Read Online The Link by Richard Matheson - Free Book Online

“We know he has survived,” she says.
    “You know it, Ruth,” John mutters.
    She shakes her head with a forgiving smile, then looks at the closed casket. “Why is everyone so frightened at the sight of a mere shell?” she says.
    “Oh, Christ,” says John gloweringly.
    Robert winces slightly as he re-lives attendance at an uncle’s funeral when he was four, his aunt preparing to lift him so he could kiss his uncle goodbye, his reaction of dread, his mother preventing it, her arm around his shoulders to protect him. We do not see her face.
    The service begins, typically dreary.
    At its conclusion, they move outside where Robert introduces them to Konrad. John breaks into the conversation to say he has to fly back to San Francisco; will Robert drive him to the airport?
    “You can’t stay a few days?” Robert asks.
    John shakes his head. “Can you take me? I can get a cab.”
    Robert looks at Ruth. “I’ll call you later,” he says.
    “She hasn’t changed a damn bit, has she?” John says as they drive off.
    Robert sighs. “She’s what she is, John,” he replies. “Why sweat it?”
    “She hated his guts, you know that.”
    Robert shrugs. “It’s in the past. Let it go.”
    John makes a bitter scoffing sound. “
One Man’s Family
,” he says mockingly. “Ruth. Mom. Aunt Grace. Aunt Myra. Crazy Uncle Jack. Flakes all of them.”
    “They believe what they believe, John. So did Mom.”
    “And do you?”
    “You know I don’t,” Robert says firmly.
    Trying to make conversation, he makes the mistake of telling John about their father’s dying request. “Care to take it on yourself?” he asks.
    “You mean you
lied
to the old man?” John asks sardonically.
    Robert’s smile is sad. “What would you have done? Let him die without that?”
    “He didn’t ask me to do it,” John says.
    Robert glances at him, hearing the hurt beneath the anger. “He would have if you’d been here instead of me,” he says.
    “The hell he would have,” John replies. “The old bastard.”
    At the airport, John asks him if he wants to join him for a few drinks, he has forty minutes before his flight.
    “I can’t,” says Robert. “I’ve got to get home.”
    “Right,” says John. He opens the car door and gets out. “If you ever get to the coast—” he says. He raises his hand in a casual departing gesture. “See you, Bobby,” he says and shuts the door.
    “Oh, Christ, I should have gone with him,” Robert mutters to himself as he drives away from the terminal curb.
    Arriving home, he greets and takes care of Bart, then phones his sister. Sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk, he tells her. She invites him to her house for Sunday dinner. His up-cast glance of mock anguish indicates his reaction. “Sure, I’d like that,” he says pleasantly.
    He and Bart take a walk in the woods, Robert still talking to himself. “Well, what should I have done, said no, forget it, die without a hope?”
    He curses aloud, startling the Lab. “I’m sorry, pal,” he says, stopping to pet the dog’s head. “How you doing?”
    He wakes up late that night to hear a heavy, wheezing breath nearby. Disoriented, his sub-conscious still gripped by the funeral, he visualizes his father standing in the darkness by the bed, breathing laboredly, looking down at him in accusation.
    He rejects the vision, turns on the lamp and sees that it is Bart again. He sits on the floor and holds the dog’s head on his lap.
    “What’s the matter, Bartie?” he asks. He strokes the dog’s neck and shoulders. “We’d better take you to Amelia.”

    He is trying to work the next afternoon when the telephone rings.
    It is a lawyer named Williker calling to tell him that he is his father’s heir. What about my brother and sister? Robert asks. Nothing, says the lawyer.
    “Forget it then,” Robert says, suddenly resentful. “Give it to some charity, I don’t want it.”
    Shutting down his processor after the call, he drives to