Chapter 2:

After taking a hot shower and getting properly dressed in a comfortable pair of gym shorts and a clean, unwrinkled, red t-shirt, Joseph was ready to head out into the world with Marko to discover what they could about the rain.

“You ready, Marko?” Joseph asked as he came running down the stairs to their shared living room. Marko looked up to him from the leather sofa and nodded. He then stood up and began to walk out the door with Joseph behind him.

“Yep. Where do you want to go first?” Marko responded as the two stepped outside, nearly blinded by the sudden burst of vibrant sunlight. The windows inside their home were always shaded by their curtains at this point in the summer, as the daytime sun was incredibly cumbersome for a few of the residents to deal with.

Joseph shielded his eyes and cringed as he looked out into the neighborhood around them, studying the light reflecting brightly off the cement sidewalks and back into his eyes.

“Holly and Joan are probably headed straight to the library,” he said as he began to think carefully about Marko’s question. “So maybe we shouldn’t go there. We’re likely to come up on similar information if we do that which may not be incredibly useful for our time,” he explained as the two of them began aimlessly traversing the neighborhood.

At about 4 pm, Treetop Hill was fairly lively for a small town. There was a college just on the outskirts of the town that Joseph and his friends all attended. They shared the house they lived in, paying equal shares of rent and utilities every month.

“I see what you’re saying,” Marko said with a rhythmic nod and a smirk. “You don’t want them getting in the way of our research. I see now.” He smiled and looked at Joseph with a goofy grin.

“That’s not exaaaactly it,” Joseph responded, knowing well that Marko was only joking, but Joseph wanted to be serious about the matter, so he got back on to his train of thought. “I just think that we could possibly find out more if we ask a professor at the college. I’m thinking we can go to the religion department and see if anyone is still there that we can talk to.”

“Huh. Hadn’t thought of that,” Marko said, nodding his head once again. “You’re a smart guy, Joseph. I’m jealous.” The two of them began to walk in the direction of the college as they had decided this was their new destination. The college wasn’t very far from their home as they all generally walked there each day during the normal school year.

“I try sometimes. I’m definitely not as smart as Enrique though. That kid is a genius,” Joseph said, looking around at the neighborhood as they walked. There were plenty of cars driving up and down the street and small children playing games along the sidewalks. Joseph noticed a particular group of kids that were drawing strange pictures on the ground with white and red chalk.

Marko noticed them too and they both began to watch them curiously as they walked by. From what they could tell, it looked like the kids were using the red chalk to draw some red creatures with wings, horns, and a tail. Then, it appeared that the white chalk was being used to draw an angelic creature that also had wings and was vanquishing the red creature.

The two of them decided to stop once they understood the bigger picture. Absolutely perplexed, Joseph had to say something to them.

“Hey guys,” he addressed them cheerfully, trying to quickly gain their trust. “What are you drawing? It looks really cool!” He exclaimed with a bright smile and a forced tone of excitement.

“It’s the devil being defeated by an angel!” A small girl around seven years old shouted happily with her tiny white teeth sparkling in the dazzling summer sun shining. This made Joseph even more curious, and he thought of more questions he could ask them. In total, there was three little kids drawing these same pictures.

“What made you want to draw pictures like this?” He got down on one knee to be eye level with the little girl and pointed to the picture of the devil.

“Mommy told me that one day the devil would come, and an angel would have to fight him!” She said with an adorable giggle, standing up to her feet quickly with her long pigtails fluttering on her shoulders.

“Oh! Does she tell you this story a lot?” Joseph asked with a newly peaked curiosity.

“Hmm,” she began to think to herself, but the other kids continued to draw in silence, seemingly uninterested in the conversation they were having. “Well mommy talks about it sometimes with daddy and we just listen,” she explained with a bit of uncertainty in her tone.

“Is mommy home right now? Can I talk to her?” Joseph looked over to the house closest to them, assuming it must be theirs and then looked back at the girl who was nodding her head with her long blonde pigtails bouncing up and down.

“Okay! Take me to her then!” Joseph exclaimed and she shouted a hearty “okay!” as she began to skip playfully to their door. Marko and Enrique followed after her from a short distance, noticing a woman looking out of her window watching them.

The little girl opened the door and shouted “Mommy! Some boys want to talk to you!” in just a few short moments, the woman that was watching through the window appeared at the door. The little girl backed up and ran back to her siblings.

Now standing in the doorway, the woman appeared to be about forty years old with frizzy brown hair that was a bit of a mess and peering brown eyes.

“I don’t want whatever you’re selling and I’m Catholic. So, if you’re looking to convert me to Mormonism, I ain’t interested,” she seemed a bit irritated, but she couldn’t be blamed. Solicitors were very common at this point in June and it wasn’t hard to mistake sudden visitors as them.

“No ma’am,” Joseph assured her quickly with nervousness beginning to settle into him. His voice started to shake, showing his inherent social anxiety. “We noticed your kids drawing demons and angels on the sidewalk and we were interested in finding out why that might be?”

“Why didn’t you just ask Alyssa? That girl will talk your ear off if you let her,” her slight country accent began to show itself as she quickly calmed down from the initial engagement.

“We did actually,” Marko responded quickly. “But, she said it’s because you and her dad have been talking about it, and that’s what we’re really interested in.” The woman sighed lightly and gestured for us to come inside.

“If y’all are really interested, I’d rather you be comfortable while I babble my mouth on and on,” she said as we hesitantly walked inside, immediately feeling a cool blast of air conditioning that almost dried my sweat on contact.

Joseph and Marko walked in further into the house and she gestured for then to have a seat on her couch. They sat down next to each other and she sat across from them on a loveseat with a small glass table between them.

“It’s because of that damned rain,” she explained with worry plastered on her face. She then took a sip of water that she had already sitting on the table and made a gesture asking if the boys wanted any. The two of them shook their heads and fixed their attention back on her.

“What about the rain?” Joseph asked intently, listening carefully to her response.

She took a moment to continue drinking her water and sat it down, sighing lightly beneath her breath. “I heard about that rain from my own mama. She predicted it, in fact. She used to tell me all the time that the devil will come and the rain will come and we were all gonna’ die. People thought that woman was crazy. Me too, in fact. But that crazy old woman was right.” She seemed distraught while explaining and the new mood offset Joseph’s overall feelings towards their current situation.

“Your mom knew about the rain way before it even happened?” Joseph asked with pure shock in his voice. He leaned forward, gaping with his eyes narrowed intensely on the woman’s face.

“Yeah. She knew alright. She ain’t know all the details but she kept saying, ‘The rain will come. The rain will come.’ I used to call her a crazy bitch. Now look at me -- telling the same things to my little girls and boys.” She looked out the window from her seat, watching her kids continue to draw on the sidewalk.

“How did your mom know about the rain and what did she think it meant?” Marko asked as equally dumbfounded as Joseph.

“I don’t know how she knew. She just kept sayin’ it. But, she did say it meant the end of the world unless the devil is defeated by an angel. So everyday I just pray to God that everything gone be alright.” She sat back in her seat and surveyed our serious expressions.

Joseph and Marko didn’t have anything else to ask her as they realized they weren’t going to get any more useful information. The story of the devil rising then being vanquished by an angel was just the story of the rapture, and they weren’t particularly interested in that jargon. However, the very interesting takeaway was that this woman’s mother knew about the rain years before it happened.

“Thank you so much for your time, ma’am,” Marko said dismissively as they both stood to their feet and gestured towards the door.

“Y’all keep prayin’ now.” She said with a serious look on her face, making them stop all motion. “Don’t lose faith. Jesus will keep you safe from harm.”

They nodded politely and walked out the door, walking up to the kids once again. They looked at their updated drawing and noticed that the red chalk had been used to draw what looked like rain. And in the devil’s arms were small children being held.

“Umm,” Joseph mumbled before regaining his thoughts. “Thank you, Alyssa. Thanks a lot,” he said awkwardly, feeling uneasy about the updated drawings.

“You’re welcome!” She exclaimed happily. Her attitude towards this situation was even more unsettling for Joseph as it appeared that she was drawing herself in the arms of the devil, and it now appeared that possibly the devil was vanquishing the angel. What was even more strange was that the angel now had red drawn all over it and around it like a shroud of fire. The devil was now covered in a white shroud that appeared as though it was protecting the small child in its arms.

“Is that you in the devil’s arms?” Joseph asked softly, staring closely at the drawings and studying them in his mind. Marko even took the next step in taking a picture of the drawings.

“Well,” she paused. “That’s not the devil. He’s the angel, but he looks like the devil on the outside and he’s protecting me. The one that looks like an angel is really the devil because the devil tricks you into seeing the wrong thing,” she explained in a slightly confusing way, but for a girl about seven years old, Joseph couldn’t really ask for better.

They took in that information carefully as it still left them incredibly curious, but there was little that they could do to fully understand the picture which was also perplexing because that implied that kids’ drawings had a level of complexity that the two college students couldn’t quite fathom.

“Thank you again, Alyssa,” Joseph said as he and Marko began to walk away. But, before they could get away, one of the little boys grabbed Joseph’s wrist, alarming him suddenly.

“While you were talking to mama, I drew this for you,” he said as he handed Joseph a drawing of something that was incredibly difficult to make out. Joseph then looked over to where the little kid was sitting and noticed that he had been drawing on paper with colored pencils this entire time and there were several equally strange drawings.

“What is it?” Joseph asked completely confused. He raised his eyebrows at the picture and studied it the best he could.

“It’s a picture of you.” Joseph was stunned as the picture appeared to look nothing like him, and this boy had to be at least ten years old, so he should have at least been able to draw something that looked almost like him.

The major confliction Joseph was having was that he appeared as two people. The two people were connected by a black shadowy mist that covered most of the details of their body and legs. The left face was facing the left side of the page and it appeared to kind of resemble him as it had his short black curly hair, green eyes and lightly tanned skin. The right face was facing the right side and it appeared to have redish-brown skin with even more black mist covering it. Its eyes were this very strange orange color without a pupil. It had two sharp white horns sticking out from above its ears and a single large red and black wing protruding from that side. It was as tall as the person in the picture.