold to the touch, and a sharp chill shot through her entire body like an electric current flowing through a wire. 

She shivered lightly, and stood in the ailse entirely bewildered. She had no idea how to interpret this incredibly bizarre experience as it made very little practical sense.  

After a few moments of being stunned and confused, Holly felt warm again and the shiver faded away. At that point, she brushed the confusion aside and rushed the books over to the rude librarian and smiled at her, trying to be on her good side.

“Hi. I would like to check these three out please!” She smiled even more brightly, getting to a point where it didn’t even seem realistic anymore.

The librarian noticed the effort and let out a sad sigh. She then mumbled a quiet “sorry” beneath her breath as she checked the three books out for her.

She stopped suddenly as she seemed to notice a problem. She appeared very confused while staring at one of the books.

“This one doesn’t seem to be in our database, but don’t worry about it. Just bring it back with the others.” She then handed the three books back to Holly.

“Thank you, ma’am! I hope you have a better day!” Holly nodded and rushed back to Joan. They then quickly walked back to the main aisle and out the door.

They began their walk home from the local library, which was only about two blocks away. They had only been out for a couple hours. Having left home around 2 pm, it was about 4 o’clock now.

“I’m surprised she didn’t try to bite your head off,” Joan stated irritably, shading her bright blue eyes from the luminous yellow sun. Her long blonde hair nearly glistened in the sunlight, appearing as a deep yellow color that almost looked like it would be more realistic in an animated setting.

“She actually softened up a little bit. She even apologized,” Holly said with a joyous smirk.

“She apologized? That’s surprising. People like that usually wouldn’t apologize if their life depended on it. But, I guess you’ve always had that effect on people.”

“Yeah. I guess so, huh.” Holly somewhat agreed with her as she had been told that many times in the past.

“Well it sucks that we didn’t really find anything useful,” Joan said with disappointment in her voice.

“We got these three books. There’s bound to be something in them!” Holly exclaimed with hopeful energy, carrying the three books proudly in her arms.

“Wait. What did you even grab?” Joan asked, looking over to Holly who had a massive “please don’t be angry” smile on her face that explicitly showed all of her perfect white teeth and gums.

“Damn it, Holly,” Joan sighed softly. “The summoning book, the Native American Curses book, and—” she paused. “What’s this one? The Devil’s Uprising?” Joan was shocked and confused as she hadn’t noticed that book in the library.

“Yeah. I kind of grabbed it last minute. I don’t know why, but I thought it could maybe have some helpful information.”

Joan just shrugged her shoulders as they continued to approach their house. They stepped up to the creaky wood steps and stopped at the door. Joan could tell no one was home as all of the lights were off and the curtains closed. She then unlocked the door and the two walked inside.