The Lost Boys | Investigations
Sep. 6th, 2025 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsBilly and Tommy hit up the public library to learn something about the weird symbol they say in the magic 8-ball. They need to work on their teamwork a bit.
Billy pulled into the Eastview Public Library parking lot in his Subaru Legacy that was nearly as old as he was. It sputtered when he shifted to park, but as usual, Billy ignored it. Despite its age, it had survived the whole year since Billy bought it, and he was convinced it had years left. (Convinced himself for his own peace of mind, maybe, but confident nonetheless.)
"There's a weirdly big occult section for a public library," Billy pondered, leading Tommy inside. "So maybe there's something about the symbol here."
The white haired boy pulled his borrowed hat more firmly over his head- their attempt at a disguise. Tommy glanced at the blinking security cameras warily. Hanging out at the Kaplans’ home was one thing, but being out in public like this made him feel uneasy. “Sure dude. Let’s just try and get this done quickly.”
Not that Billy knew the Dewey Decimal System by heart, but he did know witchcraft and demonology were at 133.4, so that's where he and Tommy headed straight towards. "I guess start at the first book and go until we find something useful?" He groaned. This collection ran over two bookshelves, they'd be here all day.
“Ummm, sure. You start on that shelf and I’ll tackle this one?” Tommy flexed his fingers and cracked his knuckles, dreading the arduous task ahead.
Billy nodded and stood on his tippy toes to reach the first book on the top shelf. A Witches' Bible. Seemed as good a place to start as any. After glancing around to make sure they were not being watched, Billy started flipping through the volume, scanning every page as closely as possible for any hint of the symbol that had shown up in the magic 8-ball. It was bound to be here somewhere. It had to be.
A breeze could be felt coming from Tommy’s general direction as he began skimming through books faster than he should’ve been able to. Within a minute, he was already done with a quarter of his shelf and held a book in one hand, shaking it as if the sigil might magically fall out.
"What are you doing?" Billy hissed. "Someone could see you!" Nevermind Tommy's trick was the only way they could accomplish this task before Thanksgiving. All Billy could see was a patron or librarian catching them and calling the cops, and then not only would Tommy go back to prison with a longer sentence after escaping but Billy would be locked up, too, maybe also his parents for harboring a fugitive even though Billy forced them, they didn't know what they were doing, and Billy would be hooked up to the same machines and devices that Tommy was, and neither of them would ever be seen again, not after mad scientists discovered what the pair of them could do, and they wouldn't be any closer to understanding what was happening to them and the nightmares would persist until eventually the monsters from their dreams became real and finally caught them.
Tommy slowed down for a second to whisper back “I’m getting this done! You stay on the lookout if it’s a problem, dork.” He didn’t have much time. They would find him any day now, and he didn’t want to waste his moments of freedom reading a bunch of boring books. “I can finish all of them in ten. Try a magic thingy to distract people or something.”
Billy glared at Tommy for a moment. If he had laser eye powers instead of whatever he could do, Tommy would be melted into a puddle of slag now. "You're going to get us in so much trouble," he admonished but followed the other boy's instructions, anyway, putting the book away and heading to the end of the aisle to keep an eye out for passersby. Thoughts of them both getting handcuffed and roughly thrown into the back of a police cruiser continued to haunt his imagination, though.
With Billy gone he was able to go much faster, still being careful not to tear any pages. Any books that seemed relatively helpful got chucked in a pile on the floor. There thankfully didn’t seem to be a camera pointed at this aisle directly.
But there was still staff wandering about, doing whatever they do when they're not shelving books or kicking patrons off the reserved computers for publicly looking up porn. Billy had to stop anyone from approaching them. "Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh, hi Ms. Florenstein!" he called maybe too loudly, stepping out from the stacks to distract the approaching librarian. He quickly glanced at Tommy and motioned at him to hurry up. "How're you? How's, um, how's Johnny? Janie? No, wait, Joel! That's right."
Tommy rolled his eyes. Of course this dork knew the librarians by name. He managed to finish the section and tried his best to look nondescript with the pile of books in his hand as Billy’s voice drew closer.
He did it all without blowing up the place either. Improvement!
All the while, Billy gabbed on with the librarian. She asked how he had enjoyed the books about dream analysis he had borrowed recently. He lied and said they were good even though he had ignored the psychological ones in favor of the mystical ones he'd slid into the pile "as a joke." She had found a couple more recommendations and offered to show him. He knew that topic was maintained under 154.63. In the next aisle over. Ms. Florenstein would pass by Tommy's supersped-up investigation. They'd be caught, Tommy would go back to prison, Billy would probably get expelled and outed all over again . . .
The squeezing sensation in his chest that never went away—just sometimes relaxed its grip—tightened, sending a signal to his gut to prepare to empty. The last thing Billy needed was to puke in the middle of the library. Which is probably why it happened; why should William Kaplan get what he wants when he can make a total fool of himself instead?
His white-haired conspirator slipped out of the aisle, about ten books balancing in his grip, and gave Billy a look. "Hey cuz, you alright?" Tommy ignored the look from the librarian as he shifted his tomes to one hand to lightly pat Billy's shoulder with the other, playing up the family angle. He figured they might as well be related out here as well if it would serve as a better cover.
Billy turned his miserable green countenance to his "cousin"-slash-accomplice until another dry heave interrupted him and he turned back to face the librarian who was already calling over the custodian. "I'm so so sorry, Ms. Florenstein," he said. "Let me he . . ." But she waved him off before he could finish his offer and begged the two to check out their stack and leave. At least the library had been renovated to laminate flooring instead of the old carpet so Billy's shame would not be a permanent stain here, so to speak. Still, the Kaplans would probably have to move towns again after this.
"Don't say anything," Billy ordered as he slumped into the driver's seat of his car. Thankfully there was a box of mints in the glove box.
Tommy sighed. “Dude, you’re not very good at this ‘not drawing attention to ourselves’ thing.” What was that all about? He had kinda reminded him of a shaky little chihuahua — all nerves. “It’s fine. These seemed like they might be helpful. We can look over them back at your house.”
Billy didn't say anything, he just kept his attention on the road and pulled out of the parking lot. Just his luck, though, that Anxiety by Doechii came on the playlist a minute later.
~*~
Later, they are rebuffed by a local fortuneteller, but slip away with something potentially useful, anyway.
None of the books from the library had proven useful, which sucked because Tommy had spent all of five minutes sorting them out. Still, some of them had similar symbols to the one that kept popping up, so they had to be on the right track.
Tommy drummed his fingers on the center console absently as they pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall. The store in front of the car read Mystic Treasures in faded, swirling font. He looked over at Billy dubiously, “I thought these places were all scams?”
"They can't all be scams, though, right?" The Google and Yelp reviews for this place (all five of them) praised the proprietor for her insight and aptitude, so it was as good an option as any. "If anyone's going to know the truth behind spooky stuff, it's got to be a fortune teller."
Mystic Treasures wasn't beating the scam allegations, though. The pair was hit with a waft of patchouli and other incense when they entered the cramped, dimly lit store. Bookcases lined one wall, filled with a mixture of leather-bound tomes and cheaply made paperbacks with Comics Sans lettering on the spine, probably self-published slop that could only be sold by unscrupulous merchants looking for an easy mark.
A middle-aged woman draped in velvet and lace appeared from a beaded curtain behind the counter. She eyed the two boys suspiciously, obviously used to selling to people of a similar demographic to herself. “Hello, what can I help you two with today? A reading perhaps? Or are you looking for something in particular?”
The variety of shiny rocks on one shelf caught Tommy’s attention for a moment, before he came back to the mission at hand. “Um, we were wondering if you knew about a thing. Show her the picture of it, Billy.”
Subtlety really was out the window now, huh? Resigned to the more direct approach, Billy reached into his back pocket to pull out the crumbled note page on which he had sketched the symbol. "Have you ever seen this before? We're, uh, curious about what it means. We think maybe it's a tarot thingie?" Tarot thingie, great.
The energy in the room immediately shifted as the woman took in the sigil, a sudden chill filling the air. “Where did you get this?”
Oh no. Billy's stomach lurched that same moment. Was he going to have a repeat of the library? Keep it together, stupid! She clearly knew something based on her reaction, and he was not going to be the one to blow it. So he inhaled deeply through his nose, held it, then breathed out through his mouth before answering as nonchalantly as he could.
"We saw it in my magic 8-ball. Maybe it's just a joke from the manufacturer, but we're curious, you know? Right, Tommy?"
“Er, yeah. Totally.” Since his investigative partner didn’t mention the dreams, he wasn’t going to. This wasn’t his shit anyways. All Tommy knew about the arcane arts came from his brief skimming in the library.
The woman looked between the two boys and the sigil. Billy figured she was debating what to tell them, which meant she knew something, which meant that after the library and their flailing online, they were finally on the right track. He leaned in to play up the shayna punim his bubbie always gave him a dollar for.
But from her perspective, he wore the expression of a sick cat. She slid the paper across the counter back to him. "Abstract forces," she said, facing away from the two so she could tidy up the already spotless shelf behind her. "Eternity and Infinity, Chaos and Order, the Powers That Be and the Natural Order of Things. Twinned personifications of cosmic concepts, they maintain the balance of reality. And unreality. And non-reality." She stopped her fretting, running a finger down the spine of one of the books on the shelf, then shook her head and turned back.
"Fictions by the likes of men like Burroughs and Lovecraft. I'm afraid your little toy is just having a bit of fun with you."
“But-“ Tommy started, then stopped, then started again. “Are you sure? What if we’ve been seeing it in other places as well?” It was blurted out without thought to Billy’s previous restraint against doing so.
The proprietor seemed unbothered by the follow-up, as opposed to Billy, who was sure they could hear his heart beating like a jackhammer in his chest. But he had to know the answer, and perhaps as importantly, also know why her gaze flicked back to that book again before firmly resting on Billy, as if forcing herself to to focus on him.
"Give me your hand." She reached over the counter and took hold of Billy's wrist before he could resist, gently but firmly turning his hand so it was palm up. She leaned over and traced a finger desperately in need of a manicure down the heart and life lines. "You have a long journey ahead of you. It will be one of great transformation. You . . ." She stopped abruptly and then looked up at Tommy. "Come. Now."
He handed over his palm without protest, not really sure what to make of it.
She studied his hand with the same intensity as she did Billy's. "Your life line is broken in two. Both of you." She dropped Tommy's hand as if it were caustic and backed up.
"W-what does that mean?" Billy examined his own palms, trying to detect whatever she did, but all he saw were hands. (Ones that, given how badly his black nail polish was chipping, were in desperate need of a manicure themselves.)
"It means you need to stop playing around and leave here."
Tommy rolled his eyes. Hard. Obviously this lady was just trying to freak them out.
He was going to protest but she had already turned her back to light something behind the counter. The smell of smoke wafted through the air as the two boys scampered out the door.
"That was so weird." Billy was still pondering his hands as they returned to his car. "Cosmic concepts? Broken life lines? I thought she'd at least try to sell us something if she's going to go all voodoo mumbo jumbo."
“Yeah…” Tommy shifted something from under his (borrowed) hoodie and held it out to the other teen. “Think this might be useful though?”
Billy's eyes widened. "Is that . . . did you?" He took the small book from Tommy, gasped and nearly dropped it, then ran the rest of the way back to his car and practically dove inside. Tommy, of course, was already comfortably sitting and buckled before Billy even opened his door. "Did you steal this?!"
The speedster snickered a little. “Duh. She obviously knew something and wasn’t going to tell us.” The strange symbols that entangled the cover of the small tome seemed to give off an icy glint. If anything had answers it would be that. “If it makes you feel better I left a twenty on the floor.”
One of Billy’s twenties, but still.
The shopkeep waited several minutes after the boys departed to flip the store's sign to Closed and lock the door. When she was sure she was alone, she picked up the receiver of the antique rotary phone. She did not need to dial before a voice on the other end greeted her. "Yes, they were here," she said emotionlessly, holding out her free hand to check her nails. "It won't be long until you're called, I'm sure. Yes. Yes. You're welcome." The other line disconnected and she hung up. Then, after another brief wait, she picked it up again and dialed. This time, she was smirking as she spoke.
"Wanda, have I got news for you . . ."
Billy pulled into the Eastview Public Library parking lot in his Subaru Legacy that was nearly as old as he was. It sputtered when he shifted to park, but as usual, Billy ignored it. Despite its age, it had survived the whole year since Billy bought it, and he was convinced it had years left. (Convinced himself for his own peace of mind, maybe, but confident nonetheless.)
"There's a weirdly big occult section for a public library," Billy pondered, leading Tommy inside. "So maybe there's something about the symbol here."
The white haired boy pulled his borrowed hat more firmly over his head- their attempt at a disguise. Tommy glanced at the blinking security cameras warily. Hanging out at the Kaplans’ home was one thing, but being out in public like this made him feel uneasy. “Sure dude. Let’s just try and get this done quickly.”
Not that Billy knew the Dewey Decimal System by heart, but he did know witchcraft and demonology were at 133.4, so that's where he and Tommy headed straight towards. "I guess start at the first book and go until we find something useful?" He groaned. This collection ran over two bookshelves, they'd be here all day.
“Ummm, sure. You start on that shelf and I’ll tackle this one?” Tommy flexed his fingers and cracked his knuckles, dreading the arduous task ahead.
Billy nodded and stood on his tippy toes to reach the first book on the top shelf. A Witches' Bible. Seemed as good a place to start as any. After glancing around to make sure they were not being watched, Billy started flipping through the volume, scanning every page as closely as possible for any hint of the symbol that had shown up in the magic 8-ball. It was bound to be here somewhere. It had to be.
A breeze could be felt coming from Tommy’s general direction as he began skimming through books faster than he should’ve been able to. Within a minute, he was already done with a quarter of his shelf and held a book in one hand, shaking it as if the sigil might magically fall out.
"What are you doing?" Billy hissed. "Someone could see you!" Nevermind Tommy's trick was the only way they could accomplish this task before Thanksgiving. All Billy could see was a patron or librarian catching them and calling the cops, and then not only would Tommy go back to prison with a longer sentence after escaping but Billy would be locked up, too, maybe also his parents for harboring a fugitive even though Billy forced them, they didn't know what they were doing, and Billy would be hooked up to the same machines and devices that Tommy was, and neither of them would ever be seen again, not after mad scientists discovered what the pair of them could do, and they wouldn't be any closer to understanding what was happening to them and the nightmares would persist until eventually the monsters from their dreams became real and finally caught them.
Tommy slowed down for a second to whisper back “I’m getting this done! You stay on the lookout if it’s a problem, dork.” He didn’t have much time. They would find him any day now, and he didn’t want to waste his moments of freedom reading a bunch of boring books. “I can finish all of them in ten. Try a magic thingy to distract people or something.”
Billy glared at Tommy for a moment. If he had laser eye powers instead of whatever he could do, Tommy would be melted into a puddle of slag now. "You're going to get us in so much trouble," he admonished but followed the other boy's instructions, anyway, putting the book away and heading to the end of the aisle to keep an eye out for passersby. Thoughts of them both getting handcuffed and roughly thrown into the back of a police cruiser continued to haunt his imagination, though.
With Billy gone he was able to go much faster, still being careful not to tear any pages. Any books that seemed relatively helpful got chucked in a pile on the floor. There thankfully didn’t seem to be a camera pointed at this aisle directly.
But there was still staff wandering about, doing whatever they do when they're not shelving books or kicking patrons off the reserved computers for publicly looking up porn. Billy had to stop anyone from approaching them. "Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh, hi Ms. Florenstein!" he called maybe too loudly, stepping out from the stacks to distract the approaching librarian. He quickly glanced at Tommy and motioned at him to hurry up. "How're you? How's, um, how's Johnny? Janie? No, wait, Joel! That's right."
Tommy rolled his eyes. Of course this dork knew the librarians by name. He managed to finish the section and tried his best to look nondescript with the pile of books in his hand as Billy’s voice drew closer.
He did it all without blowing up the place either. Improvement!
All the while, Billy gabbed on with the librarian. She asked how he had enjoyed the books about dream analysis he had borrowed recently. He lied and said they were good even though he had ignored the psychological ones in favor of the mystical ones he'd slid into the pile "as a joke." She had found a couple more recommendations and offered to show him. He knew that topic was maintained under 154.63. In the next aisle over. Ms. Florenstein would pass by Tommy's supersped-up investigation. They'd be caught, Tommy would go back to prison, Billy would probably get expelled and outed all over again . . .
The squeezing sensation in his chest that never went away—just sometimes relaxed its grip—tightened, sending a signal to his gut to prepare to empty. The last thing Billy needed was to puke in the middle of the library. Which is probably why it happened; why should William Kaplan get what he wants when he can make a total fool of himself instead?
His white-haired conspirator slipped out of the aisle, about ten books balancing in his grip, and gave Billy a look. "Hey cuz, you alright?" Tommy ignored the look from the librarian as he shifted his tomes to one hand to lightly pat Billy's shoulder with the other, playing up the family angle. He figured they might as well be related out here as well if it would serve as a better cover.
Billy turned his miserable green countenance to his "cousin"-slash-accomplice until another dry heave interrupted him and he turned back to face the librarian who was already calling over the custodian. "I'm so so sorry, Ms. Florenstein," he said. "Let me he . . ." But she waved him off before he could finish his offer and begged the two to check out their stack and leave. At least the library had been renovated to laminate flooring instead of the old carpet so Billy's shame would not be a permanent stain here, so to speak. Still, the Kaplans would probably have to move towns again after this.
"Don't say anything," Billy ordered as he slumped into the driver's seat of his car. Thankfully there was a box of mints in the glove box.
Tommy sighed. “Dude, you’re not very good at this ‘not drawing attention to ourselves’ thing.” What was that all about? He had kinda reminded him of a shaky little chihuahua — all nerves. “It’s fine. These seemed like they might be helpful. We can look over them back at your house.”
Billy didn't say anything, he just kept his attention on the road and pulled out of the parking lot. Just his luck, though, that Anxiety by Doechii came on the playlist a minute later.
~*~
Later, they are rebuffed by a local fortuneteller, but slip away with something potentially useful, anyway.
None of the books from the library had proven useful, which sucked because Tommy had spent all of five minutes sorting them out. Still, some of them had similar symbols to the one that kept popping up, so they had to be on the right track.
Tommy drummed his fingers on the center console absently as they pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall. The store in front of the car read Mystic Treasures in faded, swirling font. He looked over at Billy dubiously, “I thought these places were all scams?”
"They can't all be scams, though, right?" The Google and Yelp reviews for this place (all five of them) praised the proprietor for her insight and aptitude, so it was as good an option as any. "If anyone's going to know the truth behind spooky stuff, it's got to be a fortune teller."
Mystic Treasures wasn't beating the scam allegations, though. The pair was hit with a waft of patchouli and other incense when they entered the cramped, dimly lit store. Bookcases lined one wall, filled with a mixture of leather-bound tomes and cheaply made paperbacks with Comics Sans lettering on the spine, probably self-published slop that could only be sold by unscrupulous merchants looking for an easy mark.
A middle-aged woman draped in velvet and lace appeared from a beaded curtain behind the counter. She eyed the two boys suspiciously, obviously used to selling to people of a similar demographic to herself. “Hello, what can I help you two with today? A reading perhaps? Or are you looking for something in particular?”
The variety of shiny rocks on one shelf caught Tommy’s attention for a moment, before he came back to the mission at hand. “Um, we were wondering if you knew about a thing. Show her the picture of it, Billy.”
Subtlety really was out the window now, huh? Resigned to the more direct approach, Billy reached into his back pocket to pull out the crumbled note page on which he had sketched the symbol. "Have you ever seen this before? We're, uh, curious about what it means. We think maybe it's a tarot thingie?" Tarot thingie, great.
The energy in the room immediately shifted as the woman took in the sigil, a sudden chill filling the air. “Where did you get this?”
Oh no. Billy's stomach lurched that same moment. Was he going to have a repeat of the library? Keep it together, stupid! She clearly knew something based on her reaction, and he was not going to be the one to blow it. So he inhaled deeply through his nose, held it, then breathed out through his mouth before answering as nonchalantly as he could.
"We saw it in my magic 8-ball. Maybe it's just a joke from the manufacturer, but we're curious, you know? Right, Tommy?"
“Er, yeah. Totally.” Since his investigative partner didn’t mention the dreams, he wasn’t going to. This wasn’t his shit anyways. All Tommy knew about the arcane arts came from his brief skimming in the library.
The woman looked between the two boys and the sigil. Billy figured she was debating what to tell them, which meant she knew something, which meant that after the library and their flailing online, they were finally on the right track. He leaned in to play up the shayna punim his bubbie always gave him a dollar for.
But from her perspective, he wore the expression of a sick cat. She slid the paper across the counter back to him. "Abstract forces," she said, facing away from the two so she could tidy up the already spotless shelf behind her. "Eternity and Infinity, Chaos and Order, the Powers That Be and the Natural Order of Things. Twinned personifications of cosmic concepts, they maintain the balance of reality. And unreality. And non-reality." She stopped her fretting, running a finger down the spine of one of the books on the shelf, then shook her head and turned back.
"Fictions by the likes of men like Burroughs and Lovecraft. I'm afraid your little toy is just having a bit of fun with you."
“But-“ Tommy started, then stopped, then started again. “Are you sure? What if we’ve been seeing it in other places as well?” It was blurted out without thought to Billy’s previous restraint against doing so.
The proprietor seemed unbothered by the follow-up, as opposed to Billy, who was sure they could hear his heart beating like a jackhammer in his chest. But he had to know the answer, and perhaps as importantly, also know why her gaze flicked back to that book again before firmly resting on Billy, as if forcing herself to to focus on him.
"Give me your hand." She reached over the counter and took hold of Billy's wrist before he could resist, gently but firmly turning his hand so it was palm up. She leaned over and traced a finger desperately in need of a manicure down the heart and life lines. "You have a long journey ahead of you. It will be one of great transformation. You . . ." She stopped abruptly and then looked up at Tommy. "Come. Now."
He handed over his palm without protest, not really sure what to make of it.
She studied his hand with the same intensity as she did Billy's. "Your life line is broken in two. Both of you." She dropped Tommy's hand as if it were caustic and backed up.
"W-what does that mean?" Billy examined his own palms, trying to detect whatever she did, but all he saw were hands. (Ones that, given how badly his black nail polish was chipping, were in desperate need of a manicure themselves.)
"It means you need to stop playing around and leave here."
Tommy rolled his eyes. Hard. Obviously this lady was just trying to freak them out.
He was going to protest but she had already turned her back to light something behind the counter. The smell of smoke wafted through the air as the two boys scampered out the door.
"That was so weird." Billy was still pondering his hands as they returned to his car. "Cosmic concepts? Broken life lines? I thought she'd at least try to sell us something if she's going to go all voodoo mumbo jumbo."
“Yeah…” Tommy shifted something from under his (borrowed) hoodie and held it out to the other teen. “Think this might be useful though?”
Billy's eyes widened. "Is that . . . did you?" He took the small book from Tommy, gasped and nearly dropped it, then ran the rest of the way back to his car and practically dove inside. Tommy, of course, was already comfortably sitting and buckled before Billy even opened his door. "Did you steal this?!"
The speedster snickered a little. “Duh. She obviously knew something and wasn’t going to tell us.” The strange symbols that entangled the cover of the small tome seemed to give off an icy glint. If anything had answers it would be that. “If it makes you feel better I left a twenty on the floor.”
One of Billy’s twenties, but still.
The shopkeep waited several minutes after the boys departed to flip the store's sign to Closed and lock the door. When she was sure she was alone, she picked up the receiver of the antique rotary phone. She did not need to dial before a voice on the other end greeted her. "Yes, they were here," she said emotionlessly, holding out her free hand to check her nails. "It won't be long until you're called, I'm sure. Yes. Yes. You're welcome." The other line disconnected and she hung up. Then, after another brief wait, she picked it up again and dialed. This time, she was smirking as she spoke.
"Wanda, have I got news for you . . ."
