The Call of the Mild

by William Rabkin

  “Maybe she should have been watching her kids a little more closely instead of worrying about her necklace,” Gus said.

  “I think she was watching the kids,” Shawn said. “In fact, I think that’s how she lost the necklace. There’s a scratch on her neck that looks like it was made by a chain—that’s how I figured out she had lost the necklace. I’d guess she saw one of her students playing in poison oak, she rushed over to pull him out, and her necklace chain caught on a tree branch and snapped off. Now all we have to do is locate that patch of poison oak, find the nearby tree, and the necklace will be waiting for us there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s an inanimate object, so there’s very little chance it will get tired of waiting for us and head out on its own.”

  “No,” Gus said. “Why are we doing this? She’s a nasty bat, the case is a dog, and there are a million other things I’d rather spend my afternoon on. So why are we driving to La Canada?”

  “Because Lassie sent her over to us.”

  “Yeah, to get rid of her and piss us off.”

  “Exactly,” Shawn said. “And it’s really going to annoy him if we not only take her case and solve it in hours, but also get paid for doing it.”

  Gus had to admit there was a certain logic to Shawn’s reasoning. And he’d been curious about the new burger place in La Canada, too. Besides, the sun was out and the sky was bright blue; it was a great day for a long drive.

  Apparently he wasn’t the only one who thought that way. Because as Gus eased the Echo out of its parking spot in front of the Psych office, a black Town Car three spaces down started up—and stayed exactly three car lengths behind Gus and Shawn all the way into La Canada.

  Chapter Five

  Shawn’s plan was flawless—at least in the confines of the Psych office. Because from their perspective in that cozy bungalow on the beach, there was only one stand of poison oak in the entire hundred and fifty acres of Descanso Gardens, and it was surrounded by chain-link and crime scene tape. But this was July in the San Gabriel Valley, and the noxious weed was spreading faster than the army of professional gardeners could stamp it out. Shawn and Gus were going to have to check every tree near every stand of the stuff—and hope that Shawn’s analysis had been correct.

  They split up so they could cover more ground, and all had been going fairly well until Gus started searching the nature trail. That winding path took him out of the tree cover and up a steep hillside into the region’s natural chaparral. By the time Gus realized how hard the sun was beating down on him, he was already becoming dizzy and disoriented. And for some reason, the idiot who designed that part of the gardens decided that drinking fountains were not to be considered part of nature. As the blasting sun, untempered by the lovely ocean breezes he would have been enjoying back in Santa Barbara, leached the moisture from his body, his heat-exhausted brain brought him back into his standard nightmare.

  Now, with the giant camellias providing blessed relief from the blazing sun, Gus could feel the last wisps of fever dream retreating from his mind. That left only his irritation.

  “Would it make you feel any better if I told you the snack bar also sells root beer slushies?” Shawn said with what was as close to an expression of concern as he would get unless his friend had been run over by the train.

  “What would make me feel better is finding that stupid necklace and getting out of this hellhole,” Gus said.

  “Heckhole,” Shawn said, gesturing at the many small children running on the paths around them. “And it just so happens I’m the magic wish fairy today.”

  Shawn held out the hand that wasn’t clutching the sticky plastic pink popcorn wrapper. Lying across his palm was a heart-shaped gold locket about an inch across. A broken gold chain dangled off the end. He pressed a latch by the locket’s left ventricle and the front popped open. Inside were facing photographs of an unbelievably homely middle-aged man and a slightly younger, if even homelier, woman. The photographs were badly trimmed to fit inside the uneven space, revealing a shiny green surface behind them.

  “So you can see where she gets her fine looks from,” Shawn said.

  “At least it’s done,” Gus said. “Was it where you thought it would be?”

  “First place I looked,” Shawn said. “It was at the lost and found.”

  Gus stared at him. “You went straight to the lost and found desk?”

  “Of course,” Shawn said. “Why search if there’s a chance someone else has already found it?”

  “You let me hunt for hours in the blazing sun.”

  “I couldn’t be sure.”

  “But you were sure,” Gus said. “After you got it back. And you still let me stay out there.”

  “It was for your own good,” Shawn said. “Immersion therapy. To help you get over your irrational fear of being lost in the wilderness. This stupid dream is crippling you. And believe me, I know how bad a recurring dream can be.”

  “If you did, you wouldn’t have done this to me,” Gus said.

  “It’s not like I’ve been taking it easy,” Shawn said. “I had my own version of immersion therapy.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. I had to get over my irrational fear of ice-cream sandwiches,” Shawn said. “It took a lot of tries, but I think I’m almost there. Want to help me finish it off?”

  Gus tried to stay angry, but the thought of ice cream pushed everything out else out of his brain. And after they’d emptied the snack bar’s freezer chest, he felt so happily sated that he couldn’t bring himself to darken the mood with even well-deserved negativity.

  Shawn, apparently, didn’t have the same problem. Gus looked up over his last bite of ice-creamy goodness and was about to propose they move on to the burger stand when he noticed Shawn staring off into the distance, looking troubled.

  “Is something wrong?” Gus said.

  “Is something wrong?” Shawn repeated. “Oh, yes, my friend, there’s something wrong. Something very, very wrong.”

  “Oh, yes, my friend?” Gus said. “You mean it’s something so bad you’re required to talk like a character in one of those Raiders of the Lost Ark rip-offs Tom Selleck used to star in?”

  “It’s worse. It’s the return of an evil so malevolent, so hideous, the entire civilized world cheered when it was finally vanquished from the earth at the end of the eighties.”

  “The Soviet Union has reestablished itself in a public garden?”

  “Even worse than that,” Shawn said. “Look.”

  With a mounting sense of dread, Gus turned slowly to see what Shawn was talking about.

  Shawn was right. As horrifying as the Beast prowling through Gus’ heat-induced hallucination had been, this was worse. Its face was waxen white, its lips bloodred, its eyes ringed with thick black. Gus’ first instinct was to run screaming out of the snack bar area; his second was for a frontal attack. Before he could decide between fight and flight, though, he noticed that the creature was slamming its blue-and-white-striped appendages uselessly against some kind of invisible barrier.

  “It’s trapped in the box,” Gus said.

  “For the moment,” Shawn agreed. “But that’s not going to last long. Before we can do anything, it will be out of the box and then it will start walking into the wind. And after that, well, you know what happens.”

  Gus did. Once the wind stopped blowing, the demon would turn its bereted head on the innocent people in the garden and start to imitate them. But this wouldn’t be just any imitation. It would be vicious caricature, emphasizing the least attractive aspects of its victims. Or, far more likely, emphasizing whatever set of moves it had been taught in mime class that week.

  “Should we alert security?” Gus whispered.

  “It’s apparently neutralized the guards.” Shawn pointed down at the second beret lying at the mime’s feet. It was dotted with coins, mostly pennies, but also the occasional nickel or dime, along with a single quarter. One lone dollar bill was tu
cked into the brim, obviously placed there by the mime itself to plant the idea of donating paper money in the minds of its viewers. “To haul in that much cash, it must have been here for hours.”

  “Without us noticing it?”

  “It’s very quiet,” Shawn said. “Which is what we should be. Let’s put our trash in the wastebasket and walk out of here.”

  “But if we leave first, he’ll target us for sure.”

  “Just look straight ahead and keep walking,” Shawn said. “Whatever happens, keep walking.”

  Gus didn’t need Shawn to tell him that. He still remembered that terrible day on the Santa Barbara Pier fifteen years ago when he had been targeted for mockery by a particularly cruel mime. By the time he escaped into the crowd, Gus had witnessed such a vicious deconstruction of his walk that he was paralyzed by self-consciousness and unable to get out of bed for a week.

  Balling up their trash and tossing it in a receptacle, Shawn and Gus walked slowly but determinedly away from the snack bar, past the bathrooms, and towards the exit. As they rounded the ticket booth, Gus noticed that Shawn wasn’t next to him anymore.

  “He’s gone,” Shawn said.

  Gus stopped walking, but refused to turn his head to see Shawn behind him.. “You looked back?”

  “No,” Shawn said. “Not really. More of a glance. A glimpse, maybe.”

  “That’s what they all say, right before they turn into a pillar of salt.”

  “Better than being a pillar of Jell-O,” Shawn said.

  “Yeah?” Gus said. “Wait until it rains and see which pillar lasts longer.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” Shawn said. “There’s more to life than how long you can stand out in the rain without melting.”

  “If there is, I haven’t come across it,” Gus said, still refusing to cast a backwards glance. “Can we go now?”

  Apparently not. Shawn hadn’t moved. He was staring back towards the snack bar, looking for the vanished mime. “There was something wrong with that mime,” Shawn said.

  “By definition,” Gus said.

  “No, something else,” Shawn said, still looking back where they’d last seen the mime. “Something I noticed but didn’t register until after we left.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Then Gus spoke quietly. “You mean like he had a gun pointed at my head?”

  “I think I would have noticed that a little quicker,” Shawn said. “No, it was—”

  “Shawn!”

  “Yes?”

  “The mime has a gun pointed at my head.”

  Shawn turned back to his partner. The mime stood in front of Gus, his white-gloved hand leveling a gleaming pistol at Gus’ forehead.

  “Please,” the mime said. “Don’t make me kill you.”

  Chapter Six

  There was another long, silent moment.

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to talk,” Shawn finally said.

  “Put your hands up,” the mime said through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”

  “Absolutely.” Shawn’s arms shot up in the air. Gus’ followed quickly.

  “Now turn around and walk towards the bathrooms.”

  Shawn and Gus turned around, their hands high in the air. Shawn waved his back and forth, trying to attract some attention.

  “You’re never going to get away with this,” Gus said. “There are dozens of witnesses.”

  “And they’re all staring right at us,” Shawn said, waving his hands wildly. With each wave, another few people turned towards them.

  Gus and Shawn exchanged a look; then Gus shouted to the throng of parents, kids, and gardeners who were staring at them from the snack bar area. “Help! He’s got a gun!”

  Gus didn’t know what to expect. Best-case scenario would be a squad of beefy, well-armed security experts descending on them. Second best might be dozens of cell phones dialing 911 at the same instant. He would have settled for one irate mom with a canister of pepper spray on her keychain.

  What he didn’t expect was what happened. The crowd was still for a moment. Then they burst into laughter.

  “Don’t laugh,” Gus commanded them. “This is serious. He could kill us!”

  But the crowd only laughed harder.

  “Has this whole town gone crazy?” Gus asked Shawn.

  “Look behind you,” Shawn said.

  Gus risked a glance over his shoulder. The mime had hidden his gun under his shirt. To the crowd of onlookers, it might well have been his finger. His painted face was alternating between a mask of furious anger and an impressively accurate impersonation of Gus’ fear.

  “I so do not look like that,” Gus said.

  “Really?” Shawn said. “This man is holding us at gunpoint, and you’re worried that his imitation of you is too mean?”

  The killer mime said something urgent and harsh. It sounded like “ash oon.” Shawn and Gus turned back to look at him and saw that as he said the syllables again, his ruby lips were locked into an evil scowl. Because of course he couldn’t let his audience see him speaking.

  “Ash oon?” Shawn said. “I’m afraid we don’t know what that is.”

  There was a click from under the mime’s shirt. He had cocked the pistol.

  “But if you wanted us to step into the bathroom, we could do that,” Shawn said.

  As the crowd cheered them on, Shawn and Gus marched towards the public restrooms, a low, wide building faced with river rock and brown-painted wood.

  “Inside,” the mime hissed. Shawn pushed the door open and led Gus in. The mime followed them inside and slid a latch locked behind them, as the faint sounds of applause came through the walls.

  The bathroom was surprisingly clean for a public facility in midsummer. The linoleum floor was shiny and dry; the three stalls’ white paint was fresh and unmarked by graffiti. All the discarded paper towels had somehow made it into the receptacles. And the room deodorizer was a mild clove scent.

  Still, there were many other places Gus would have preferred to be. And none of them contained gun-toting mimes.

  “Take off your clothes and throw them on the ground,” the mime said.

  Shawn winced. “My mother always told me not to take off my clothes for strange men in a public restroom.”

  “Then I’ll shoot you,” the mime said. “If I have to kill you to protect Rushmore, I will.”

  “I know some people really love that movie,” Shawn said,

  “but this seems a little over the top. And can you really tell me that Olivia Williams would have ever forgiven that idiot kid after he almost killed Bill Murray?”

  “Stop it!” the mime shouted. “Get undressed now!”

  “I don’t see a back door in this building,” Gus said. “Once you pull that trigger, everyone outside will know you’re not an adorable mime.”

  “If such a thing exists,” Shawn said.

  “How long do you think that latch will hold out once the police bring the battering ram?” Gus said.

  “I’ve got six bullets in my gun,” the mime said. “Two for you, three for him, and one left over for myself. The latch will hold out long enough for that.”

  “How come I get three and he only gets two?” Shawn said.

  “Take off your clothes,” the mime said. “I won’t tell you again.”

  “What do we do?” Gus whispered to Shawn.

  Shawn stared at the mime. Then he lowered his gaze and pulled off his T-shirt.

  “You, too,” the mime snapped at Gus.

  It took Gus a lot longer to get down to his boxers than it did Shawn, who had apparently dressed with exactly this scenario in mind. Even his shoes were slip-ons, which he slipped off in less than a second. Everything Gus was wearing seemed to have more buttons than he remembered, and his fingers slipped and fumbled with every one. Somehow the laces on his standard brown dress shoes had been tied into triple knots, and it took what felt like hours for him to undo them. After a few more hours, Gu
s stood next to Shawn, dressed only in his boxer shorts, his bare feet adhering to the linoleum.

  “I didn’t say get ready to go swimming,” the mime said.

  “All your clothes.”

  Gus wanted to sneak a look at Shawn to see what he was going to do. But he didn’t dare. He was afraid he’d find courage in his friend’s eyes, and then he’d refuse to do what the mime was demanding, and then they’d both be dead. He bent down and quickly stripped off his shorts, covering himself with both hands as he straightened up.

  “Now kick them over here,” the mime commanded, and Gus did. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a blur of movement that must have been Shawn also following the order. The mime scooped up all the clothes with his free arm, then gestured with the gun. “Into the stall.”

  “Could we go into separate stalls?” Shawn said. “Because they’re really only meant for one person, and I don’t think we should be doing a lot of touching in our present condition.”

  The mime didn’t answer. He lowered the gun to where Shawn had strategically placed his hands.

  “You know, one stall sounds fine,” Shawn said. “It’ll be much warmer that way.”

  Shawn and Gus scurried into the middle stall and slammed the door shut behind them. Gus turned the latch firmly, locking them in.

  “Oh, yeah, that will do a lot of good,” Shawn said. “No one’s ever gotten through one of these before.”

  “You want me to leave it open?”

  Shawn didn’t. Each stood pressed against a stall wall, trying to pretend the cold metal wasn’t lowering their body temperatures with every passing second.

  “Are you almost done with our clothes out there?” Shawn finally called out.

  There was no answer.

  “Maybe you could finish up with our underwear first?” Shawn suggested hopefully.

  Still no answer came.

  “What do you think he’s doing out there?” Gus whispered.

  Shawn pressed his eye to the crack at the edge of the door and tried to peer out.

  “One of two things,” Shawn said. “Either he’s taken our clothes and woven them into a cloak of invisibility, or he’s gone.”