The Link

by Richard Matheson

  “She just went into the bathroom,” Rosalyn says as casually as though announcing the time.

  Robert opens his mouth to speak, then goes mute as the sound of the shower starts. He looks toward the bathroom blankly. “Is it really running?” he asks.

  She gets off the bed and stands. “Let’s see,” she says.

  He starts to say something to stop her then decides it wouldn’t stop her anyways. He trails her gingerly as she moves to the dark bathroom.

  They are almost there when Rosalyn stops, catching her breath. He almost bumps into her. “What?” he asks.

  “Can’t you hear?” she asks him.

  He listens intently. “Hear what?”

  She nods. “Mm-hmm,” she says.

  “Hear what?” he asks.

  “The sound of her dying,” Rosalyn tells him.

  “Oh, my God.” Robert tries to listen as hard as he can but all he hears is the sound of the shower. When she describes what she hears—choking, gagging noises as though a young woman is having an attack of some kind—he grimaces. “I’m glad I can’t hear it,” he murmurs.

  The sound continues for almost a minute, Rosalyn’s hand raised as though to still Robert.

  Then the shower stops.

  Abruptly, Robert spins away with a cry, eyes watering, a gagging noise in his throat as the smell floods over him.

  Rosalyn turns on the bathroom light and goes inside. He stands, coughing. “Come here,” he hears her say.

  He hesitates.

  “Hurry while it’s here,” she tells him.

  He turns and moves back toward the bathroom, mumbling. “What now?”

  She is standing, looking into the open shower stall. Robert comes up beside her and looks inside.

  “You see?” she points.

  Robert stiffens. In a corner of the shower stall is a stationary pool of darkness, like a smudgy gathering of air.

  “You do see it,” Rosalyn says.

  He nods shakily. “Yes.”

  “That’s where she died,” she says. “That may be her.”

  Robert shudders convulsively. As they watch, the shapeless dark patch fades and disappears. Robert keeps staring at the spot where it had been. “What about that smell?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I never smelled anything like that before.”

  They whirl at the sound of sudden, rushing footsteps on the stairs, reacting as a tall, heavyset man bursts into the bedroom, his face twisted by fury. “Get the hell out of here!” rages Scotty Winston.

  An awkward, embarrassing and potentially harmful scene as Winston manhandles them upstairs with shoves and curses, his wife screaming at him and crying, his bodyguard trying to calm him down, Rosalyn looking dazed at being treated so roughly by a star.

  In minutes, they are out of the house, being driven to the airport by the grim-faced bodyguard who tells them, “You’re lucky to be in one piece.” Winston had found out about them being there from the house man and had come back on a chartered flight, ready for bear.

  “He looks so much nicer in his pictures,” Rosalyn says meekly.

  On their way back to San Francisco on the studio owner’s jet, Rosalyn begins to tell Robert what she thinks happened at the house on Lake Tahoe.

  Arriving at San Francisco, Robert says goodbye to a tearful Rosalyn who offers to come to New York and work with ESPA if he’ll “put in a good word” for her. Honestly, he says, relieved to be able to say it, he has no control over that kind of thing. He’ll mention it to ESPA but he can’t promise anything.

  He is flown to Los Angeles, taken to a hotel and, after sleeping a few hours, is picked up by a limo and taken to the studio.

  There he meets Elaine Winston’s father whose office is not unlike the one he imagined for Alan in the beginning.

  He repeats what Rosalyn told him, not too happy to say it but too honest to do otherwise. He presents it as discreetly as he can but it is clearly a story even discretion cannot whitewash.

  He tells only what he’s been told, not filling in any gaps. Even so, the incident seems apparent in its basic outline. Elaine Winston gone for a month. A young woman brought to the house by Winston. Given some kind of drug (he describes the smell) which caused the girl to die while taking a shower.

  “Ms. Hutchinson doesn’t know where the body might be,” he completes the story. “But she doesn’t seem to feel it’s near the house. She has no explanation for it. She just feels that way.”

  The studio owner, tall, grey-haired, distinguished looking, thanks him as though he has just described a fluctuation in the stock market. The only indication he gives that he has heard what Robert just told him is to request, quietly and politely, that Robert not repeat the story to anyone at all. His voice is subdued but the instruction is clear. He means anyone at all.

  “I understand,” says Robert.

  Alan is waiting for Robert in his office. “What happened?” he asks.

  Robert tells him that he’s promised not to say anything and Alan backs off instantly; clearly the studio head wields considerable power.

  They briefly discuss the film and Alan gives him the script for the first hour. “Read it on your way home,” he says. “We’re shooting it now. It’s going great.”

  Robert is driven to the airport and catches a flight to New York.

  He tries to sleep on the plane but can’t; too many things have happened in the past few days, his brain is a maelstrom. Taking out the script, he starts to read it.

  It is at once a diversion and a dismay. At first, he looks stunned by the changes in the story presented; early psi has been eliminated totally, the film beginning with a presentation of the Fox sisters incident.

  We witness, in his mind’s eye, what the film appears to be—not bad enough to be atrocious but so distorted and falsified as to lose reality and bite, a glossy, over-stated melodrama.

  The girls are in their teens, the writer having gone so far as to describe them as “nubile”. Robert visualizes—perhaps excessively—the sight of them: two nymphet chorus girl types wearing filmy nightclothes, writhing revealingly as they listen to the raps on their room, Kate’s voice a teen-age version of Mae West’s as she says, “Here, Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do,” and claps her hands vigorously enough to jiggle her gelatinous bosom.

  The script may not be as far-fetched as Robert sees it in his mind but it is close and he progresses from shock to dazed astonishment to minor amusement, ending finally (a probable release from what he’s gone through in San Francisco) in hysterics, the film (which we see) degenerating into virtual burlesque, tears rolling down his cheeks, his body rocking helplessly with laughter he cannot contain, the other passengers looking askance at him.

  He finally has to put the script aside. “Oh, God,” he murmurs, drying his eyes with a handkerchief. “All that work for this,” he moans softly.

  “No wonder psi can’t get a break,” he mumbles to himself.

  Home again. A message on his answering machine from Cathy. Can he meet her at a certain restaurant the following day? She needs to talk to him.

  A call from Barbara too which he returns. She is angry and upset that he has encouraged Ann to accept what’s happening to her. Life at home has been unbearable since he spoke to her. She would appreciate it if he would take Ann for a while. She can get Ann a leave of absence from school and it would be desirable all around. He owes it to everyone concerned to “straighten” things with Ann.

  Robert promises nothing about what he’ll say to Ann but does tell Barbara that he’ll take her for a few weeks at the very least.

  The next afternoon, he meets Cathy in the restaurant.

  At first, their talk is general. Hearing about the Tahoe house, she tells him that it sounds, to her, like a prime example of telepathy, Winston’s wife picking up information from her husband’s guilty mind and using it to create a personal hallucination.

  Robert doesn’t contest the point by mentioning that Rosalyn and he also expe
rienced the same things; Cathy would undoubtedly declare that to be second-hand telepathy anyway. Beside, he is in no mood to discuss psychic phenomena at the moment.

  “Then, too, there might be some residual field of energy left in the bathroom,” Cathy says. “The woman hasn’t been dead very long.”

  Robert only looks at her. She lowers her gaze. “All right,” she says.

  “I love you, Cathy,” he tells her. “I want to marry you. What’s your decision?”

  It does not come out directly.

  She’s been thinking about her life. Her situation in London is established. She has her work, her friends. Harry understands and respects her. Her parents admire Harry. Everything about her existence was comfortably patterned before she met Robert. She is free to do as she chooses and her husband is supportive, loving, easy to live with.

  “Sounds very organized,” he comments in a flat voice.

  Her face hardens slightly. “It’s more than that,” she says. “I’m not just talking about convenience.”

  “Aren’t you?” he asks.

  She doesn’t reply, her lips pressing together, her gaze dropping to the table once more.

  “Did you ever say anything to him?” Robert asks.

  She shakes her head. “It wasn’t necessary. I realize now that he never suspected anything. He trusts me absolutely.”

  Silence. Heavy. Painful.

  “I hope you won’t give up on your psychic—” she begins.

  “Cathy, I really don’t want to talk about that right now.” He lays his napkin on the table and stands. Leaning over, he kisses her on the cheek. “Goodbye,” he murmurs. Turning on his heel, he leaves the restaurant.

  He does not look back.

  When he arrives home, the first thing he sees is Bart’s dish on the kitchen floor. Tensing, he picks it up and drops it in the trash can in the garage, then puts Bart’s two sleeping baskets into a closet.

  Done, he walks into the living room, makes himself a drink and sits down, sighs.

  “Quo vadis, Allright?” he mutters.

  CUT TO Arizona.

  The Indian standing by the temple ruins, looking eastward, waiting.

  For Robert.

  January 19th; a bright Sunday morning. He and Ann are having breakfast in his kitchen, Robert rhapsodizing over a batch of biscuits Ann has made.

  He is no longer working on the outline for Alan. He could do a few more and a wrap-up statement but the script has made him lose interest in that; he may, he tells Ann, do a long article on psi for some major magazine, using ESPA’s work as his basic material. An article on Teddie is a possibility as well.

  They get into more personal matters when Ann asks him why he and Barbara got divorced.

  “Well, sweetheart,” he says, “there are relationships in which two people—however well intentioned—simply can’t get along for whatever reasons. Trying to keep such a relationship going can do more harm than good. It was that way with your mother and me. It’s not that we didn’t love each other, just that… well, we don’t really think alike about anything of consequence. Our backgrounds are too different.”

  “Why did you marry then?”

  He smiles. “Well…” he grunts. “Modesty aside, we were two attractive young people; your mother’s a beautiful woman.”

  He reaches across the table and strokes her cheek. “If we weren’t, how could we have had such a lovely daughter?”

  “Oh.” She looks embarrassed but pleased.

  “Just remember,” he adds, “the fact that your Mom and I were unable to maintain a relationship doesn’t mean we don’t love you very much. That’s a separate thing. Okay?”

  She swallows, nods. “Okay.” She holds out the plate. “Another biscuit?”

  Later, they take a walk in the woods and start to talk about the Allright “curse”.

  “It’s not really a curse,” he tells her, smiling. “Actually, I guess, it’s a blessing.”

  “You guess,” she says.

  He chuckles. “Well, we both know it can be a problem,” he says.

  He asks her to tell him exactly what she’s been experiencing. She hesitates, she’s kept it bottled up so long but, finally, tells him.

  He has had no idea how radically extensive it has been. (We see it as she tells it.)

  To begin with, for a long time now, she has seen not merely physical bodies but bodies set within a nebulous egg-shaped covering.

  “You see it on me now?” Robert asks.

  She concentrates, looking at him, then nods. We see what it looks like to her, a surrounding transparency filled with shifting colors.

  “It changes when people change,” Ann says. “Like when they get angry.”

  “It gets red?” he asks.

  “Yes,” she says interestedly. “Do you see it too?”

  “No.” He shakes his head. “You Aunt Ruth claims to though.”

  “I’d like to talk about it with her.”

  He indicates a desire to discourage that, not because he has anything in particular against Ruth but because he wants to protect Ann from being proselytized into Spiritualism.

  “Oh,” says Ann, with a nod. “I know; Mom says you hate them.”

  “I don’t hate them, honey,” he tells her. “I’m just not sure it would be a good idea for you to be involved in it right now. When you get older, you can decide for yourself.”

  Her story continues and we see, again, what she describes.

  For years—it started when he and Barbara were first having “troubles” with their marriage—she has seen what she calls “surrounds” encasing every living person, animal and plant.

  She tried, a few times, to talk to other girls about the mist-like envelopes she sees but they either made fun of her or were alarmed. She soon stopped mentioning them.

  “I used to stay in my room a lot, remember?” she asks. Robert does, sadly. “I’d lie on my bed and feel the air around me. After a while, I could see it too, little moving things like tiny stars weaving around the room, going in and out among each other.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t tell Mom about that,” Robert says, laughing. “I wish you’d told me though.”

  “I couldn’t tell anyone,” Ann says.

  He puts an arm around her shoulders. “What do you see now?” he asks.

  “Well—” she looks around. “It’s hard to describe. It’s like… everything has its own song, I know that doesn’t make sense.”

  “I like it though,” Robert says with a smile.

  Ann moves to a tree and leans back against it, closes her eyes. Robert smiles at her beauty and her innocent expression.

  “I hear tones coming from it,” she says (perhaps we hear them too). “I feel them vibrating through me. Like a—a—”

  “An energy?” he asks.

  “Yes,” she says, opening her eyes with a smile. “An energy that never stops.”

  She moves back to him, snuffling close as he puts an arm across her shoulders again. “If I lie on the grass when it’s warm,” she says, “I hear sounds in the earth. Not the same as in the tree but like them. If I really concentrate—” she hesitates.

  “What?” he asks.

  “You sure you won’t put me away?” she asks.

  He laughs. “I don’t promise nothin’, kid,” he teases.

  “Well—” She looks around as though they are fellow conspirators. “If I listen really hard, really concentrate, I can tell the difference between the song of the grass, the song of the earth and the song of the insects under the earth.”

  He shakes his head. “Sweetheart, you are lucky,” he tells her. “You can hear the sounds of Life. My God, be grateful.”

  She smiles as though another weight has lifted form her shoulders.

  They sit together on a log, surrounded by the silent woods.

  “Tell me what you see,” he asks.

  She is open now, pleased to tell him everything. We see it as she speaks.

  “I see aro
und every tree and branch and twig and leaf—even the dead ones—a ‘surround’ that seems to breathe and move. It’s like a—cradle sort of, holding everything alive in it. Things grow in it and are taken care of by it—especially us.”

  She stares at a nearby tree. “I see the air filled with—very tiny globes, like the smallest soap bubble you could blow. The trees and the plants like… suck them in right out of the air. They’re like little globes and light dancing in the air and the surrounds of everything keep drawing them in, never stopping.

  “In the summer, when it’s hot, the globes get drawn out of trees and plants and flowers and swallowed by the sunlight. Then, later, when it cools off, the globes come back again and dance faster and get… what’s the word?”

  “Re-absorbed?” suggests Robert.

  “Yes, re-absorbed,” she says. “And it’s as if—well, it seems just like the tiny globes are glad to be going back into the surrounds. Helping them. Giving them life. Does that sound crazy?”

  “If it does, it’s the kind of crazy everyone should be a part of,” Robert tells her.

  He and Ann sit together in the soundless glade, his arm around her, her head resting on his shoulder. It is a scene of quiet peace for both of them.

  When Ann comments on the lack of water pressure in his house, Robert decides it’s time to try a dowser. Why not? What has he got to lose?

  The man shows up the next day, a small, wiry man with the facial characteristics of a leprechaun. Robert and Ann enjoy his visit hugely.

  “I know, you think it’s witchcraft,” says the little man, starting on a non-stop monologue. “Most people do. Well, let me tell you, some important people have been dowsers.”

  CUT TO the backyard of someone’s house, a SHOT of a highly concentrated Albert Einstein walking slowly across the ground, holding a forked stick in front of him.

  “Found it too, by crackers,” says the little man; his name is FISHER WHITMAN. “Wasn’t only relativity old Albert found. Also found a leak in an underground water flow that was draining the pond of a friend of his.”

  To their surprise, the man starts dowsing inside Robert’s house instead of out. He asks casually if Robert’s back aches in the morning when he wakes up. When Robert, taken back, says yes, it does, Whitman nods. “Vile water underneath your bed,” he says. “Move it over there.” He points to the other side of the room.