The Institute

by Stephen King

  Now he lay on the cot in this barren room, dressed in dry clothes, thinking of how fine the castle had looked when it was done. And feeling the hum. It was constant here in Back Half. Loud in the rooms, louder in the halls, loudest of all down past the cafeteria, where a double-locked door beyond the caretakers’ break room led to the back half of Back Half. The caretakers often called that part Gorky Park, because the kids who lived there (if you could call it living) were gorks. Hummers. But they were useful, Avery supposed. The way the wrapper your Hershey bar came in was useful, until you licked it clean. Then you could throw it away.

  The doors here had locks. Avery concentrated, trying to turn his. Not that there was anywhere to go except for the hallway with its blue carpet, but it was an interesting experiment. He could feel the lock trying to turn, but he couldn’t quite manage it. He wondered if George Iles would be able to, because George had been a strong TK-pos to begin with. Avery guessed he could, with a little help. He thought again about what his father had said: We’ll do it together. One step at a time.

  At five o’clock, the door opened and a red-clad caretaker poked his unsmiling face in. They didn’t wear nametags here, but Avery didn’t need a nametag. This was Jacob, known to his colleagues as Jake the Snake. He was ex-Navy. You tried to be a SEAL, Avery thought, but you couldn’t make it. They kicked you out. I think maybe you liked hurting people too much.

  “Dinner,” Jake the Snake said. “If you want it, come on. If you don’t, I’ll lock you in until movie time.”

  “I want it.”

  “All right. You like movies, kiddo?”

  “Yes,” Avery said, and thought, But I won’t like these. These movies kill people.

  “You’ll like these,” Jake said. “There’s always a cartoon to start with. Caff’s right down there on your left. And quit lollygagging.” Jake gave him a hefty swat on the ass to get him going.

  In the cafeteria—a dreary room painted the same dark green as the residence corridor in Front Half—about a dozen kids sat eating what smelled to Avery like Dinty Moore Beef Stew. His mom served it at least twice a week back home, because his little sister liked it. She was probably dead, too. Most of the kids looked like zombies, and there was a lot of slobbering. He saw one kid, a girl, who was smoking a cigarette as she ate. As Avery watched, she tapped ash into her bowl, looked around vacantly, and began eating from it again.

  He had felt Kalisha even down in the tunnel and now he saw her, sitting at a table near the back. He had to restrain an urge to run to her and throw his arms around her neck. That would attract attention, and Avery didn’t want to do that. Just the opposite. Helen Simms was sitting next to Sha, hands lying limply on either side of her bowl. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling. Her hair, so razzily colored when she showed up in Front Half, was now dull and dank, hanging around her face—her much thinner face—in clumps. Kalisha was feeding her, or trying to.

  “Come on, Hel, come on, Hell on Wheels, here we go.” Sha got a spoonful of the stew into Helen’s mouth. When a brown lump of mystery meat tried to come out over Helen’s lower lip, Sha used the spoon to push it back in. This time Helen swallowed, and Sha smiled. “That’s right, good.”

  Sha, Avery thought. Hey, Kalisha.

  She looked around, startled, saw him, and broke into a broad smile.

  Avester!

  A drool of brown gravy ran down Helen’s chin. Nicky, sitting on her other side, used a paper napkin to wipe it off. Then he also saw Avery, grinned, and gave him a thumbs-up. George, sitting directly across from Nicky, turned around.

  “Hey, check it out, it’s the Avester,” George said. “Sha thought you might be coming. Welcome to our happy home, little hero.”

  “If you’re gonna eat, get a bowl,” said a hard-faced older woman. Her name was Corinne, Avery knew, and she liked slapping. Slapping made her feel good. “I gotta shut down early, on account of it’s movie night.”

  Avery got a bowl and ladled up some of the stew. Yes, it was Dinty Moore. He put a piece of spongy white bread on top of it, then took his meal over to his friends and sat down. Sha smiled at him. Her headache was bad today, but she smiled anyway, and that made him feel like laughing and crying at the same time.

  “Eat up, buddy,” Nicky said, but he wasn’t taking his own advice; his bowl was still mostly full. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was rubbing at his left temple. “I know it looks like diarrhea, but you don’t want to go to the movies on an empty stomach.”

  Have they caught Luke? Sha sent.

  No. They’re all scared shitless.

  Good. Good!

  Will we get hurty shots before the movie?

  I don’t think so tonight, this is still a new one, we’ve only seen it once.

  George was looking at them with wise eyes. He had heard. Once upon a Front Half time George Iles had only been a TK, but now he was something more. They all were. Back Half increased whatever you had, but thanks to the immersion tank, none of them were like Avery. He knew stuff. The tests in Front Half, for example. A lot of them were side projects of Dr. Hendricks, but the injections were matters of practicality. Some of them were limiters, and Avery hadn’t had those. He had gone straight to the immersion tank, where he had been taken to death’s door or maybe right through it, and as a result he could make the Stasi Lights almost any time he wanted to. He didn’t need the movies, and he didn’t need to be part of the group-think. Creating that group-think was Back Half’s main job.

  But he was still only ten. Which was a problem.

  As he began to eat, he probed for Helen, and was delighted to discover she was still in there. He liked Helen. She wasn’t like that bitch Frieda. He didn’t need to read Frieda’s mind to know she had tricked him into telling her stuff, then snitched on him; who else could it have been?

  Helen?

  No. Don’t talk to me, Avery. I have to . . .

  The rest was gone, but Avery thought he understood. She had to hide. There was a sponge filled with pain inside her head, and she was hiding from it as best she could. Hiding from pain was a sensible response, as far as it went. The problem was how the sponge kept swelling. It would keep on until there was nowhere to hide, and then it would squash her against the back of her own skull like a fly on a wall. Then she’d be done. As Helen, at least.

  Avery reached into her mind. It was easier than trying to turn the lock on the door of his room, because he’d been a powerful TP to begin with, and TK was new to him. He was clumsy and had to be careful. He couldn’t fix her, but he thought he could ease her. Shield her a bit. That would be good for her, and it would be good for them . . . because they were going to need all the help they could get.

  He found the headache-sponge deep inside Helen’s head. He told it to stop spreading. He told it to go away. It didn’t want to. He pushed it. The colored lights started to appear in front of him, swirling slowly, like cream into coffee. He pushed harder. The sponge was pliable but firm.

  Kalisha. Help me.

  With what? What are you doing?

  He told her. She came in, tentatively at first. They pushed together. The headache-sponge gave a little.

  George, Avery sent. Nicky. Help us.

  Nicky was able to, a little. George looked puzzled at first, then joined in, but after a moment he backed out again. “I can’t,” he whispered. “It’s dark.”

  Never mind the dark! That was Sha. I think we can help!

  George came back. He was reluctant, and he wasn’t much help, but at least he was with them.

  It’s only a sponge, Avery told them. He could no longer see his bowl of stew. It had been replaced by the heartbeat swirl of the Stasi Lights. It can’t hurt you. Push it! All together!

  They tried, and something happened. Helen looked down from the ceiling. She looked at Avery instead.

  “Look who’s here,” she said in a rusty voice. “My headache’s a little better. Thank God.” She began to eat on her own.

  “Holy shit,” George said. “T
hat was us.”

  Nick was grinning and holding up a hand. “Five, Avery.”

  Avery slapped him five, but any good feeling left with the dots. Helen’s headache would come back, and it would worsen each time she watched the movies. Helen’s would, Sha’s would, Nicky’s would. His would, too. Eventually all of them would join the hum emanating from Gorky Park.

  But maybe . . . if they were all together, in their own group-think . . . and if there was a way to make a shield . . .

  Sha.

  She looked at him. She listened. Nicky and George also listened, at least as well as they could. It was like they were partially deaf. But Sha heard. She ate a bite of stew, then put her spoon down and shook her head.

  We can’t escape, Avery. If that’s what you’re thinking, forget it.

  I know we can’t. But we have to do something. We have to help Luke, and we have to help ourselves. I see the pieces, but I don’t know how to put them together. I don’t . . .

  “You don’t know how to build the castle,” Nicky said in a low, musing voice. Helen had stopped eating again, and had resumed her inspection of the ceiling. The headache-sponge was growing again already, swelling as it gorged on her mind. Nicky helped her to another bite.

  “Cigarettes!” one of the caretakers was shouting. He held up a box. Smokes were free back here, it seemed. Encouraged, even. “Who wants a cigarette before the show?”

  We can’t escape, Avery sent, so help me build a castle. A wall. A shield. Our castle. Our wall. Our shield.

  He looked from Sha to Nicky to George and back to Sha again, pleading for her to understand. Her eyes brightened.

  She gets it, Avery thought. Thank God, she gets it.

  She started to speak, but closed her mouth again as the caretaker—his name was Clint—passed them by, bawling, “Cigarettes! Who wants one before the show?”

  When he was gone, she said, “If we can’t escape, we have to take the place over.”

  10

  Deputy Wendy Gullickson’s original frosty attitude toward Tim had warmed considerably since their first date at the Mexican restaurant in Hardeeville. They were now an acknowledged couple, and when she came into Mr. Jackson’s back room apartment with a large paper bag, she kissed him first on the cheek and then quickly on the mouth.

  “This is Deputy Gullickson,” Tim said, “but you can call her Wendy, if that’s okay with her.”

  “It is,” Wendy said. “What’s your name?”

  Luke looked to Tim, who gave him a slight nod.

  “Luke Ellis.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Luke. That’s quite a bruise you’ve got there.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Ran into something.”

  “Yes, Wendy. And the bandage over your ear? Did you cut yourself, as well?”

  That made him smile a little, because it was the stone truth. “Something like that.”

  “Tim said you might be hungry, so I grabbed some take-out from the restaurant on Main Street. I’ve got Co’-Cola, chicken, burgers, and fries. What do you want?”

  “All of it,” Luke said, which made Wendy and Tim laugh.

  They watched him eat two drumsticks, then a hamburger and most of the fries, finally a good-sized go-cup of rice pudding. Tim, who had missed his lunch, ate the rest of the chicken and drank a Coke.

  “All right now?” Tim asked when the food was gone.

  Instead of speaking, Luke burst into tears.

  Wendy hugged him and stroked his hair, working some of the tangles out with her fingers. When Luke’s sobs finally eased, Tim squatted beside him.

  “Sorry,” Luke said. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  “That’s okay. You’re allowed.”

  “It’s because I feel alive again. I don’t know why that would make me cry, but it did.”

  “I think it’s called relief,” Wendy said.

  “Luke claims his parents were murdered and he was kidnapped,” Luke said. Wendy’s eyes widened.

  “It’s not a claim!” Luke said, sitting forward in Mr. Jackson’s easy chair. “It’s the truth!”

  “Bad word choice, maybe. Let’s have your story, Luke.”

  Luke considered this, then said, “Will you do something for me first?”

  “If I can,” Tim said.

  “Look outside. See if that other guy is still there.”

  “Norbert Hollister?” Tim smiled. “I told him to scram. By now he’s probably down at the Go-Mart, buying lottery tickets. He’s convinced he’s going to be South Carolina’s next millionaire.”

  “Just check.”

  Tim looked at Wendy, who shrugged and said, “I’ll do it.”

  She came back a minute later, frowning. “As a matter of fact, he’s sitting in a rocking chair over at the depot. Reading a magazine.”

  “I think he’s an uncle,” Luke said in a low voice. “I had uncles in Richmond and Wilmington. Maybe in Sturbridge, too. I never knew I had so many uncles.” He laughed. It was a metallic sound.

  Tim got up and went to the door just in time to see Norbert Hollister rise and amble away in the direction of his going-to-seed motel. He didn’t look back. Tim returned to Luke and Wendy.

  “He’s gone, son.”

  “Maybe to call them,” Luke said. He poked at his empty Coke can. “I won’t let them take me back. I thought I was going to die there.”

  “Where?” Tim asked.

  “The Institute.”

  “Start at the beginning and tell us everything,” Wendy said.

  Luke did.

  11

  When he was finished—it took almost half an hour, and Luke consumed a second Coke during the telling—there was a moment of silence. Then Tim said, very quietly, “It’s not possible. Just to begin with, that many abductions would raise red flags.”

  Wendy shook her head at that. “You were a cop. You should know better. There was a study a few years back that said over half a million kids go missing each year in the United States. Pretty staggering figure, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I know the numbers are high, there were almost five hundred missing kids reported in Sarasota County the last year I was on the cops there, but the majority—the great majority—are kids who come back on their own.” Tim was thinking of Robert and Roland Bilson, the twins he’d spotted on their way to the Dunning Agricultural Fair in the wee hours of the morning.

  “That still leaves thousands,” she said. “Tens of thousands.”

  “Agreed, but how many of those disappear leaving murdered parents behind?”

  “No idea. I doubt if anyone’s done a study.” She turned her attention back to Luke, who had been following their conversation with his eyes, as if watching a tennis match. His hand was in his pocket, touching the thumb drive as if it were a lucky rabbit’s foot.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “they probably make it look like accidents.”

  Tim had a sudden vision of this boy living with Orphan Annie in her tent, the two of them listening to that late-night kook of hers on the radio. Talking about the conspiracy. Talking about they.

  “You say you cut your earlobe off because there was a tracking device in it,” Wendy said. “Is that really the truth, Luke?”

  “Yes.”

  Wendy didn’t seem to know where to take it from there. The expression she looked at Tim said Over to you.

  Tim picked up Luke’s empty Coke can and dropped it into the take-out bag, which now contained nothing but wrappers and chicken bones. “You’re talking about a secret installation running a secret program on domestic soil, one that stretches back God knows how many years. Once upon a time that might have been possible, I suppose—theoretically—but not in the age of the computer. The government’s biggest secrets get dumped onto the Internet by this rogue outfit called—”

  “WikiLeaks, I know about WikiLeaks.” Luke sounded impatient. “I know how hard it is to keep secrets, and I know how crazy this sounds. On the other hand, the Germans had concentration camps during World War II whe
re they managed to kill seven million Jews. Also gypsies and gays.”

  “But the people around those camps knew what was going on,” Wendy said. She tried to take his hand.

  Luke took it back. “And I’d bet a million bucks the people in Dennison River Bend, that’s the closest town, know something’s going on. Something bad. Not what, because they don’t want to know. Why would they? It keeps them going, and besides, who’d believe it, anyway? You’ve still got people today who don’t believe the Germans killed all those Jews, as far as that goes. It’s called denial.”

  Yes, Tim thought, the boy is bright. His cover story for whatever really happened to him is loony, but he does have a ton of brains.

  “I want to be sure I have this straight,” Wendy said. She was speaking gently. They both were. Luke got it. You didn’t have to be a child fucking prodigy to know this was how people talked to someone who was mentally unbalanced. He was disappointed but not surprised. What else could he have expected? “They somehow find kids who are telepaths and what you call teleki-something—”

  “Telekinetics. TK. Usually the talents are small—even TK-pos kids don’t have much. But the Institute doctors make them stronger. Shots for dots, that’s what they say, what we all say, only the dots are really the Stasi Lights I told you about. The shots that bring on the lights are supposed to boost what we have. I think some of the others might be to make us last longer. Or . . .” Here was something he just thought of. “Or to keep us from getting too much. Which could make us dangerous to them.”

  “Like vaccinations?” Tim asked.

  “I guess you could say that, yeah.”

  “Before you were taken, you could move objects with your mind,” Tim said in his gentle I’m-talking-to-a-lunatic voice.

  “Small objects.”

  “And since this near-death experience in the immersion tank, you can also read thoughts.”