The Link

by Richard Matheson

  “I have come to the conclusion, after all my reading,” Teddie says, “that Sanai of Afghanistan reduced everything to its appropriate level when he wrote ‘Humanity is asleep, concerned only with what is useless, living in a wrong world’.”

  He sits, lights a cigar. “All right, what is it you want?” he asks.

  Robert is taken back, then realizes that there is no point in denying that he had a reason for inviting Teddie to lunch.

  Can Teddie “do his thing” and travel to the house in Brooklyn? The address at any rate; for all he knows the house may have been demolished years before to make way for an apartment house, an office building, a bowling alley.

  “You were right about me living in two houses at the same time,” he tells the older man. “Mentally, I seem to be.”

  Teddie closes his eyes and, in a short while, “travels” to Brooklyn.

  “It’s still there,” he says. “No one’s living in it but it’s there.”

  Robert swallows dryly.

  “I’ll go up on the porch,” says Teddie. “I’m looking in the window. Can’t see much. White curtains in the way. At least they were white once upon a time.”

  Robert shivers, a QUICK SHOT of the rain on the window, the white curtain, crossing his mind.

  “You want me to go in?” asks Teddie.

  Robert draws in shaking breath. “Yes, please,” he murmurs.

  “All right.” Teddie blows out smoke, his eyes still shut. “I’m in the living room. Still furnished. Old stuff. Archway to the dining room, a doorway to the kitchen. Very gloomy here. Can’t say I like it. Is it haunted?”

  Robert shivers again, answers mutedly, “I don’t know.”

  “Nothing in the dining room. Smells old. Look at that stove, it’s an antique. I see the backyard through the window. Barely, the glass is so dirty. Very barren out there.”

  “All right, let’s go upstairs.”

  Silence. Robert stares at him, his heartbeat thudding. Seconds tick by.

  “Oh,” says Teddie suddenly. He opens his eyes and looks at Robert.

  “Something up there,” he says. He whistles softly. “Waiting; waiting.

  “I’d stay away from there if I were you.”

  When Robert returns to ESPA, Stafford is completing a speech. Robert takes a seat and tries to pay attention but what Teddie has told him preys on his mind.

  “—would involve, of course, an energy of some sort transmitted from the so-called healer to the patient, said energy perhaps taking the form of an electromagnetic wave emitted by the so-called healer in some manner as yet unknown, a wave which could be a very long radio wave, a much shorter radio or television wave or one with a wavelength of mere centimeters, similar to a microwave radiation.”

  Hearing only fragments of Stafford’s address, Robert’s attention is drawn to a woman sitting next to Peter in the front row. She looks familiar.

  He tries to see who she is as Stafford bumbles on about scientific groups presenting evidence that non-thermal effects do arise when low-level microwaves are directed at living systems.

  He can’t see who the woman is. Or he suspects who she is and hopes to God he’s wrong.

  “Alternatively,” Stafford finishes, “the so-called healer might modify an imbalance of electrical potential between various parts of the body, an action for which there is some minor evidence but, of course, a total absence of detailed mechanism.”

  Peter rises as Stafford sits to a polite smattering of applause.

  “Our next speaker is a psychic healer who functions under the aegis of a Spiritualist church,” he begins.

  Robert doesn’t hear the rest, realizing that it’s Ruth. “Oh, no,” he murmurs.

  Peter sees him and sits beside him as Ruth moves onto the speaker’s platform. “Surprised?” he whispers.

  “You might say that,” Robert replies.

  Seeing his expression, Peter asks him what’s wrong. Robert tells him that Ruth is his sister, much to Peter’s startlement. He’d picked her because of her last name, that was the surprise. He never dreamed that she might be related to Robert, much less his sister.

  “I apologize if this is awkward for you in any way,” he says.

  While they are whispering, Ruth is reciting, to the gathering, a prayer she uses for spiritual healing.

  She does not get to the end of it before Westheimer complains.

  “I assumed this seminar to be grounded in science,” he says wearily.

  “We’re trying to examine the subject from all points of view,” Peter reminds him.

  “Yes, of course,” mutters Westheimer, loud enough for all to hear.

  Ruth sees Robert and reacts with a faint smile and gesture, Westheimer turning to see whom she is greeting. Robert’s flat expression gives nothing away.

  Ruth then begins describing auras as she sees them.

  “The physical aura is located next to the body, of course,” she says.

  “Of course,” says Westheimer. Robert glares at him.

  We see an illustration of Ruth’s following words.

  “Next to it is the mental aura which represents all thinking in the individual.

  “On the outside is the spiritual aura.

  “If you have seen the prisms of a chandelier penetrated by light rays,” she goes on, “you know the colors which exist in the aura. These colors are always changing in a variety of subtle ways.

  “Anger, for instance, can cause a tremendous blood-colored radiation to suffuse the aura. Distress can cause what might be called a wobbling of the aura, especially over the head. Depression can cause a grayness to pervade the aura.

  “Generally speaking, blue means trust, calm, peace. Green means humanitarianism. Brown is earthy. Black ranges from sophistication to self-destruction and murder.”

  Westheimer shifts noisily on his chair.

  “If we recall,” Ruth continues, “Jesus, on occasion, only gestured at the ailing, indicating that it was enough for his aura to make connection with them. And, when a woman with an issue of blood touched the hem of his robe, he said that he perceived that virtue ‘had gone out of him’ indicating—”

  “Must we listen to this?” asks Westheimer, twisting around to look at Peter.

  “No, you can leave,” snaps Robert. “No one’s tied you to your chair.”

  Westheimer regards him icily.

  “Would you come up here, Robert?” Ruth asks pleasantly.

  The trace of a smirk plays at the corners of Westheimer’s lips as Robert goes up to the platform. When she introduces Robert as her brother, the smirk manifests fully and Westheimer leans back on his chair, arms crossed, regarding Robert with amusement.

  “Perhaps it might be of interest for me to tell you what I see in my brother’s aural envelope,” Ruth says.

  “It might indeed,” mocks Westheimer.

  Robert stands in silent anger as Ruth “reads” his aura.

  He does not register her comment that she sees some zigzag lines in his right groin. “Better keep an eye on that,” she tells him.

  “What is particularly interesting,” Ruth observes, “is the strong psychic coloring I see in my brother’s aura. He has an enormous gift which, up until now, he has denied.”

  “Pity,” Westheimer says.

  Robert drives Ruth home, trying to be polite but unable to disguise his tension.

  “You’ll feel better when you accept your gift, Robert,” she tells him. “It is from God and not be taken lightly.”

  When he gets home, it is to find Bart lying by the mailbox, waiting for him. The dog is clearly in pain, making noises of distress.

  That night, when Robert wakes up, the Lab is lying by his bed, breathing laboredly and whimpering in his sleep. Robert looks down at him in concern.

  The next day he takes Bart to Amelia. He’s obviously in pain, she says. “I can give you stronger pills; they’d help a while but—”

  He takes Bart home, not knowing what to do. Agonized to see
the dog suffering but hating the alternative to keeping him home.

  He sees the woman’s name and address on the seminar participants’ sheet.

  Stares at it.

  Later. Bart seems worse despite the new sedation. Robert hesitates, paces, talking to himself.

  Finally, he gets Bart into the car and drives toward where the woman lives. He tells himself he is an idiot for doing this but what else is there now? He finds the small tract neighborhood in Queens and stops the car in front of the house. Sits looking at the house. Starts the motor. Turns it off. Starts it again and drives away. This is stupidity,” he berates himself.

  Bart is lying on the front seat beside him. Robert caresses his head.

  After driving several blocks, he groans and pulls the car over, stops, the motor idling. “Bartie, what should I do?” he asks.

  Bart’s tail thumps once, weakly.

  “Oh, God,” Robert swallows. Then, deciding, he makes a fast U-turn and returns to the woman’s house.

  She isn’t home.

  “Perfect,” Robert says. He hisses angrily. “Idiot,” he says. “Why didn’t you phone her first?”

  He goes back to the car and gets in. Sits indecisively, stroking Bart’s head.

  An hour later, Brenda Turner comes home. Robert is still there and accosts her. She tells him she’s a little tired. He explains: the long drive, sitting here for an hour, his dog in pain. Clearly, he hates to have to say these things to a stranger by any possibility of helping Bart is more important now than his feelings.

  The woman accedes and Robert brings Bart into her living room. Even in pain, Bart is polite and friendly. “Nice dog,” Brenda says.

  “Yes,” murmurs Robert.

  She sits on the floor beside Bart. Strokes his head. Looks into his eyes. Robert sits immobile on the sofa, staring at her.

  After a while, the woman looks at him.

  “He’s in terrible pain,” she says. “Very bad. I see inoperable cancer near the lungs.”

  Robert’s breath shudders. “Inoperable,” he mumbles.

  “He wants to have the pain end,” Brenda says. “I told him that was possible only one way, that he wouldn’t be alive any more.”

  Robert stares at her dazedly.

  “He told me that he’s willing for that to happen if you’ll hold him when it’s done.”

  It is as though Robert has been struck. His breath staggers. He stares at her in stricken silence.

  He spends an agonizing evening with Bart, trying, in vain, to comfort him. A double doze of the new sedation barely helps. He holds the Lab in his arms, stroking him endlessly, speaking endless, soothing words.

  It is after midnight when he calls Amelia. He is sorry to be calling so late. Is there any kind of stronger medication?

  Hearing the sound of his voice, she says, “Why don’t you bring him over, Robert?”

  He has to carry Bart to the car. The Lab is breathing poorly, whimpering with pain.

  “I thing this is the right thing, Robert,” Amelia tells him when he arrives minutes later.

  When he tells her that he wants to hold Bart when she injects him, she is taken back. “You’re sure you want to do that, Robert?” she asks.

  He says he must. Reluctantly, she takes them into one of the treatment rooms and prepares the injection as Robert sits on the floor, holding Bart in his arms. Speaking to him softly, stroking him.

  Saying goodbye to a beloved friend.

  “I want you to know, pal, it’s been wonderful to have you with me all these years. You’ve been the best dog anyone could ever want. A good companion. Just a perfect friend. My pal. My Bart. I’m going to say goodbye to you now. If there is another life ahead, you wait for me, hear? Just… be waiting for me and we’ll take a nice, long run together. You and me, Bart. Just you and me. Okay? You’ll wait for me, pal?”

  He speaks a little longer, then nods to Amelia.

  “I love you, Bart. I won’t forget,” he whispers.

  It is over in seconds.

  Robert sits holding the motionless dog, his eyes dry.

  Unable to release the pain.

  He is at the ESPA seminar again, a bomb waiting to explode. Bart’s death has rebounded on him. He is furious at himself for believing what the woman told him, for having the Lab put to sleep.

  By poor chance, Stafford has the platform, showing slides of an experiment.

  “We attempted to discover if, in fact, there are any abnormally high electromagnetic fields of very long wave-lengths—or any abnormal radio-wave or microwave emission—near a so-called healer’s body during the course of a so-called healing session.”

  “So-called,” mutters Robert.

  “Accordingly, the so-called healer was wired up with various electrodes on his hands and, during the course of the so-called healing various movable aerials were brought up to the so-called healer’s body and recordings taken of electromagnetic emissions at various wavelengths. At no time was an electromagnetic signal observed beyond the normal levels to be expected. Thus we concluded that electromagnetism was not involved in psychic healing.”

  “So-called psychic healing,” Robert corrects aloud.

  Westheimer turns. “Is our Spiritualist healer’s brother trying to tell us something?” he asks.

  “Guilt by association, Westheimer?” Robert responds. “Senator McCarthy would have loved you.”

  “Gentlemen,” says Peter.

  “Are you trying to say something?” inquires Westheimer.

  “I’m not trying to say something, Westheimer. I’m saying it. You made up your mind about psi a long time ago and all you’re looking for here is substantiation of your prejudice.”

  “Such a comment from a man who has written a “popular” (he makes it sound like a dirty word) book endorsing psi in every conceivable way is hardly to be credited.”

  “Gentlemen,” says Peter.

  “Oh, have you read my book?” goads Robert.

  “I don’t believe it’s necessary for me to—”

  “I submit then,” Robert interrupts, “that you are scarcely in a position to dismiss it until you do. This is what is known, in intelligent circles, as elementary scholarship.”

  The meeting degenerates into a shouting match which Peter cannot control.

  Cathy’s return does not improve things.

  After accepting Robert’s intense embrace and kiss, she tells him that she didn’t say anything about them to Harry. Since Harry’s mother is gravely ill, Harry had assumed that she’d flown over to see her.

  “I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d come to ask for a divorce,” she says.

  She feels, in fact, uncomfortable about the entire situation. Harry has given her no cause whatever to complain about their marriage and she knows it would shatter him for her to leave it now.

  “Would?” says Robert tightly. “Or will?”

  He has tried to show understanding of her dilemma but his state of mind is not conducive to long-suffering at the moment. When she says she simply hates to face the problem right away, he responds, “Who doesn’t want to go below the surface now?”

  She nods tiredly. “Touché,” she says.

  Things are no better the next day when both return to ESPA. They are on the verge of open friction.

  Peter asks Robert if he’ll assist in a distance perception test and Robert, with a cool smile, asks, “Had enough of me at the seminar?”

  Peter does not permit himself to be provoked. “You mustn’t let Westheimer get to you,” he says. “Everything looks yellow to his jaundiced eye.”

  “He doesn’t believe in anything,” Robert says. “He’s here to destroy.”

  “You mean you do believe in something now?” asks Cathy.

  She hasn’t meant the question to be insulting but that’s the way it sounds and Robert responds accordingly. “No, I’m as vacillating as ever,” he snaps.

  Their friction increases and Peter separates them, sending Cathy into the field
on a distance perception test while Robert remains with the subject.

  He is sitting, bored, in the testing room when the vision hits him.

  Cathy on a Manhattan street corner. A truck out of control. Her body hurled against a store window and through it.

  To her death.

  Robert jolts on his chair and looks around.

  The subject sits quietly in her chair, eyes closed. The room is very still.

  He doesn’t know what to do.

  Until the vision repeats itself, more vividly this time.

  Cathy on a corner; he can see the store name behind her. The truck out of control, the driver pumping its brakes in vain. Cathy struck by the hood of the truck, her body flung violently through the store window glass, cut to shreds.

  “No,” he stands abruptly.

  The subject opens her eyes and frowns at him. He doesn’t even notice.

  Suddenly, he leaves the room. He has to know the target location, he tells the man outside. It’s essential. Now.

  The man doesn’t understand but there is nothing he can do, he tells Robert. Only people in the field know the target area.

  “Oh, my God,” Robert mutters. Then, resisting panic, he tells the man there has to be a master list. If there is, says the man, he doesn’t know about it.

  Robert rushes to the meeting room and breaks in on the seminar, pulling Peter aside and telling him what’s happened. Peter hesitates, then, without a word, has Easton open the ESPA safe and remove the master list of 200 locations.

  Robert looks down the list, his expression frantic. There are dozens of street intersections listed. He makes a sound of dread.

  “Easy,” Peter tells him, grabbing his arm. “Do you remember anything about the vision? Any detail at all?”

  Robert tries to recapture what he saw. At first, he fails. Then, abruptly, the name of the store printed on its window leaps to consciousness.

  They rush to a telephone directory and look up the store. Another setback. It is a chain; there are dozens of them. “What are we going to do?!” Robert cries. He knows that Cathy is going to be killed.

  Grabbing every available ESPA employee, Peter gives each of them Xerox copies of the master list and the telephone directory page. Assigning each one twenty-five target locations, he tells them to pick out the store addresses which seem to match whatever intersection they have in their twenty-five locations.