The Institute

by Stephen King

  “The little Dixon boy’s one of the mind-readers, isn’t he? And he must be a powerful one, bed-wetter or not. No pink dot on his intake.”

  “Yeah, he is.” Luke went on stirring with the ice scoop.

  “Well, he’s right. It was a church adoption, right after my boy was born. I wanted to keep him, but pastor and my mother talked me out of it. The dog I married never wanted kids, so it was just the one I gave away. Do you really care about this, Luke?”

  “Yeah.” He did, but talking too long might be a bad idea. They might not be able to hear, but they could watch.

  “When I started getting my back pains, it came to me that I had to know what became of him, and I found out. State says they’re not supposed to tell where the babies go, but the church keeps adoption records going all the way back to 1950, and I got the computer password. Pastor keeps it right underneath the keyboard in the parsonage. My boy’s just two towns over from where I live in Vermont. A senior in high school. He wants to go to college. I found that out, too. My son wants to go to college. That’s what the money’s for, not to pay off that dirty dog’s bills.”

  She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, a quick and almost furtive gesture.

  He closed the ice chest and straightened up. “Take care of your back, Maureen.”

  “I will.”

  But what if it was cancer? That was what she thought it was, he knew it.

  She touched his shoulder as he turned away and leaned close. Her breath was bad. It was a sick person’s breath. “He doesn’t ever have to know where the money came from, my boy. But he needs to have it. And Luke? Do what they say, now. Everything they say.” She hesitated. “And if you want to talk to anybody about anything . . . do it here.”

  “I thought there were some other places where—”

  “Do it here,” she repeated, and rolled her basket back the way she had come.

  19

  When he returned to the playground, Luke was surprised to see Nicky playing HORSE with Harry Cross. They were laughing and bumping and ranking on each other as if they had been friends since first grade. Helen was sitting at the picnic table, playing double-deck War with Avery. Luke sat down beside her and asked who was winning.

  “Hard to tell,” Helen said. “Avery beat me last time, but this one’s a nail-biter.”

  “She thinks it’s boring as shit, but she’s being nice,” Avery said. “Isn’t that right, Helen?”

  “Indeed it is, Little Kreskin, indeed it is. And after this, we’re moving on to Slap Jack. You won’t like that one because I slap hard.”

  Luke looked around, and felt a sudden stab of concern. It bloomed a squadron of ghostly dots in front of his eyes, there and then gone. “Where’s Kalisha? They didn’t—”

  “No, no, they didn’t take her anywhere. She’s just having a shower.”

  “Luke likes her,” Avery announced. “He likes her a lot.”

  “Avery?”

  “What, Helen?”

  “Some things are better not discussed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Y’s a crooked letter and can’t be made straight.” She looked away suddenly. She ran a hand through her tu-tone hair, perhaps to hide her trembling mouth. If so, it didn’t work.

  “What’s wrong?” Luke asked.

  “Why don’t you just ask Little Kreskin? He sees all, he knows all.”

  “She got a thermometer jammed up her butt,” Avery said.

  “Oh,” Luke said.

  “Right,” Helen said. “How fucking degrading is that?”

  “Demeaning,” Luke said.

  “But also delightful and delicious,” Helen said, and then they were both laughing. Helen did it with tears standing in her eyes, but laughing was laughing, and being able to do it in here was a treasure.

  “I don’t get it,” Avery said. “How is getting a thermometer up your butt delightful and delicious?”

  “It’s delicious if you lick it when it comes out,” Luke said, and then they were all howling.

  Helen whacked the table, sending the cards flying. “Oh God I’m peeing myself, gross, don’t look!” And she went running, almost knocking George over as he came outside, noshing a peanut butter cup.

  “What’s her deal?” George asked.

  “Peed herself,” Avery said matter-of-factly. “I peed my bed last night, so I can relate.”

  “Thank you for sharing that,” Luke said, smiling. “Go over and play HORSE with Nicky and New Kid.”

  “Are you crazy? They’re too big, and Harry already pushed me down once.”

  “Then go jump on the trampoline.”

  “I’m bored of it.”

  “Go jump on it, anyway. I want to talk to George.”

  “About the lights? What lights?”

  The kid, Luke thought, was fucking eerie. “Go jump, Avester. Show me a couple of forward rolls.”

  “And try not to break your neck,” George said. “But if you do, I’ll sing ‘You Are So Beautiful’ at your funeral.”

  Avery looked at George fixedly for a moment or two, then said, “But you hate that song.”

  “Yes,” George said. “Yes, I do. Saying what I did is called satire. Or maybe irony. I always get those two things mixed up. Go on, now. Put an egg in your shoe and beat it.”

  They watched him trudge to the trampoline.

  “That kid is ten and except for the ESP shit acts like he’s six,” George said. “How fucked up is that?”

  “Pretty fucked up. How old are you, George?”

  “Thirteen,” George said, sounding morose. “But these days I feel a hundred. Listen, Luke, they say our parents are okay. Do you believe that?”

  It was a delicate question. At last Luke said, “Not . . . exactly.”

  “If you could find out for sure, would you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Not me,” George said. “I’ve got enough on my plate already. Finding out they were . . . you know . . . that would break me. But I can’t help wondering. Like all the time.”

  I could find out for you, Luke thought. I could find out for both of us. He almost leaned forward and whispered it in George’s ear. Then he thought of George saying he had enough on his plate already. “Listen, that eye thing—you had it?”

  “Sure. Everyone has it. Just like everyone gets the thermometer up the ass, and the EEG and the EKG and the MRI and the XYZ and the blood tests and the reflex tests and all the other wonderful things you have in store, Lukey.”

  Luke thought about asking if George had gone on seeing the dots after the projector was off and decided not to. “Did you have a seizure? Because I did.”

  “Nah. They did sit me down at a table, and the asshole doc with the mustache did some card tricks.”

  “You mean asking you what was on them.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean. I thought they were Rhine cards, pretty much had to be. I got tested on those a couple of years before I wound up in this charming hole of hell. This was after my parents figured out I really could move things around sometimes if I looked at them. Once they decided I wasn’t faking it just to freak them out, or as one of my little jokes, they wanted to find out what else was going on with me, so they took me to Princeton, where there’s this thing called Anomalies Research. Or was. I think they closed it down.”

  “Anomalies . . . are you serious?”

  “Yeah. Sounds more scientific than Psychic Research, I guess. It was actually part of the Princeton engineering department, if you can believe that. A couple of grad students ran the Rhine cards on me, but I pretty much zeroed out. I wasn’t even able to move much stuff around that day. Sometimes it’s just like that.” He shrugged. “They probably thought I was a faker, which was okey-doke with me. I mean, on a good day I can knock over a pile of blocks, just thinking about them, but that’ll never get me chicks. You agree?”

  As someone whose big trick was knocking a pizza pan off a restaurant table without touching it, Luke did. “So did t
hey slap you around?”

  “I did get one, and it was a real hummer,” George said. “It was because I tried to make a joke. This bitch named Priscilla laid it on me.”

  “I met her. She’s a bitch, all right.”

  A word his mother hated even more than fuck, and using it made Luke miss her all over again.

  “And you didn’t know what was on the cards.”

  George gave him an odd look. “I’m TK, not TP. The same as you. How could I?”

  “I guess you couldn’t.”

  “Since I’d had the Rhine cards at Princeton, I guessed cross, then star, then wavy lines. Priscilla told me to stop lying, so when Evans looked at the next one, I told him it was a photo of Priscilla’s tits. That’s when she slapped me. Then they let me go back to my room. Tell you the truth, they didn’t seem all that interested. More like they were crossing t’s and dotting i’s.”

  “Maybe they didn’t really expect anything,” Luke said. “Maybe you were just a control subject.”

  George laughed. “Man, I can’t control jackshit in here. What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing. Never mind. Did they come back? The lights, I mean? Those colored dots?”

  “No.” George looked curious now. “Did they with you?”

  “No.” Luke was suddenly glad that Avery wasn’t here, and could only hope the little kid’s brain radio was short-range. “Just . . . I did have a seizure . . . or thought I did . . . and I was afraid they might come back.”

  “I don’t get the point of this place,” George said, sounding more morose than ever. “It almost has to be a government installation, but . . . my mother bought this book, okay? Not long before they took me to Princeton. Psychic Histories and Hoaxes, it was called. I read it when she was done. There was a chapter on government experiments about the stuff we can do. The CIA ran some back in the nineteen-fifties. For telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, even levitation and teleportation. LSD was involved. They got some results, but nothing much.” He leaned forward, blue eyes on Luke’s green ones. “And that’s us, man—nothing much. Are we supposed to achieve world domination for the United States by moving Saltine boxes—and only if they’re empty—or flipping the pages of a book?”

  “They could send Avery to Russia,” Luke said. “He could tell them what Putin had for breakfast, and if he was wearing boxers or briefs.”

  That made George smile.

  “About our parents—” Luke began, but then Kalisha came running out, asking who wanted to play dodgeball.

  It turned out they all did.

  20

  There were no tests for Luke that day, except of his own intestinal fortitude, and that one he flunked again. Twice more he went to the Star Tribune, and twice more he backed out, although the second time he did peep at the headline, something about a guy running over a bunch of people with a truck to prove how religious he was. That was a terrible thing, but at least it was something that was going on beyond the Institute. The outside world was still there, and at least one thing had changed in here: the laptop’s welcome screen now had his name instead of the departed Donna’s.

  He would have to look for information about his parents sooner or later. He knew that, and now understood perfectly that old saying about no news being good news.

  The following day he was taken back down to C-Level, where a tech named Carlos took three ampules of blood, gave him a shot (no reaction), then had him go into a toilet cubicle and pee in a cup. After that, Carlos and a scowling orderly named Winona escorted him down to D-Level. Winona was reputed to be one of the mean ones, and Luke made no attempt to talk to her. They took him to a large room containing an MRI tube that must have cost megabucks.

  It almost has to be a government installation, George had said. If so, what would John and Josie Q. Public think about how their tax dollars were being spent? Luke guessed that in a country where people squalled about Big Brother even if faced with some piddling requirement like having to wear a motorcycle helmet or get a license to carry a concealed weapon, the answer would be “not much.”

  A new tech was waiting for them, but before he and Carlos could insert Luke in the tube, Dr. Evans darted in, checked Luke’s arm around the site of his latest shot, and pronounced him “fine as paint.” Whatever that meant. He asked if Luke had experienced any more seizures or fainting spells.

  “No.”

  “What about the colored lights? Any recurrence of those? Perhaps while exercising, perhaps while looking at your laptop computer, perhaps while straining at stool? That means—”

  “I know what it means. No.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Luke.”

  “I’m not.” Wondering if the MRI would detect some change in his brain activity and prove him a liar.

  “Okay, good.” Not good, Luke thought. You’re disappointed. Which makes me happy.

  Evans scribbled something on his clipboard. “Carry on, lady and gentlemen, carry on!” And he darted out again, like a white rabbit late for a very important date.

  The MRI tech—DAVE, his tag said—asked Luke if he was claustrophobic. “You probably know what that means, too.”

  “I’m not,” Luke said. “The only thing I’m phobic about is being locked up.”

  Dave was an earnest-looking fellow, middle-aged, bespectacled, mostly bald. He looked like an accountant. Of course, so had Adolf Eichmann. “Just if you are . . . claustrophobic, I mean . . . I can give you a Valium. It’s allowed.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “You should have one, anyway,” Carlos said. “You’re gonna be in there a long time, on and off, and it makes the experience more pleasant. You might even sleep, although it’s pretty loud. Bumps and bangs, you know.”

  Luke knew. He’d never actually been in an MRI tube, but he’d seen plenty of doctor shows. “I’ll pass.”

  But after lunch (brought in by Gladys), he took the Valium, partly out of curiosity, mostly out of boredom. He’d had three stints in the MRI, and according to Dave, had three more to go. Luke didn’t bother asking what they were testing for, looking for, or hoping to find. The answer would have been some form of none of your beeswax. He wasn’t sure they knew themselves.

  The Valium gave him a floaty, dreamy feeling, and during the last stint in the tube, he fell into a light doze in spite of the loud banging the machine made when it took its pictures. By the time Winona appeared to take him back to the residence level, the Valium had worn off and he just felt spaced out.

  She reached into her pocket and brought out a handful of tokens. When she handed them to him, one fell to the floor and rolled.

  “Pick that up, butterfingers.”

  He picked it up.

  “You’ve had a long day,” she said, and actually smiled. “Why don’t you go get yourself something to drink? Kick back. Relax. I recommend the Harveys Bristol Cream.”

  She was middle-aged, plenty old enough to have a kid Luke’s age. Maybe two. Would she have made a similar recommendation to them? Gee, you had a tough day at school, why not kick back and have a wine cooler before tackling your homework? He thought of saying that, the worst she’d probably do was slap him, but . . .

  “What good would it do?”

  “Huh?” She was frowning at him. “What good would what do?”

  “Anything,” he said. “Anything at all, Winnie.” He didn’t want Harveys Bristol Cream, or Twisted Tea, or even Stump Jump Grenache, a name John Keats might have been thinking of when he said something or other was “call’d as romantic as that westwards moon in yon waning ribbon of the night.”

  “You want to watch that wise mouth, Luke.”

  “I’ll work on that.”

  He put the tokens in his pocket. He believed there were nine of them. He would give three to Avery, and three to each of the Wilcox twins. Enough for snacks, not enough for any of the other stuff. All he wanted for himself at the present moment was a big load of protein and carbs. He didn’t care what was on tonight’s menu f
or supper as long as there was a lot of it.

  21

  The next morning Joe and Hadad took him back down to C-Level, where he was told to drink a barium solution. Tony stood by with his zap-stick, ready to administer a jolt if Luke voiced any disagreement. Once he’d drained every drop, he was led to a cubicle the size of a bathroom stall in a turnpike rest area and X-rayed. That part went all right, but as he left the cubicle, he cramped up and doubled over.

  “Don’t you hurl on this floor,” Tony said. “If you’re going to do it, use the sink in the corner.”

  Too late. Luke’s half-digested breakfast came up in a barium puree.

  “Ah, shit. You are now going to mop that up, and when you’re done, I want the floor to be so clean I can eat off it.”

  “I’ll do it,” Hadad said.

  “The fuck you will.” Tony didn’t look at him or raise his voice, but Hadad flinched just the same. “You can get the mop and the bucket. The rest is Luke’s job.”

  Hadad got the cleaning stuff. Luke managed to fill the bucket at the sink in the corner of the room, but he was still having stomach cramps, and his arms were trembling too badly to lower it again without spilling the soapy water everywhere. Joe did that for him, whispering “Hang in there, kid” into Luke’s ear.

  “Just give him the mop,” Tony said, and Luke understood—in the new way he had of understanding things—that old Tones was enjoying himself.

  Luke swabbed and rinsed. Tony surveyed his work, pronounced it unacceptable, and told him to do it again. The cramps had let up, and this time he was able to lift and lower the bucket by himself. Hadad and Joe were sitting down and discussing the chances of the Yankees and the San Diego Padres, apparently their teams of choice. On the way back to the elevator, Hadad clapped him on the back and said, “You done good, Luke. Got some tokens for him, Joey? I’m all out.”