The Link

by Richard Matheson

  Has Robert tried to help Ann understand? asks Cathy.

  Not enough, he admits. Avoiding it himself, he knows he’s let her down.

  “It’s never too late, Rob,” Cathy says.

  They work together in the kitchen, making dinner, chatting. At the sink, she comments on the water pressure. “Get yourself a dowser,” she advises. “Maybe he (or she) can find you a better water supply.”

  Robert nods and smiles, grinding up salad makings in the Cuisinart. Their conversation is lighter now; they are more comfortable with each other. Cathy is particularly amused by Bart’s incessant Svengali-like staring at Robert which results in many a snack for the Lab despite Robert’s “aggravated” comments to the dog. “Obviously a severely disciplined animal,” she says.

  Over a candle-lit dinner, they get into “them”.

  “I know I’m not facing it,” she admits. “I’m doing everything I can to avoid it.”

  She tells him of her marriage. She and Harry have been man and wife for nine years. They have a “comfortable” relationship. An attractive flat in London. Concerts, plays, operas, films. Travels to the Continent. Friends, acquaintances.

  “And, I think,” she says, trying not to sound immodest, “he looks up to me. Admires me.”

  Robert was right when he said it must be hard for her coming from a family of such extreme achievers. “I am, without a doubt, the low girl on the totem pole,” she says. “I try hard but that’s the way it stays.” Harry gives her that extra measure of respect she needs for balance.

  “Do you think I wouldn’t?” Robert asks.

  “No. Of course not,” she says. She looks disturbed. It’s just that Harry is such a nice man, so endlessly supportive. She never has a problem incorporating her work into the marriage. And her parents like him too; tremendously. “And he’s devoted to them,” she adds.

  His smile is sad. “Quite a combination,” he agrees.

  “It’s just that I never felt… passion before—” She breaks off awkwardly and covers her face with her left hand. “Why am I telling you this?” she says.

  He reaches across the table and takes her other hand. “I’m glad you did.”

  She lowers the hand from her face. “I know it’s commonplace today to have sex without commitment, without consideration even. But I find myself… unable to—”

  “Cathy,” he cuts her off gently. “It isn’t just sex I want; I hope you know that. It’s you. Every aspect of you. Every particle. You in your entirety.”

  Her smile is pleased and pained at once. “You sound like Stafford,” she says.

  Quietly they laugh together.

  Later. They are sitting on the heavy throw rug in front of the fireplace, leaning back against the sofa. “This is lovely,” Cathy says. “The place and company I mean, not my gross indecision.”

  “You have to leave at the end of the year?” he asks.

  Her sigh is heavy. “That’s the contract,” she answers.

  He looks at her. “Oh, my God,” he murmurs.

  “What?” she turns.

  “You remember that day in the park?” he asks. “The distance perception test?”

  She nods, curious.

  “I saw us sitting in front of a fire,” he says. “You were wearing a pale yellow sweater and a string of pearls.”

  She looks intrigued. “Truly?”

  “Yes,” he nods.

  “You are psychic, Rob,” she tells him. “You do know that, don’t you?”

  They look at each other a while. Then easily, without constraint, they are together, arms around each other as they kiss.

  “Oh, God, I can’t, I can’t,” she murmurs.

  “Catherine, you can’t keep doing this,” he tells her.

  “No, I mean I just can’t fight it any more. I love you, Rob.”

  Their kiss is passionate. “I love you, Cathy. God, how I love you,” Robert says.

  The point of no return has been passed. They start to make love, every held-in feeling for each other rushing out.

  SUDDEN CUT. The dream. The rain. The rivuleted window. The 1950 song. The dim-lit living room. The CAMERA MOVING TOWARD the hall, picking up speed. Now CONTINUING UP the staircase, moving faster, faster.

  With shocking suddenness, we see a shadowy figure waiting at the head of the stairs!

  Robert jars awake, face wet with perspiration.

  A figure looms up on the bed beside him. Robert gasps and shrinks away from it.

  “Rob,” she says.

  He stares at her, shaking uncontrollably.

  “Darling, what is it?”

  He shudders. “Dream,” he says, just able to speak. “The dream.”

  She holds him tightly, stroking him, trying to soothe his terrible distress. Robert clings to her. “Why do I keep having it,” he mutters.

  “Why?”

  When he wakes up in the morning, Cathy is gone. He finds a note on his bedside table.

  I’m not running away again, it reads. Just a little scared, that’s all. I do love you and I won’t retreat. Promise. C.

  P.S. Your water pressure really sucks. Get a dowser!

  He telephones Ann. He wants to get together with her soon, talk about their mutual “problem”.

  “You too?” Ann says, amazed.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says wryly. “We have both been struck a fell blow by the Allright Curse.”

  It gratifies him to hear her laugh.

  “We’ll do it soon,” he promises. “I love you, Ann.”

  We see the following (possibly actual film footage taken at the time) as Peter’s voice narrates.

  “One of the most noted experiments in the history of psychic investigation took place in 1960 at McGill University in Toronto.

  “Dr. Bernard Grad, a biologist associated with the Department of psychiatry acquired the services of Hungarian psychic healer Colonel Oscar Estebany.

  “In the experiment, small patches of skin were removed from the backs of laboratory mice.

  “These mice were separated into three groups.

  “Over a period of days, the mice of one group were treated by Colonel Estebany who laid his hands on the cages.

  “Those of another group were treated in the same manner by persons who claimed no healing power.

  “The third group had no such laying of hands on cages.

  “After sixteen days, the skin patches on the mice treated by Estebany were significantly smaller than those on the mice treated by other people. This latter group, in fact, resembled that which received no treatment at all.”

  November 19; the healing seminar at ESPA, Peter moderating, a sizeable gathering.

  “Parapsychology has, over past decades, found strong evidence that psycho-kinesis—or, as the layman would describe it, ‘mind over matter’—does occur where non-living materials are concerned.

  “Can this power also influence living systems?

  “The search for answers to this question is the premise of this seminar.”

  To begin with, Peter says, many healers claim to function by observing a visual manifestation called the aura.

  He introduces a Manhattan physician who claims this.

  We see a dramatization of how the doctor discovered this ability in himself.

  He is not in his office but at a dinner party. Looking at a male friend, he begins to see a kind of foggy layer around the man’s body as he stands talking to a woman.

  The doctor blinks, shakes his head, looks away, examines his glasses.

  All in vain. The visual effect persists.

  Moreover, there is a distinct palpitation of the fog-like cocoon around his friend’s body, as though it is alive and “irritated” from head to foot.

  “I had no idea what I was looking at,” the doctor narrates. “Only later, after seeing the same condition many times, did I realize that the condition indicated by this palpitation was high blood pressure to the point of occasional dizziness, a condition which my friend did, indeed, suf
fer, I consequently learned.

  “The next time I saw this so-called aura was in my office two days later.”

  We see the following dramatized.

  “I was examining a pregnant woman when I saw the fog-like cocooning effect again.

  “To my surprise, I saw, above her abdomen, two pulsing radiations.

  “I asked her if there had ever been twins in her family and she said there had been.

  “I suppose I should have held my tongue until I was certain but instead I told her that she was in the act of furthering her family tradition.”

  Back to the seminar, the smiling doctor.

  “I had the devil’s own time coming up with an explanation for what I’d told her,” he says.

  “And was it twins?” Peter asks.

  “Oh, yes,” the doctor answers.

  Someone asks, “Are there colors in this aura, as I’ve read?”

  We see the aura of a male patient as the doctor speaks.

  “Well, I’m told that what I see has been called the physical aura. It looks entirely gray to me into which—depending on the patient’s condition—come markings, shadings, sometimes tiny zigzag lines that give the aura a cracked appearance.

  “There are said to be several other auras adjoining the outer edges of the physical one. The truth of that I have no way of proving.”

  Donald Westheimer is present. Without bothering to raise his hand, his acid-etched voice rides over someone else’s question.

  “And have you apprised your fellow physicians of this ability in yourself?” he inquires.

  The doctor smiles despite the offensive tone of Westheimer’s question.

  “I wrestled with myself a good deal over that,” he says. “I knew of no other doctor who made such a claim. I worried that the AMA might banish me from membership.”

  “And haven’t they?” Westheimer breaks in, making Robert bristle.

  “Not yet,” the doctor says. “Of course, I always check, in traditional ways, any indications I receive from what I see.”

  “For your patients’ sakes, I hope so,” Westheimer says with a snicker.

  Coffee break. Cathy sneaks Robert into a photographic: development room where they embrace and kiss hungrily. “Oh, God, I’m going to miss you so!” she says.

  “Come back soon.”

  “I will, I will.”

  They kiss again, again.

  “You’re doing wonders for my aura,” he murmurs, nuzzling her neck. She laughs softly, clinging to him.

  She is flying to England that afternoon to tell Harry about them. She’s thought of phoning or writing but feels it isn’t fair to do it any other way except in person.

  “I’m afraid I’ve mentioned your name just once too often,” she says. “I think he already knows there’s something going on.”

  “I’m sorry you have to go through this,” he says, holding her tightly. He does concur with her however. In person is the only way for Harry to be told about them.

  They run into Peter as they leave the darkroom. His eyebrows lift. “Developing something?” he asks, only half in humor.

  An awkward conversation starts. The aura is, of course, the visual aspect of the energy field, Cathy says. Has Peter considered the possibility of trying a healer for Carol? Peter says he hasn’t.

  “Well, who’s on next?” asks Robert, wondering how much Peter knows or suspects about them.

  “Who else but Mr. Quibberdick,” says Peter. “The nasty quibbler,” he explains. “Westheimer.”

  CUT.

  “The obvious point in so-called healing,” Westheimer says, “is the presence of the so-called healer, namely his or her psychological effect on the so-called patient.”

  “I’m really getting sick of ‘so-called’,” Robert mumbles behind his hand.

  “The psychological factor involved in so-called healing cannot be peremptorily dismissed,” Westheimer continues. “The purblind attitude of the typical healer that, if the healing does, in fact, take place, nothing more is necessary in the way of investigation is, to say the very least, criminally short-sighted.”

  “What a charmer,” Robert murmurs.

  “Shh,” says someone behind them; Elmo Stafford.

  Cathy has to leave. As Westheimer goes on, she leans over to say goodbye.

  “You’re sure you don’t want me to take you to the airport,” Robert whispers.

  “No, thank you,” she whispers back. “I’ll call as soon as I can. I love you.”

  As she leaves, she blows him a kiss, Peter sees it and he and Robert exchange a look.

  Then Robert returns to Westheimer’s speech. Sighing wearily as Westheimer says, “—been clearly established that claims of health improvement after so-called healings are directly proportional to the patients’ lack of education.”

  Later. Close to lunch. Robert returns from the water fountain to find Peter introducing a middle-aged woman, thin, blonde, slightly garish looking.

  “Animal experiments with healers can be most useful,” he begins.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Westheimer makes no attempt to muffle his voice. Saying something to Stafford, he lurches to his feet and makes a show of his exit, Peter’s disapproving look lost on him.

  “Animals being incapable of faking or imagining non-existent ailments,” Peter continues, “the results of their exposure to healers provide evidence unclouded by possibilities of psychological involvement.”

  The woman—BRENDA TURNER—speaks. Technically, she tells them, she is not a healer. It is just that, since childhood, she has had this ability to communicate with animals; to “hear” in her head what they’re thinking.

  “They tell me what’s wrong with them,” she says. “The healing, if it takes place, does so through customary medical means.”

  CUT.

  A STABLE at Belmont Park race track. A trainer takes Brenda to the stall of an ailing racehorse.

  “We don’t know what’s wrong with her,” he says. “She hasn’t been ill for almost a year but she just won’t run.”

  They reach the stall. The horse is looking out and Brenda moves to it. She doesn’t speak, just puts her face close to the horse’s head as though listening.

  An eerie scene. The horse’s eyes move to her and hold. It stands immobile. Moments.

  Brenda shakes her head. “She has sores on her lungs and trouble with her intestines.”

  The trainer gapes at her. He has told her nothing. As a matter of fact, the horse had pneumonia when it was two and the previous year it had almost died of an intestinal virus.

  Back to the seminar. “I first realized that I could know what animals were thinking when I was twelve,” Brenda says.

  CUT.

  Young Brenda Turner is walking home from school when a dog comes bounding off the porch of its house and runs at her.

  Startled at first, she becomes intrigued when the dog stops in its tracks in front of her and looks at her intently.

  “I knew what that dog was thinking,” her voice continues. “I just knew it.”

  Brenda walks up to the house and knocks on the door. A woman opens it.

  “Your dog has a great big foxtail stuck inside his right leg and it hurts him,” she says.

  Back to seminar. “I never found out if those people took their dog to the vet. I do know that was what the dog was suffering from.”

  Her main work is in horse racing circles, she explains, but she does work with all kinds of animals.

  Robert sits staring at her.

  Wondering.

  Peter can’t have lunch with Robert; he has to attend a meeting.

  “Do be back at two though,” he says. “I have a little surprise for you.”

  Robert is starting out by himself when he runs into Teddie at the elevators. Teddie has had it for the day. “These tests are boring me into a state of stupefaction,” he says.

  Robert gets an idea and asks if he can take Teddie to lunch. Teddie says no, he never eats out. “Every
restaurant in this town is a potential source of death by ptomaine,” he observes.

  If Robert would like to come back to his apartment, Carla will feed them both. It isn’t far away.

  Robert accepts and they walk to Teddie’s apartment, chatting as they go.

  Robert tells him that Carla seems to be a lovely girl. She must make Teddie happy.

  “Nonsense,” Teddie answers. “I would not demean myself with happiness.”

  He looks at Christmas decorations being put up in the stores they pass. “I am, on the other hand, usually happy around Christmas thinking of all the lovely presents I am not going to give people I hate.”

  Robert smiles and tells the older man that he and Cathy have decided that Teddie isn’t quite as dark a personality as he makes out.

  “What a terrible thing to say to me,” says Teddie, straight-faced. Robert asks him when he first found out he was psychic.

  “When did you first find out?” Teddie counters.

  “I asked first,” says Robert.

  “Still denying it?” asks Teddie, looking at him.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Still denying something,” Teddie tells him. “I look inside your head and see a wall.”

  He turns back to the front. “To answer your impolite and thoroughly uncalled for question, I had an accident when I was seventeen, a skull concussion.” He thought that a consequent period of ESP was far behind him when that “damn woman” came to see him perform.

  In the days between what happened in the nightclub and his reluctant agreement to be tested at ESPA, “I went through seventeen varieties of hell trying to deny what had taken place.”

  Robert will save himself at least ten of these varieties by accepting his ability and getting on with it.

  They reach Teddie’s apartment where Carla gets disturbed because she didn’t know Robert was coming and looks “a sight”. She is in the bathroom almost as soon as they enter.

  “You are bewitching enough! I’m ravenous!” Teddie shouts.

  She curses at him in German.

  “What am I, an aging Semite doing with this Nazi bitch?” Teddie says without apparent rancor.

  Robert pays appreciative attention to the mass of books in Teddie’s living room all non-fiction: philosophy, psychology and history predominating.