The Institute

by Stephen King

  “Priscilla,” Hendricks said, “take Luke back to his room.”

  “Yes, Doctor. Bran, help me with him as far as the elevator.”

  By the time they got him there, Luke felt reintegrated again, his mind slipping back into gear. Had they really turned off the projector? And he still kept seeing the dots?

  “You made a mistake.” Luke’s mouth and throat were very dry. “I’m not what you people call a TP. You know that, right?”

  “Whatever,” Priscilla said indifferently. She turned to Brandon and with a real smile became a new person. “I’ll see you later, right?”

  Brandon grinned. “You bet.” He turned to Luke, suddenly made a fist, and drove it at Luke’s face. He stopped an inch short of Luke’s nose, but Luke cringed and cried out. Brandon laughed heartily, and Priscilla gave him an indulgent boys-will-be-boys smile.

  “Shake her easy, Luke,” Brandon said, and headed off down the C-Level hall in a modified swagger, his holstered zap-stick bumping against his hip.

  Back in the main corridor—what Luke now understood to be the residents’ wing—the little girls, Gerda and Greta, were standing and watching with wide, frightened eyes. They were holding hands and clutching dolls as identical as they were. They reminded Luke of twins in some old horror movie.

  Priscilla accompanied him to his door and walked away without saying anything. Luke went in, saw that no one had come to take away his laptop, and collapsed on his bed without even taking off his shoes. There he slept for the next five hours.

  15

  Mrs. Sigsby was waiting when Dr. Hendricks, aka Donkey Kong, entered the private suite adjacent to her office. She was perched on the small sofa. He handed her a file. “I know you worship hard copy, so here you are. Much good it will do you.”

  She didn’t open it. “It can’t do me good or harm, Dan. These are your tests, your secondary experiments, and they don’t seem to be panning out.”

  He set his jaw stubbornly. “Agnes Jordan. William Gortsen. Veena Patel. Two or three others whose names now escape me. Donna something. We had positive results with all of them.”

  She sighed and primped at her thinning hair. Hendricks thought Siggers had a bird’s face: a sharp nose instead of a beak, but the same avid little eyes. A bird’s face with a bureaucrat’s brain behind it. Hopeless, really. “And dozens of pinks with whom you had no results at all.”

  “Perhaps that’s true, but think about it,” he said, because what he wanted to say—How can you be so stupid?—would get him in a world of trouble. “If telepathy and telekinesis are linked, as my experiments suggest they are, there may be other psychic abilities, as well, latent and just waiting to be brought to the fore. What these kids can do, even the most talented ones, may only be the tip of the iceberg. Suppose psychic healing is a real possibility? Suppose a glioblastoma tumor like the one that killed John McCain could be cured simply by the power of thought? Suppose these abilities could be channeled to lengthen life, perhaps to a hundred and fifty years, even longer? What we’re using them for doesn’t have to be the end; it might only be the beginning!”

  “I’ve heard all this before,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “And read it in what you’re pleased to call your mission statement.”

  But you don’t understand, he thought. Neither does Stackhouse. Evans does, sort of, but not even he sees the vast potential. “It’s not as though the Ellis boy or Iris Stanhope are especially valuable. We don’t call them pinks for nothing.” He made a pish sound, and waved his hand.

  “That was truer twenty years ago than it is today,” Mrs. Sigsby replied. “Even ten.”

  “But—”

  “Enough, Dan. Did the Ellis boy show indications of TP, or didn’t he?”

  “No, but he continued to see the lights after the projector was turned off, which we believe is an indicator. A strong indicator. Then, unfortunately, he had a seizure. Which isn’t uncommon, as you know.”

  She sighed. “I have no objection to you continuing your tests with the Stasi Lights, Dan, but you need to keep perspective here. Our main purpose is to prepare the residents for Back Half. That’s the important thing, the main objective. Any side-effects are not of great concern. The management isn’t interested in the psychic equivalent of Rogaine.”

  Hendricks recoiled as if she had struck at him. “A hypertension medicine that also proved able to grow hair on the skulls of bald suburbanites is hardly in the same league as a procedure that could change the course of human existence!”

  “Perhaps not, and perhaps if your tests had caused more frequent results, I—and the people who pay our salaries—might be more excited. But all you have now are a few random hits.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again when she gave him her most forbidding look.

  “You can continue your tests for the time being, be content with that. You should be, considering that we have lost several children as a result of them.”

  “Pinks,” he said, and made that dismissive pish sound again.

  “You act as though they were a dime a dozen,” she said. “Maybe once they were, but no more, Dan. No more. In the meantime, here’s a file for you.”

  It was a red file. Stamped across it was RELOCATION.

  16

  When Luke walked into the lounge that evening, he found Kalisha sitting on the floor with her back against one of the big windows looking out on the playground. She was sipping from one of the small bottles of alcohol available for purchase in the snack machine.

  “You drink that stuff?” he asked, sitting down beside her. In the playground, Avery and Helen were on the trampoline. She was apparently teaching him how to do a forward roll. Soon it would be too dark and they’d have to come in. Although never closed, the playground had no lights, and that discouraged most nighttime visits.

  “First time. Used all my tokens. It’s pretty horrible. Want some?” She held out the bottle, which contained a beverage called Twisted Tea.

  “I’ll pass. Sha, why didn’t you tell me that light test was so bad?”

  “Call me Kalisha. You’re the only one who does, and I like it.” Her voice was the tiniest bit slurred. She couldn’t have drunk more than a few ounces of the alcoholic tea, but he supposed she wasn’t used to it.

  “All right. Kalisha. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She shrugged. “They make you look at dancing colored lights until you get a little woozy. What’s so bad about that?” That came out tha.

  “Really? Is that all that happened to you?”

  “Yes. Why? What happened to you?”

  “They gave me a shot first, and I had a reaction. My throat closed up. I thought for a minute I was going to die.”

  “Huh. They gave me a shot before I had the test, but nothing happened. That does sound bad. I’m sorry, Lukey.”

  “That was only the first bad part. I passed out while I was looking at the lights. Had a seizure, I think.” He had also wet his pants a little, but that was information he’d keep to himself. “When I woke up . . .” He paused, getting himself under control. He had no urge to cry in front of this pretty girl with her pretty brown eyes and curly black hair. “When I woke up, they slapped me around.”

  She sat up straight. “Say what?”

  He nodded. “Then one of the docs . . . Evans, do you know him?”

  “The one with the little ’stash.” She wrinkled her nose and had another sip.

  “Yeah, him. He had some cards and tried to get me to say what was on them. They were ESP cards. Pretty much had to be. You talked about them, remember?”

  “Sure. They’ve tested those on me a dozen times. Two dozen. But they didn’t after the lights. They just took me back to my room.” She took another tiny sip. “They must have confused their paperwork, thought you were TP instead of TK.”

  “That’s what I thought at first, and I told them, but they kept slapping me. Like they thought I was faking.”

  “Craziest thing I ever heard,” she said. Hur
r instead of heard.

  “I think it happened because I’m not what you guys call a pos. I’m just ordinary. They call us ordinary kids pinks.”

  “Yeah. Pinks. That’s right.”

  “What about the other kids? Did any of that stuff happen to them?”

  “Never asked them. Sure you don’t want some of this?”

  Luke took the bottle and had a swallow, mostly so she wouldn’t drink all of it. In his estimation, she’d had enough. It was just as horrible as he’d expected. He handed it back.

  “Don’t you want to know what I’m celebrating?”

  “What?”

  “Iris. Her memory. She’s like you, nothing special, just a little TK. They came and took her an hour ago. And as George would say, we will see her no more.”

  She began to cry. Luke put his arms around her. He couldn’t think what else to do. She put her head on his shoulder.

  17

  That night he went to the Mr. Griffin site again, typed in the Star Trib web address, and stared at it for almost three minutes before backing out without hitting enter. Coward, he thought. I’m a coward. If they’re dead, I should find out. Only he didn’t know how he could face that news without breaking down completely. Besides, what good would it do?

  He typed in Vermont debt lawyers instead. He had already researched this, but told himself that double-checking his work was always a good idea. And it would pass the time.

  Twenty minutes later he shut down and was debating whether to take a walk and see who was around (Kalisha would be his first choice, if she wasn’t sleeping it off ), when the colored spots came back. They swirled in front of his eyes and the world started to go away. To pull away, like a train leaving the station while he watched from the platform.

  He put his head down on the closed laptop and took big slow breaths, telling himself to hold on, hold on, just hold on. Telling himself it would pass, not allowing himself to wonder what would happen if it didn’t. At least he could swallow. Swallowing was fine, and eventually that sense of drifting away from himself—drifting into a universe of swirling lights—did pass. He didn’t know how long it took, maybe only a minute or two, but it felt much longer.

  He went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth, looking at himself in the mirror as he did it. They could know about the dots, probably did know about the dots, but not about the other. He had no idea what had been on the first card, or on the third one, but the second had been a boy on a bike and the fourth had been a small dog with a ball in its mouth. Black dog, red ball. It seemed he was TP after all.

  Or was now.

  He rinsed his mouth, turned off the lights, undressed in the dark, and laid down on his bed. Those lights had changed him. They knew that might happen, but weren’t sure. He didn’t know how he could be positive of that, but—

  He was a test subject, maybe they all were, but low-level TPs and TKs—pinks—got extra tests. Why? Because they were less valuable? More expendable if things went wrong? There was no way to be sure, but Luke thought it was likely. The doctors believed the experiment with the cards had been a failure. That was good. These were bad people, and keeping secrets from bad people had to be good, right? But he had an idea the lights might have some purpose beyond growing the talents of the pinks, because stronger TPs and TKs, like Kalisha and George, also got them. What might that other purpose be?

  He didn’t know. He only knew that the dots were gone, and Iris was gone, and the dots might come back but Iris wouldn’t. Iris had gone to Back Half and they would see her no more.

  18

  There were nine children at breakfast the following morning, but with Iris gone, there was little talk and no laughter. George Iles cracked no jokes. Helen Simms breakfasted on candy cigarettes. Harry Cross got a mountain of scrambled eggs from the buffet, and shoveled them in (along with bacon and home fries) without looking up from his plate, like a man doing work. The little girls, Greta and Gerda Wilcox, ate nothing until Gladys appeared, sunny smile and all, and coaxed a few bites into them. The twins seemed to cheer up at her attentions, even laughed a little. Luke thought of taking them aside later and telling them not to trust that smile, but it would frighten them, and what good would that do?

  What good would that do had become another mantra, and he recognized it was a bad way to think, a step down the path to acceptance of this place. He didn’t want to go there, no way did he want to go there, but logic was logic. If the little Gs were comforted by the attentions of the big G, maybe that was for the best, but when he thought about those girls getting the rectal thermometer . . . and the lights . . .

  “What’s up with you?” Nicky asked. “You look like you bit into a lemon.”

  “Nothing. Thinking about Iris.”

  “She’s history, man.”

  Luke looked at him. “That’s cold.”

  Nicky shrugged. “The truth often is. Want to go out and play HORSE?”

  “No.”

  “Come on. I’ll spot you the H and even let you have your ride at the end.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Chicken?” Nicky asked it without rancor.

  Luke shook his head. “It would just make me feel bad. I used to play it with my dad.” He heard that used to and hated it.

  “Okay, I hear that.” He looked at Luke with an expression Luke could barely stand, especially coming from Nicky Wilholm. “Listen, man . . .”

  “What?”

  Nicky sighed. “Just I’ll be out there if you change your mind.”

  Luke left the caff and wandered up his corridor—the JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE corridor—and then up the next one, which he now thought of as the Ice Machine Hallway. No sign of Maureen, so he kept going. He passed more motivational posters and more rooms, nine on each side. All the doors stood open, displaying unmade beds and walls that were bare of posters. This made them look like what they really were: jail cells for kids. He passed the elevator annex and kept walking past more rooms. Certain conclusions seemed inescapable. One was that once upon a time there had been a lot more “guests” in the Institute. Unless those in charge had been overly optimistic.

  Luke eventually came to another lounge, where the janitor named Fred was running a buffer in big, lackadaisical sweeps. There were snack and drink machines here, but they were empty and unplugged. There was no playground outside, only a swatch of gravel, more chainlink with some benches beyond (presumably for staff members who wanted to take their breaks outside), and the low green admin building seventy yards or so further on. The lair of Mrs. Sigsby, who had told him he was here to serve.

  “What are you doing?” Fred the janitor asked.

  “Just walking around,” Luke said. “Seeing the sights.”

  “There are no sights. Go back where you came from. Play with the other kids.”

  “What if I don’t want to?” That sounded pathetic rather than defiant, and Luke wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

  Fred was wearing a walkie-talkie on one hip and a zap-stick on the other. He touched the latter. “Go back. Won’t tell you again.”

  “Okay. Have a nice day, Fred.”

  “Fuck your nice day.” The buffer started up again.

  Luke retreated, marveling at how quickly all his unquestioned assumptions about adults—that they were nice to you if you were nice to them, just for starters—had been blown up. He tried not to look into all those empty rooms as he passed them. They were spooky. How many kids had lived in them? What happened to them when they went to Back Half? And where were they now? Home?

  “The fuck they are,” he murmured, and wished his mom was around to hear him use that word and reprimand him for it. That he didn’t have his father was bad. That he didn’t have his mother was like a pulled tooth.

  When he got to the Ice Machine Hallway, he saw Maureen’s Dandux basket parked outside Avery’s room. He poked his head in, and she gave him a smile as she smoothed down the coverlet on the Avester’s bed. “All okay, Luke?”

&nbs
p; A stupid question, but he knew she meant it well; just how he knew might have something or nothing to do with yesterday’s light-show. Maureen’s face looked paler today, the lines around her mouth deeper. Luke thought, This woman is not okay.

  “Sure. How about you?”

  “I’m fine.” She was lying. This didn’t feel like a hunch or an insight; it felt like a rock-solid fact. “Except this one—Avery—wet the bed last night.” She sighed. “He’s not the first and he won’t be the last. Thankfully it didn’t go through the mattress pad. You take care now, Luke. Have a fine day.” She was looking directly at him, her eyes hopeful. Except it was what was behind them that was hopeful. He thought again, They changed me. I don’t know how and I don’t know how much, but yes, they changed me. Something new has been added. He was very glad he’d lied about the cards. And very glad they believed his lie. At least for now.

  He made as if to leave the doorway, then turned back. “Think I’ll get some more ice. They slapped me around some yesterday, and my face is sore.”

  “You do that, son. You do that.”

  Again, that son warmed him. Made him want to smile.

  He got the bucket that was still in his room, dumped the meltwater into the bathroom basin, and took it back to the ice machine. Maureen was there, bent over with her bottom against the cinderblock wall, hands on her shins almost all the way down to her ankles. Luke hurried to her, but she waved him off. “Just stretching my back. Getting the kinks out.”

  Luke opened the door of the ice machine and got the scoop. He couldn’t pass her a note, as Kalisha had passed one to him, because although he had a laptop, he had no paper and no pen. Not even a stub of a pencil. Maybe that was good. Notes were dangerous in here.

  “Leah Fink, in Burlington,” he murmured as he scooped ice. “Rudolph Davis, in Montpelier. Both have five stars on Legal Eagle. That’s a consumer website. Can you remember the names?”

  “Leah Fink, Rudolph Davis. Bless you, Luke.”

  Luke knew he should leave it at that, but he was curious. He had always been curious. So instead of going, he pounded at the ice, as if to break it up. It didn’t need any breaking, but it made a nice loud sound. “Avery said the money you’ve got saved is for a kid. I know it’s not any of my business—”