The Institute

by Stephen King

Her name was Marjorie Kellerman, and she ran the Brunswick library. She also belonged to something called the Southeastern Library Association. Which, she said, had no money because “Trump and his cronies took it all back. They understand culture no more than a donkey understands algebra.”

He was touched and surprised—not for the first time—by the ordinary kindness and generosity of ordinary folks, especially those without much to spare.

And so he set out for DuPray. Great events turn on small hinges.

“Frustrated and unhappy?” Herb said. “Huh. We don’t see that side of him.” I do, Eileen thought. Not all the time, but sometimes. Yes. That’s when the plates rattle or the doors shut by themselves.

Do as you’re told, you’ll come out into the sunshine. Trust me on that. He was only twelve, and understood that his experience of the world was limited, but one thing he was quite sure of: when someone said trust me, they were usually lying through their teeth.

This wasn’t summer camp, and it wasn’t a field trip. This was a nightmare, and all he wanted was for it to be over. He wanted to wake up. And because he couldn’t, he fell asleep with his narrow chest still hitching with a few final sobs.

It came to him, with the force of a revelation, that you had to have been imprisoned to fully understand what freedom was.

What mattered to her, to the Institute, and to those who funded the Institute and had kept it a hard secret since 1955, was that children with high BDNF levels came with certain psychic abilities as part of the package: TK, TP, or (in rare cases) a combination of the two.

Mrs. Sigsby sat down on the bare mattress and looked at the woman hanging from the shower head. And at the message she had written with the lipstick Mrs. Sigsby now observed lying in front of the toilet. HELL IS WAITING. I’LL BE HERE TO MEET YOU.

They always come back and no matter how sloppy some things have become around here, they don’t talk. That’s one thing they are never sloppy about. Because if people found out what we’re doing, the hundreds of children we have destroyed, we’d be tried and executed by the dozens.

There was Front Half, there was Back Half… and there was the back half of Back Half. The end of the line.

It was so simple, but it was a revelation: what you did for yourself was what gave you the power.

Avery Dixon reached out, searching for Luke, hoping to find him in a place too far away to be of any help to them. Because that would mean at least one of the Institute’s child slaves was safe. There was a good chance the rest of them were going to die, because the staff of this hellhole would do anything to keep them from escaping. Anything.

“Mr. Stackhouse thinks I’m coming to him, but that’s not right.” “No?” Tim asked. “No. I’m coming for him.”

“It’s the two of them together that put us where we are, you know. Luke’s chocolate, Avery’s peanut butter. Either of them alone, nothing would have changed. Together they’re the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup that’s going to rip this joint.”

She looked again at Avery, and thought of something else from the Bible: a little child shall lead them.