The Institute

by Stephen King

  Avery was one of the dodgers running around inside the circle, and now someone bonked him right in the face with the ball. He sat down and began to cry. Stevie Whipple helped him to his feet and examined his nose. “No blood, you’re okay. Why don’t you go over there and sit with Luke?”

  “Out of the game is what you mean,” Avery said, still sniffling. “That’s okay. I can still—”

  “Avery!” Luke called. He held up a couple of tokens. “You want some peanut butter crackers and a Coke?”

  Avery trotted over, smack in the face forgotten. “Sure!”

  They went inside to the canteen. Avery dropped a token into the snack machine slot, and when he bent over to fish the package from the tray, Luke bent over with him and whispered in his ear. “You want to help me get out of here?”

  Avery held up the package of Nabs. “Want one?” And in Luke’s mind, the word lit up and faded: How?

  “I’ll just take one, you have the rest,” Luke said, and sent back three words: Tell you tonight.

  Two conversations going on, one aloud, one between their minds. And that was how it would work with Maureen.

  He hoped.

  11

  After breakfast the next day, Gladys and Hadad took Luke down to the immersion tank. There they left him with Zeke and Dave.

  Zeke Ionidis said, “We do tests here, but it’s also where we dunk bad boys and girls who don’t tell the truth. Do you tell the truth, Luke?”

  “Yes,” Luke said.

  “Have you got the telep?”

  “The what?” Knowing perfectly well what Zeke the Freak meant.

  “The telep. The TP. You got it?”

  “No. I’m TK, remember? Move spoons and stuff?” He tried a smile. “Can’t bend them, though. I’ve tried.”

  Zeke shook his head. “If you’re TK and see the dots, you get the telep. You’re TP and see the dots, you move the spoons. That’s how it works.”

  You don’t know how it works, Luke thought. None of you do. He remembered someone—maybe Kalisha, maybe George—telling him they’d know if he lied about seeing the dots. He guessed that was true, maybe the EEG readings showed them, but did they know this? They did not. Zeke was bluffing.

  “I have seen the dots a couple of times, but I can’t read minds.”

  “Hendricks and Evans think you can,” Dave said.

  “I really can’t.” He looked at them with his very best honest-to-God eyes.

  “We’re going to find out if that’s the truth,” Dave said. “Strip down, sport.”

  With no choice, Luke took off his clothes and stepped into the tank. It was about four feet deep and eight feet across. The water was cool and pleasant; so far, so good.

  “I’m thinking of an animal,” Zeke said. “What is it?”

  It was a cat. Luke got no image, just the word, as big and bright as a Budweiser sign in a bar window.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, sport, if that’s how you want to play it. Take a deep breath, go under, and count to fifteen. Put a howdy-do between each number. One howdy-do, two howdy-do, three howdy-do, like that.”

  Luke did it. When he emerged, Dave (last name unknown, at least so far) asked him what animal he was thinking of. The word in his mind was KANGAROO.

  “I don’t know. I told you, I’m TK, not TP. And not even TK-pos.”

  “Down you go,” Zeke said. “Thirty seconds, with a howdy-do between each number. I’ll be timing you, sport.”

  The third dip was forty-five seconds, the fourth a full minute. He was questioned after each one. They switched from animals to the names of various caretakers: Gladys, Norma, Pete, Priscilla.

  “I can’t!” Luke shouted, wiping water from his eyes. “Don’t you get that?”

  “What I get is we’re going to try for a minute and a quarter,” Zeke said. “And while you’re counting, think about how long you want to keep this up. It’s in your hands, sport.”

  Luke tried to surface after he’d counted to sixty-seven. Zeke grabbed his head and pushed him back down. He came up at a minute-fifteen gasping for air, his heart pounding.

  “What sports team am I thinking about?” Dave asked, and in his mind Luke saw a bright bar sign reading VIKINGS.

  “I don’t know!”

  “Bullshit,” Zeke said. “Let’s go for a minute-thirty.”

  “No,” Luke said, splashing back toward the center of the tank. He was trying not to panic. “I can’t.”

  Zeke rolled his eyes. “Stop being a pussy. Abalone fishermen can go under for nine minutes. All I want is ninety seconds. Unless you tell your Uncle Dave here what his favorite sports team is.”

  “He’s not my uncle and I can’t do that. Now let me out.” And because he couldn’t help it: “Please.”

  Zeke unholstered his zap-stick and made a production of turning the dial up to max. “You want me to touch this to the water? I do that and you’ll dance like Michael Jackson. Now get over here.”

  With no choice, Luke waded toward the edge of the immersion tank. It’s fun, Richardson had said.

  “One more chance,” Zeke said. “What’s he thinking of?”

  Vikings, Minnesota Vikings, my hometown team.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” Zeke said, sounding regretful. “USN Luke now submerging.”

  “Wait, give him a few secs to get ready,” Dave said. He looked worried, and that worried Luke. “Flood your lungs with air, Luke. And try to be calm. When your body’s on red alert, it uses more oxy.”

  Luke gasped in and out half a dozen times and submerged. Zeke’s hand came down on his head and gripped his hair. Calm, calm, calm, Luke thought. Also, You fucker, Zeke, you fucker, I hate your sadistic guts.

  He made the ninety seconds and came up gasping. Dave dried his face with a towel. “Stop this,” he murmured in Luke’s ear. “Just tell me what I’m thinking. This time it’s a movie star.”

  MATT DAMON, the bar sign in Dave’s head now said.

  “I don’t know.” Luke began to cry, the tears running down his wet face.

  Zeke said, “Fine. Let’s go for a minute forty-five. One hundred and five big seconds, and don’t forget to put a howdy-do between each one. We’ll turn you into an abalone fisherman yet.”

  Luke hyperventilated again, but by the time he reached one hundred, counting in his head, he felt sure he was going to open his mouth and suck in water. They would haul him out, resuscitate him, and do it again. They would keep on until he either told them what they wanted to hear or drowned.

  At last the hand on his head was gone. He surged up, gasping and coughing. They gave him time to recover, then Zeke said, “Never mind the animals and sports teams and the whatever. Just say it. Say ‘I’m a telep, I’m TP,’ and this stops.”

  “Okay! Okay, I’m a telep!”

  “Great!” Zeke cried. “Progress! What number am I thinking of?”

  The bright bar sign read 17.

  “Six,” Luke said.

  Zeke made a game-show buzzer sound. “Sorry, it was seventeen. Two minutes this time.”

  “No! I can’t! Please!”

  Dave spoke quietly. “Last one, Luke.”

  Zeke gave his colleague a shoulder-shove almost hard enough to knock him off his feet. “Don’t tell him what might not be true.” He returned his attention to Luke. “I’ll give you thirty seconds to get fully aerated, and then down you go. Olympic Diving Team, baby.”

  With no choice, Luke inhaled and exhaled rapidly, but long before he could count to thirty in his head, Zeke’s hand closed on his hair and shoved him down.

  Luke opened his eyes and stared at the white side of the tank. The paint was scratched in a couple of places, maybe by the fingernails of other children subjected to this torture, which was reserved strictly for pinks. And why? It was pretty obvious. Because Hendricks and Evans thought the range of psychic talents could be expanded, and pinks were expendable.

  Expand, expend, he thought. Expand, expen
d. Calm, calm, calm.

  And although he tried his best to enter a Zenlike state, his lungs eventually demanded more air. His Zenlike state, which hadn’t been very Zenlike to begin with, broke down when he thought that if he survived this he’d be forced to go two minutes and fifteen, then two minutes and thirty, then—

  He began to thrash. Zeke held him down. He planted his feet and pushed, almost made it to the surface, but Zeke added his other hand and pushed him down again. The dots came back, flashing in front of his eyes, rushing toward him, pulling back, then rushing toward him again. They started to swirl around him like a carousel gone crazy. Luke thought, The Stasi Lights. I’m going to drown looking at the—

  Zeke hauled him up by the hair. His white tunic was soaked. He looked fixedly at Luke. “I’m going to put you down again, Luke. Again and again and again. I’ll put you down until you drown and then we’ll resuscitate you and drown you again and resuscitate you again. Last chance: what number am I thinking of?”

  “I don’t . . .” Luke retched out water. “. . . know!”

  That fixed gaze remained for perhaps five seconds. Luke met it, although his eyes were gushing tears. Then Zeke said, “Fuck this and fuck you, sport. Dave, dry him off and send him back. I don’t want to look at his little cunt face.”

  He left, slamming the door.

  Luke floundered from the pool, staggered, almost fell. Dave steadied him, then handed him a towel. Luke dried himself and got back into his clothes as fast as he could. He didn’t want to be anywhere near this man or this place, but even feeling half-dead, his curiosity remained. “Why is it so important? Why is it so important when it isn’t even what we’re here for?”

  “How would you know what you’re here for?” Dave asked.

  “Because I’m not stupid, that’s why.”

  “You want to keep your mouth shut, Luke,” Dave said. “I like you, but that doesn’t mean I want to listen to you run your mouth.”

  “Whatever the dots are for, it doesn’t have anything to do with finding out if I can go both ways, TP as well as TK. What are you guys doing? Do you even kn—”

  Dave slapped him, a big roundhouse that knocked Luke off his feet. Water puddled on the tile floor soaked into the seat of his jeans. “I’m not here to answer your questions.” He bent toward Luke. “We know what we’re doing, smartass! We know exactly what we’re doing!” And, as he hauled Luke up: “We had a kid here last year who lasted three and a half minutes. He was a pain in the ass, but at least he had balls!”

  12

  Avery came to his room, concerned, and Luke told him to go away, he needed to be alone for awhile.

  “It was bad, wasn’t it?” Avery asked. “The tank. I’m sorry, Luke.”

  “Thanks. Now go away. We’ll talk later.”

  “Okay.”

  Avery went, considerately closing the door behind him. Luke lay on his back, trying not to relive those endless minutes submerged in the tank and doing it anyway. He kept waiting for the lights to come back, bobbing and racing through his field of vision, turning circles and making dizzy whirlpools. When they didn’t, he began to calm. One thought trumped all others, even his fear that the dots might come back . . . and stay this time.

  Get out. I have to get out. And if I can’t do that, I have to die before they take me to Back Half and take the rest of me.

  13

  The worst of the bugs had departed with June, so Dr. Hendricks met with Zeke Ionidis in front of the administration building, where there was a bench under a shady oak tree. Nearby was a flagpole, with the stars and stripes flapping lazily in a light summer breeze. Dr. Hendricks held Luke’s folder on his lap.

  “You’re sure,” he said to Zeke.

  “Positive. I dunked the little bastard five or six times, I guess, each one fifteen seconds longer, just like you said. If he could read minds, he would have done it, and you can take that to the bank. A Navy SEAL couldn’t stand up to that shit, let alone a kid not old enough to have more than six hairs on his balls.”

  Hendricks seemed ready to push it, then sighed and shook his head. “All right. I can live with that. We’ve got plenty of pinks right now, and more due in. An embarrassment of riches. But it’s still a disappointment. I had hopes for that boy.”

  He opened the file with its little pink dot in the upper righthand corner. He took a pen from his pocket and drew a diagonal line across the first page. “At least he’s healthy. Evans gave him a clean bill. That idiot girl—Benson—didn’t pass her chicken pox on to him.”

  “He wasn’t vaccinated against that?” Zeke asked.

  “He was, but she took pains to swap spit with him. And she had quite a serious case. Couldn’t risk it. Nope. Better safe than sorry.”

  “So when does he go to Back Half?”

  Hendricks smiled a little. “Can’t wait to get rid of him, can you?”

  “Actually, no,” Zeke said. “The Benson girl might not have infected him with chicken pox, but Wilholm passed on his fuck-you germ.”

  “He goes as soon as I get a green light from Heckle and Jeckle.”

  Zeke pretended to shiver. “Those two. Brrr. Creepy.”

  Hendricks advanced no opinion on the Back Half doctors. “You’re sure he’s flat as far as telepathy goes?”

  Zeke patted him on the shoulder. “Absolutely, Doc. Take it to the bank.”

  14

  While Hendricks and Zeke were discussing his future, Luke was on his way to lunch. As well as terrorizing him, the immersion tank had left him ravenously hungry. When Stevie Whipple asked where he’d been and what was wrong, Luke just shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about the tank. Not now, not ever. He supposed it was like being in a war. You got drafted, you went, but you didn’t want to talk about what you’d seen, or what had happened to you there.

  Full of the caff’s version of fettuccini alfredo, he took a nap and awoke feeling marginally better. He went looking for Maureen and spied her in the formerly deserted East Wing. It seemed the Institute might soon be hosting more guests. He walked down to her and asked if she needed help. “Because I wouldn’t mind earning some tokens,” he said.

  “No, I’m fine.” To Luke she looked like she was ageing almost by the hour. Her face was dead pale. He wondered how long it would be before someone noticed her condition and made her stop working. He didn’t like to think about what might become of her if that happened. Was there a retirement program for housekeepers who were also Institute snitches? He doubted it.

  Her laundry basket was half filled with fresh linen, and Luke dropped his own note into it. He had written it on a memo sheet he’d stolen from the equipment alcove in C-4, along with a cheap ballpoint pen which he’d hidden under his mattress. Stamped on the barrel of the pen was DENNISON RIVER BEND REALTY. Maureen saw the folded note, covered it with a pillowcase, and gave him a slight nod. Luke went on his way.

  That night in bed, he whispered to Avery for a long time before allowing the kid to go to sleep. There were two scripts, he told Avery, there had to be. He thought the Avester understood. Or maybe the right word was hoped.

  Luke stayed awake a long time, listening to Avery’s light snores and meditating on escape. The idea seemed simultaneously absurd and perfectly possible. There were those dusty surveillance bulbs, and all the times he had been left alone to wander, gathering in his little bits and bobs of information. There were the fake surveillance dead zones that Sigsby and her minions knew about, and the real one that they didn’t (or so he hoped). In the end, it was a pretty simple equation. He had to try. The alternative was the Stasi Lights, the movies, the headaches, the sparkler that triggered whatever it triggered. And at the end of it all, the drone.

  When they stop testing, you might only have 3 days.

  15

  The following afternoon, Trevor Stackhouse joined Mrs. Sigsby in her office. She was bent over an open file, reading and making notes. She raised a single finger without looking up. He went to her window, which looked ou
t on the East Wing of the building they called the Residence Hall, as if the Institute really were a college campus, one that happened to be situated in the deep woods of northern Maine. He could see two or three kids milling around snack and soda machines that had just been restocked. There was no tobacco or alcohol available in that lounge, hadn’t been since 2005. The East Wing was usually thinly populated or not populated at all, and when there were residents boarded there, they could get cigarettes and wine nips from the vending machines at the other end of the building. Some only sampled, but a surprising number—usually those who were the most depressed and terrified by the sudden catastrophic change in their lives—became addicted quickly. Those were the ones who gave the least trouble, because they didn’t just want tokens, they needed them. Karl Marx had called religion the opiate of the people, but Stackhouse begged to differ. He thought Lucky Strikes and Boone’s Farm (greatly favored by their female guests) did the job quite nicely.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Sigsby said, closing her file. “Ready for you, Trevor.”

  “Four more coming in tomorrow from Opal team,” Stackhouse said. His hands were clasped behind his back and his feet were spread apart. Like a captain on the foredeck of his ship, Mrs. Sigsby thought. He was wearing one of his trademark brown suits, which she would have thought a terrible choice for midsummer, but he no doubt considered it part of his image. “We haven’t had this many onboard since 2008.”

  He turned from the view, which really wasn’t that interesting. Sometimes—often, even—he got very tired of children. He didn’t know how teachers did it, especially without the freedom to whack the insolent and administer a splash of electricity to the rebellious, like the now departed Nicholas Wilholm.