The Institute

by Stephen King

  “Hello, Mrs. Sigsby! Hello, Security Director Stackhouse! How wonderful to see you! We should get together more often! I’m sorry about the circumstances that have brought you here today, however!” He bent and patted the canvas bundle containing Maureen Alvorson. Then touched the corner of his mouth, as if patting at a cold sore only he could see or feel. “In the midst of life, cetra-cetra.”

  “We need to make this quick,” Stackhouse said. Meaning, Mrs. Sigsby supposed, we have to get out of here. She quite concurred. This was where the real work was done, and Drs. Heckle and Jeckle (real name Joanne James) were heroes for doing it, but that didn’t make it any easier to be here. She could already feel the atmosphere of the place. It was like being in a low-level electrical field.

  “Yes, of course you do, the work never ends, wheels within wheels, big fleas with little fleas to bite em, don’t I know, right this way.”

  From the lounge, with its ugly chairs, equally ugly sofa, and elderly flatscreen, they entered a hall with a thick blue carpet on the floor—in Back Half, the children sometimes fell down and bumped their valuable little heads. The trolley’s wheels left tracks in the nap. This looked much like a corridor on the residence level of Front Half, except for the locks on the doors, which were all shut. From behind one of them, Mrs. Sigsby heard pounding and muffled cries of “Let me out!” and “At least give me a fucking aspirin!”

  “Iris Stanhope,” Heckle said. “She’s not feeling well today, I’m afraid. On the upside, several of our other recent arrivals are holding up remarkably well. We’re having a movie this evening, you know. And fireworks tomorrow.” He giggled and touched the corner of his mouth, reminding Mrs. Sigsby—grotesquely—of Shirley Temple.

  She brushed at her hair to make sure it was still in place. It was, of course. What she was feeling—that low buzz along her exposed skin, the sense that her eyeballs were vibrating in their sockets—wasn’t electricity.

  They passed the screening room with its dozen or so plush seats. Sitting in the front row were Kalisha Benson, Nick Wilholm, and George Iles. They were wearing their red and blue singlets. The Benson girl was sucking on a candy cigarette; Wilholm was smoking a real one, the air around his head wreathed with gray smoke. Iles was rubbing lightly at his temples. Benson and Iles turned to look at them as they rolled past with their canvas-wrapped burden; Wilholm just went on staring at the blank movie screen. A lot of steam has been taken out of that hotdog, Mrs. Sigsby thought with satisfaction.

  The cafeteria was beyond the screening room, on the other side of the corridor. It was much smaller than the one in Front Half. There were always more children here, but the longer they stayed in Back Half, the less they ate. Mrs. Sigsby supposed an English major might call that irony. Three kids were currently present, two slurping up what looked like oatmeal, the other—a girl of about twelve—simply sitting with a full bowl in front of her. But when she saw them passing with the trolley, she brightened.

  “Hi! What you got there? Is it a dead person? It is, isn’t it? Was her name Morris? That’s a funny name for a girl. Maybe it’s Morin. Can I see? Are her eyes open?”

  “That’s Donna,” Heckle said. “Ignore her. She’ll be at the movie tonight, but pretty soon I expect she’ll be moving on. Maybe later this week. Greener pastures, cetra-cetra. You know.”

  Mrs. Sigsby did know. There was Front Half, there was Back Half . . . and there was the back half of Back Half. The end of the line. She put her hand to her hair again. Still in place. Of course it was. She thought of a tricycle she’d had as a very young child, the warm squirt of urine in her pants as she rode it up and down the driveway. She thought of broken shoelaces. She thought of her first car, a—

  “It was a Valium!” the girl named Donna screamed. She leaped up, knocking her chair over. The other two children looked at her dully, one with oatmeal dripping from his chin. “A Plymouth Valium, I know that! Oh God I want to go home! Oh God stop my head !”

  Two caretakers in red scrubs appeared from . . . from Mrs. Sigsby didn’t know where. Nor did she care. They grabbed the girl by her arms.

  “That’s right, take her back to her room,” Heckle said. “No pills, though. We need her tonight.”

  Donna Gibson, who had once shared girl-secrets with Kalisha when they were both still in Front Half, began to scream and struggle. The caretakers led her away with the toes of her sneakers brushing the carpet. The broken thoughts in Mrs. Sigsby’s mind first dimmed, then faded. The buzz along her skin, even in the fillings of her teeth, remained, however. Over here it was constant, like the buzz of the fluorescent lights in the corridor.

  “All right?” Stackhouse asked Mrs. Sigsby.

  “Yes.” Just get me out of here.

  “I feel it, too. If it’s any comfort.”

  It wasn’t. “Trevor, can you explain to me why bodies bound for the crematorium have to be rolled right through these children’s living quarters?”

  “There are tons of beans in Beantown,” Stackhouse replied.

  “What?” Mrs. Sigsby asked. “What did you say?”

  Stackhouse shook his head as if to clear it. “I’m sorry. That came into my head—”

  “Yes, yes,” Hallas said. “There are a lot of . . . uh, shall we say loose transmissions in the air today.”

  “I know what it was,” Stackhouse said. “I had to get it out, that’s all. It felt like . . .”

  “Choking on food,” Dr. Hallas said matter-of-factly. “The answer to your question, Mrs. Sigsby is . . . nobody knows.” He tittered and touched the corner of his mouth.

  Just get me out of here, she thought again. “Where is Dr. James, Dr. Hallas?”

  “In her quarters. Not feeling well today, I’m afraid. But she sends her regards. Hopes you’re well, fit as a fiddle, in the pink, cetra-cetra.” He smiled and did the Shirley Temple thing again—ain’t I cute?

  8

  In the screening room, Kalisha plucked the cigarette from Nicky’s fingers, took a final puff from the filterless stub, dropped it to the floor, stepped on it. Then she put an arm around his shoulders. “Bad?”

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “The movie will make it better.”

  “Yeah. But there’s always tomorrow. Now I know why my dad was so butt-ugly when he had a hangover. How about you, Sha?”

  “Doing okay.” And she was. Just a low throb over her left eye. Tonight it would be gone. Tomorrow it would be back, and not low. Tomorrow it would be pain that would make the hangovers suffered by Nicky’s dad (and her own parents, from time to time) look like fun in the sun: a steady pounding thud, as if some demonic elf were imprisoned in her head, hammering at her skull in an effort to get out. Even that, she knew, wasn’t as bad as it could be. Nicky’s headaches were worse, Iris’s worse still, and it took longer and longer for the pain to go away.

  George was the lucky one; in spite of his strong TK, he had so far felt almost no pain at all. An ache in his temples, he said, and at the back of his skull. But it would get worse. It always did, at least until it was finally over. And then? Ward A. The drone. The hum. The back half of Back Half. Kalisha didn’t look forward to it yet, the idea of being erased as a person still horrified her, but that would change. For Iris, it already had; most of the time she looked like a zombie on The Walking Dead. Helen Simms had pretty much articulated Kalisha’s feelings about Ward A when she said anything was better than the Stasi Lights and a screaming headache that never stopped.

  George leaned forward, looking at her across Nick with bright eyes that were still relatively pain-free. “He got out,” he whispered. “Concentrate on that. And hold on.”

  “We will,” Kalisha said. “Won’t we, Nick?”

  “We’ll try,” Nick said, and managed a smile. “Although the idea of a guy as horrible at HORSE as Lukey Ellis bringing the cavalry is pretty farfetched.”

  “He may be bad at HORSE but he’s good at chess,” George said. “Don’t count him out.”

  One of the re
d caretakers appeared in the open doors of the screening room. The caretakers in Front Half wore nametags, but down here no one did. Down here the caretakers were interchangeable. There were no techs, either, only the two Back Half doctors and sometimes Dr. Hendricks: Heckle, Jeckle, and Donkey Kong. The Terrible Trio. “Free time is over. If you’re not going to eat, go back to your rooms.”

  The old Nicky might have told this over-muscled lowbrow to go fuck himself. The new version just got to his feet, staggering and grabbing a seatback to keep his balance. It broke Kalisha’s heart to see him this way. What had been taken from Nicky was in some ways worse than murder. In many ways.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’ll go together. Right, George?”

  “Well,” George said, “I was planning to catch a matinee of Jersey Boys this afternoon, but since you insist.”

  Here we are, the three fucked-up musketeers, Kalisha thought.

  Out in the hall, the drone was much stronger. Yes, she knew Luke was out, Avery had told her, and that was good. The complacent assholes didn’t even know he was gone yet, which was better. But the headaches made hope seem less hopeful. Even when they let up, you were waiting for them to come back, which was its own special brand of hell. And the drone coming from Ward A made hope seem irrelevant, which was awful. She had never felt so lonely, so cornered.

  But I have to hold on for as long as I can, she thought. No matter what they do to us with those lights and those goddam movies, I have to hold on. I have to hold on to my mind.

  They walked slowly down the hall under the eye of the caretaker, not like children but like invalids. Or old people, whiling away their final weeks in an unpleasant hospice.

  9

  Led by Dr. Everett Hallas, Mrs. Sigsby and Stackhouse walked past the closed doors marked Ward A, Stackhouse rolling the trolley. There were no shouts or screams coming from behind those closed doors, but that sense of being in an electrical field was even stronger; it raced over her skin like invisible mouse feet. Stackhouse felt it, too. The hand not busy pushing Maureen Alvorson’s makeshift bier was rubbing his smooth bald dome.

  “To me it always feels like cobwebs,” he said. Then, to Heckle, “You don’t feel it?”

  “I’m used to it,” he said, and touched the corner of his mouth. “It’s a process of assimilation.” He stopped. “No, that’s not the right word. Acclimation, I think. Or is it acclimatization? Could be either.”

  Mrs. Sigsby was struck by a curiosity that was almost whimsical. “Dr. Hallas, when’s your birthday? Do you remember?”

  “September ninth. And I know what you’re thinking.” He looked back over his shoulder at the doors with Ward A on them in red, then at Mrs. Sigsby. “I’m fine, howsomever.”

  “September ninth,” she said. “That would make you . . . what? A Libra?”

  “Aquarius,” Heckle said, giving her a roguish look that seemed to say You do not fool me so easily, my lady. “When the moon is in the seventh house and Mercury aligns with Mars. Cetra-cetra. Duck, Mr. Stackhouse. Low bridge here.”

  They passed along a short, dim hallway, descended a flight of stairs with Stackhouse braking the trolley in front and Mrs Sigsby controlling it from behind, and came to another closed door. Heckle used his key card and they entered a circular room that was uncomfortably warm. There was no furniture, but on one wall was a framed sign: REMEMBER THESE WERE HEROES. It was under dirty smeared glass that badly needed a dose of Windex. On the far side of the room, halfway up a rough cement wall, was a steel hatch, as if for an industrial meat locker. To the left of this was a small readout screen, currently blank. To the right was a pair of buttons, one red and one green.

  In here, the broken thoughts and fragments of memory that had troubled Mrs. Sigsby ceased, and the fugitive headache which had been hovering at her temples lifted a bit. That was good, but she couldn’t wait to be out. She seldom visited Back Half, because her presence was unnecessary; the commander of an army rarely needed to visit the front lines as long as the war was going well. And even though she felt better, being in this bare round room was still flat-out horrible.

  Hallas also seemed better, no longer Heckle but the man who had spent twenty-five years as an Army doctor and won a Bronze Star. He had straightened, and he had stopped touching his finger to the side of his mouth. His eyes were clear, his questions concise.

  “Is she wearing jewelry?”

  “No,” Mrs. Sigsby said, thinking of Alvorson’s missing wedding ring.

  “I may assume she’s dressed?”

  “Of course.” Mrs. Sigsby felt obscurely offended by the question.

  “Have you checked her pockets?”

  She looked at Stackhouse. He shook his head.

  “Do you want to? This is your only chance, if you do.”

  Mrs. Sigsby considered the idea and dismissed it. The woman had left her suicide note on the bathroom wall, and her purse would be in her locker. That would need checking, just as a matter of routine, but she wasn’t going to unwrap the housekeeper’s body and expose that protruding impudent tongue again just to find a ChapStick, a roll of Tums, and a few wadded-up Kleenex.

  “Not me. What about you, Trevor?”

  Stackhouse shook his head again. He had a year-round tan, but today he looked pale beneath it. The Back Half walk-through had taken a toll on him, too. Maybe we should do it more often, she thought. Stay in touch with the process. Then she thought of Dr. Hallas proclaiming himself an Aquarian and Stackhouse saying there were tons of beans in Beantown. She decided that staying in touch with the process was a really bad idea. And by the way, did September 9th really make Hallas a Libra? That didn’t seem quite right. Wasn’t it Virgo?

  “Let’s do this,” she said.

  “All righty, then,” Dr. Hallas said, and flashed an ear-to-ear smile that was all Heckle. He yanked the handle of the stainless steel door and swung it open. Beyond was blackness, a smell of cooked meat, and a sooty conveyer belt that angled down into darkness.

  That sign needs to be cleaned off, Mrs. Sigsby thought. And that belt needs to be scrubbed before it gets clogged and breaks down. More carelessness.

  “I hope you don’t need help lifting her,” Heckle said, still wearing his game-show host smile. “I’m afraid I’m feeling rather weakly today. Didn’t eat my Wheaties this morning.”

  Stackhouse lifted the wrapped body and placed it on the belt. The bottom fold of the canvas dropped open, revealing one shoe. Mrs. Sigsby felt an urge to turn away from that scuffed sole and quelled it.

  “Any final words?” Hallas asked. “Hail and farewell? Jenny we hardly knew ye?”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Mrs. Sigsby said.

  Dr. Hallas closed the door and pushed the green button. Mrs. Sigsby heard a trundle and squeak as the dirty conveyer belt began to move. When that stopped, Hallas pushed the red button. The readout came to life, quickly jumping from 200 to 400 to 800 to 1600 and finally to 3200.

  “Much hotter than your average crematory,” Hallas said. “Also much faster, but it still takes awhile. You’re welcome to stick around; I could give you the full tour.” Still smiling the big smile.

  “Not today,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “Far too busy.”

  “That’s what I thought. Another time, perhaps. We see you so seldom, and we’re always open for business.”

  10

  As Maureen Alvorson was starting her final slide, Stevie Whipple was eating mac and cheese in the Front Half cafeteria. Avery Dixon grabbed him by one meaty, freckled arm. “Come out to the playground with me.”

  “I ain’t done eating, Avery.”

  “I don’t care.” He lowered his voice. “It’s important.”

  Stevie took a final enormous bite, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and followed Avery. The playground was deserted except for Frieda Brown, who was sitting on the asphalt surrounding the basketball hoop and drawing cartoon figures in chalk. Rather good ones. All smiling. She didn’t look up as the boys passed.

 
When they arrived at the chainlink fence, Avery pointed at a trench in the dirt and gravel. Stevie stared at it with big eyes. “What did that? Woodchuck or sumpin?” He looked around as if he expected to see a woodchuck—possibly rabid—hiding under the trampoline or crouching beneath the picnic table.

  “Wasn’t a woodchuck, nope,” Avery said.

  “I bet you could squiggle right through there, Aves. Make an excape.”

  Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind, Avery thought, but I’d get lost in the woods. Even if I didn’t, the boat is gone. “Never mind. You have to help me fill it in.”

  “Why?”

  “Just because. And don’t say excape, it sounds ignorant. Ess, Stevie. Esscape.” Which is just what his friend had done, God love and bless him. Where was he now? Avery had no idea. He’d lost touch.

  “Esscape,” Stevie said. “Got it.”

  “Terrific. Now help me.”

  The boys got down on their knees and began to fill in the depression under the fence, scooping with their hands and raising a cloud of dust. It was hot work, and they were both soon sweating. Stevie’s face was bright red.

  “What are you boys doing?”

  They looked around. It was Gladys, her usual big smile nowhere in sight.

  “Nothing,” Avery said.

  “Nothing,” Stevie agreed. “Just playin in the dirt. You know, the dirty ole dirt.”

  “Let me see. Move.” And when neither of them did, she kicked Avery in the side.

  “Ow!” he cried, and curled up. “Ow, that hurt!”

  Stevie said, “What are you, on the rag or some—” Then he got his own kick, high up on the shoulder.

  Gladys looked at the trench, only partially filled in, then at Frieda, still absorbed in her artistic endeavors. “Did you do this?”

  Frieda shook her head without looking up.