The Link

by Richard Matheson

  “Come on,” he tells himself in aggravation.

  With a willful tread, he walks to the doorway, pushes open the door and looks inside.

  Exactly as his dream has been except for the music. He stares into the room at his mother’s bed and bureau, her rocking chair, the pictures on the wall, the mirror in which he had seen—in his dream—himself reflected as a little boy.

  He walks into the room and stops, his heart beating faster.

  He looks at the radio on the bedside table.

  After several moments, he moves to it and switches it on. “If it plays that music—” he starts.

  No sound, of course. Electricity has been long cut off. “Idiot,” he mutters.

  He stands with his back to the closet. This is the moment he has put off, the moment he knows he came into the house to face.

  After awhile, clenching his teeth, he turns slowly and looks toward the closet.

  The door is closed.

  “Naturally,” he says. His smile is pained.

  He stands there, nodding. Now what? Does he actually go through with this? To the very end?

  He checks his watch. “Come on, lady,” he says irritably. He moves quickly to the doorway and calls out. “Are you here yet?”

  No reply. He shudders. “I didn’t mean you, mother,” he whispers.

  He stands rock still. “All right,” he says. “All right, damn it.”

  Turning, he approaches the closet door.

  It seems to take forever, as though his feet are moving through thick molasses. His steps are small, agonizingly slow. His heartbeat gets faster, faster. He can hardly breathe. He swallows, gulps, shivering convulsively.

  Stops in front of the door.

  With infinite slowness, his hand drifts upward to the door knob. Reaches it. Closes over it. Tightens. “You have to,” he tells himself. “You have to.”

  He jerks open the door, prepared for anything.

  There is nothing.

  Only an empty closet. Her clothes are gone. He stares at the blank interior.

  Suddenly, he whirls, making a gagging sound of shock as he sees a woman’s figure standing the in the doorway, looking at him.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” says the lady realtor. “Did I startle you?”

  He takes whatever he wants—a few pictures, a few small objects—and leaves the rest; it can go with the house.

  He drives to the realty office and signs a sales contract for the house. The woman isn’t sure what it will bring. The structure itself is negligible, too old and run-down to be usable. The property, however, might go for some business purpose; the zoning is right.

  “Whatever,” Robert says. He has no intention of ever setting foot in the house again. He is, at once, disappointed that, after all his expectation, no revelation was forthcoming from his mother’s closet—and profoundly relieved that nothing transpired.

  He is just in time to pick up Cathy at the train station.

  She is unresponsive as he tells her of his experience in the house.

  Over supper, he finds out why.

  She is thinking of going back to England.

  Robert is shocked. “Why?” he asks.

  “Isn’t that obvious?” she counters.

  She feels as though she really isn’t part of his life. First, the disagreements over Peter’s survival work, his lack of interest in hers. Then his leaving ESPA completely. Now this decision to go to Arizona.

  Where does all of it leave her?

  He tries to reassure her that he still loves her very much and wants to marry her but she is unable to take comfort from that. Loving him and leaving Harry has opened up too many wounds in her. What she is she became to survive an emotional environment which would allow no other persona to exist in her. Now Robert is expecting her to change all that.

  “I’m not asking you to change,” Robert protests. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  She sighs unhappily. “We’re too different then,” she says. “What am I supposed to do, drop everything and dig with you in Arizona?”

  “I’d like that, yes, but—”

  “I wouldn’t like it!” she cuts him off. “I think you’re on a wild goose chase!”

  He tries not to react angrily. “If I am, I’ll find out soon enough,” he responds patiently.

  “And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?” she demands.

  “Work at ESPA, live here—”

  “You’re asking too much,” she says unhappily. “I gave up everything to come to America with you. Now you want to leave me alone.”

  “Come with me then,” he says. “It might be—”

  “I don’t believe in what you’re doing!” she interrupts him almost fiercely. “I think you’re going there because you feel guilt about your father!”

  “Oh,” he nods. Sighs heavily. “I see.”

  He regards her sadly. “Cathy, can’t you love me without agreeing with what I believe?” he asks.

  She has no reply.

  The evening is virtually non-communicative. Cathy goes to bed early. Robert, unable to sleep, turns on the television set, putting the earphone into his ear so the sound won’t disturb her. Bartoo sleeps beside him.

  As though things aren’t bad enough, in switching channels with the remote control, he turns on Westheimer’s program.

  He stares at the set with glum antipathy as Westheimer states his “Scientific Bill of Rights”.

  “One,” says Westheimer, “knowledge is acquirable only through the five senses and the only way in which we can increase our knowledge of the universe is with extensions of our senses made possible by devices such as the electronic microscope, the radio telescope, the electroencephalograph, the magnetic-resonance spectrometer, etcetera.

  “Two, all qualitative properties are reducible to quantitative ones, color reducible to wave lengths, thought to brain waves, emotions to the chemical composition of glandular secretions, etcetera.

  “Three, there is a clear distinction between the objective world perceivable to anyone and the subjective world perceivable only to the individual in the privacy of his own mind.

  “Four, the concept of the inner man is a non-scientific substitute for causes discoverable in the course of true scientific analysis—that is, a combination of outside pressures and internal tensions characteristic of the human organism.

  “Five, so-called consciousness is only a side effect of physical and bio-chemical processes going on in the brain.

  “Six, what we call memory is simply a matter of stored data in the physical organism.

  “Seven, the nature of time being what it is, there is no way of obtaining knowledge of future events other than prediction from known causes.

  “Eight, it is impossible for mental activity to exert a direct effect on the physical world outside the organism.

  “Nine, the evolution of the universe and man has come about through purely physical causes and there is no justification for any concept of universal purpose.

  “Ten, the individual does not survive the death of the organism. If there is any sense—”

  Robert reaches for the remote control so abruptly that he knocks it to the floor. He curses softly, glaring at the t-v screen.

  The set goes off in apparent defiance of Westheimer’s proposition number eight.

  Robert stares at the blank screen.

  Something very peculiar happens.

  Gradually, he begins to see pictures on the screen. Moving pictures in color as though the set were still on.

  Soundless pictures from his childhood.

  We see the fragmented tapestry of it. Robert with his mother, still a beautiful woman. He is obviously her joy. He draws pictures which, for his age—four or five—are remarkable. His mother smiles and kisses him.

  We see him sitting with his mother as she prays in silence. He doesn’t understand but, loving her, accepts it unquestioningly. We see him sitting in a Spiritualist church with her, his hand in hers.

  We s
ee his sister’s resentment of their mother’s obvious favoritism toward Robert, her dislike of their father. We see John trying to please their father in vain, almost being ignored by their mother.

  The pictures darken further.

  His parents arguing, him listening in dread to the rage of his father.

  His mother becoming ill. Robert unable to understand her deteriorating appearance. A CLOSE UP of his Aunt Grace, her lips forming the word “cancer”. Ruth keeping him away from his mother, partially to protect her rest but also with a kind of vengeful pleasure that she can get back at Robert for his having been their mother’s darling.

  John and Ruth arguing bitterly. His mother like a pale wraith barely moving through the house. His father shouting at her. Her shaking her head, lips pressed together, refusing medical assistance, retreating to her room to read her books and pray.

  Then the dream re-lived in all its detail.

  With sound.

  Robert, six, coming home from playing at a nearby house. The house empty. The rain. The music playing. Him calling for his mother. No answer. Him becoming frightened, running upstairs to her room. She isn’t there. But her radio is on, playing the 1950 song. There is the imprint of her body on the bed.

  He is about to leave when he hears a creaking noise in the closet.

  He moves there and opens the door.

  And is plunged into hellish nightmare.

  His mother’s body is slumping forward, held up by a white belt attached at one end to a wall hook, the other end around her neck.

  Her face is darkly purple, her eyes staring hideously.

  Robert screams in horror. He tries to pull her loose. At first, he can’t. Then the hook gives way and her body falls on top of him, pinning him to the floor with its dead weight. He cannot free himself. His body is drained of all strength by the horror he feels.

  All he can do is scream and scream, shrilly, mindlessly, his mother’s purplish, mottled face pushed close against his, her dead eyes staring into his.

  Tearing him loose from the reason of his childhood.

  NINE

  Robert goes to confront his sister.

  Why didn’t she tell him the truth about their mother’s death?

  Ruth is shocked at first, then, quickly defensive. He has no idea of the state she found him in that rainy August afternoon in 1950. She had to carry him downstairs. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could scarcely breathe.

  She had to carry him more than a mile to Aunt Grace’s just to get him away from the house. She had to go back alone, take care of everything. Their father was in Guatemala. John was in the Catskills. She had to drag and lift their mother’s body to her bed, close her eyes, cover her up.

  When Robert literally did not remember what had happened, she (with Aunt Grace’s agreement) took it as a blessing from God which they would not undo.

  Accordingly, they invented the story about Mother falling down the staircase. As an added safeguard for Robert, they kept the truth from John and from their father.

  “It was done to protect you,” she tells him firmly.

  “But don’t you see it didn’t protect me?” he responds. “All it did was push it deeper inside. It had to come out eventually. Look at all the years I lost. All the years I spent distorting my mind before it emerged.”

  His sister is obdurate. She did the right thing. She would do it again. If he had only “stayed with the church” he would have been “truly protected” and never have had to undergo such a horrible recollection.

  “Ruth, the mind doesn’t work that way!” he cries, incredulous that she is still defending what she did.

  His anger breaks her. She reciprocates, all her resentments from the past spilling out. She was the one who had to take care of him after their mother died! Not father! Not John! Not Aunt Grace!

  It was enough to do without telling him about Mother’s suicide!

  It all emerges then. Not only was she embittered by the attention given to him by their mother but also the attention John received from their father; maybe not enough for John but a lot more than she ever got. She was in the middle of it all, admired by no one, given attention by no one, expected to be responsible and grown up.

  When Mother became ill, did Robert take care of her? Did John? Did Father? Did Aunt Grace? “No!” she says. “I did! Me! Me!”

  Hurt and anger pour out. No one had any use for her. She wasn’t pretty, she wasn’t gifted, she wasn’t smart, she wasn’t interesting. She tried to gain their mother’s favor by becoming devoted to the church. Even that failed. She had to maintain her faith alone, without support, knowing even that Robert was the truly psychic member of the family, not her; that he has been almost from the time he was born. He had everything. Everything!

  Robert draws back fast, regretting his anger. He apologizes to Ruth, tries to put his arms around her, reach some kind of intimate rapport with her.

  It is too late. Ruth endures his embrace and pats his back impersonally as she tells him, “Understanding will come to you. Pray to God and it will come to you. You should be in the church. That’s where all the answers lie. The church, Robert, the church.”

  Driving home, Robert has a memory of his childhood.

  Him sitting with his mother in the early stages of her illness, too young to be aware of what is happening or what she says to him; that she knows that “personally” she is “unworthy” of the faith she claims. That she asks him to not judge that faith by her personal “weakness”.

  “Judge the believer, not the belief, darling,” she tells him, stroking his hair lovingly. “You’re too young to understand that now but try to remember. The believer, Robert, not the belief.”

  When he arrives home, the thick envelope from Williker has arrived.

  His father’s journal.

  Immediately, he sits down to read it, Bartoo on his lap.

  A piece of paper has been clipped to the first page of the journal, on it the words: To whoever reads this—read what I have written on page 156 before reading the journal.

  Page 156 contains, incredibly, a virtual paraphrase of Arthur Bellenger’s words at Cambridge. We hear the voice of Francis Kenneth Allright as CAMERA MOVES IN ON the writing.

  “The ruins of ancient sites appear to contain fragmentary clues that their architects possessed some kind of knowledge we no longer have.”

  CUT TO Robert’s father sitting on his cot in a tent in Arizona, writing in his journal, his expression grave.

  “These words, at one time, would have been a virtual abomination to me,” says his voice. “Now, as much as I desire to, I am unable to refute them.”

  CUT TO Egypt, The Great Pyramid.

  “The Great Pyramid,” his father’s voice continues, “seems to be a landmark on which the geography of the ancient world was constructed.”

  SHOTS OF the pyramid parallel what he says.

  “The foundations were apparently oriented to true North. Its builders seemingly knew the circumference of the Earth and the length of the year. They knew, among other things, it seems, the specific density of the earth, the acceleration of gravity and the length of the earth’s orbit around the Sun.”

  CUT TO Northwest Europe and the megalith remains.

  “The megalith builders of Northwest Europe apparently knew the same things hundreds and, in certain cases, thousands of years before textbooks listed them.

  “Along a fifteen hundred mile front of Europe’s Atlantic seaboard, these ancient and mysterious monuments, stones, mounds and burial chambers exist to remind us of this fact.”

  CUT TO aerial shot of Stonehenge.

  “Another of these strange locations is Stonehenge,” says his voice. “The builders of which were, without the aid of writing, astronomers and mathematicians of high ability.”

  CLOSE SHOT ON Stonehenge.

  “Like the stone circles in Cornwall, on Dartmoor, at Station Drew and in Scotland, these enormous configurations were aligned not only toward the Sun
but on many of the stars as well.

  “In Great Britain, 600 sites have been discovered to be designed geometrically and aligned astronomically to an astonishing degree of perfection.”

  CUT TO Peru, the plain of Nazca.

  “Distinctions related in spite of distance and difference in shape and size are the desert patterns of Nazca in Peru,” says his voice.

  “In 1972, it was discovered that the straightness of these lines could not be measured even with modern air-surveying techniques.”

  CUT TO Francis Allright writing in his journal intently.

  “Why were these sites of early man placed so carefully? Why were the sites apparently connected and developed with such uncanny geometric precision?

  “What impelled these ancient people to such a gigantic physical and intellectual effort?

  “Did it have a practical purpose?

  “And did I catch a glimpse of that purpose last night?”

  CUT TO the previous day, the dig progressing, the workers a combination of students and local residents both white and Indian.

  A discovery is made and Francis Allright hurries to the spot with his foreman, a Hopi in his sixties.

  The finds are exciting.

  A clay face with prominently sloping eyes. A smaller pink soap-stone head, strange in appearance, almost Egyptian. An ornament made of shell.

  And something else which the foreman pockets before Allright notices. The expression on the Indian’s face as he does so is overwhelmed.

  That night the old man comes to Allright’s tent. He wants to show Allright something.

  Allright follows the man to his tent. There the Indian prepares some odd-looking tea for them to drink. To be polite, Allright drinks it.

  As they do, the old man says, “You have a son.”

  “Two,” says Allright.

  “One will come here,” says the Indian.

  Allright looks surprised. “That I doubt,” he says.

  “He will,” says the old man. “He will come to complete what you have started.”

  “What have I started?” asks Allright. By now, the tea has begun to affect him; he has not noticed it occurring but his mind is beginning to cloud.

  The old man tells him to put out his hand.