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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Dopabeane on 2024-11-17 18:02:33+00:00.

I know how to make people talk.

It’s a pretty helpful skill. It’s even saved my life a few times. But every once in a great while, it gets me into massive trouble.

The first time it got me in trouble was in elementary school. It started with one of those guessing games with which frazzled teachers tend to end the day.

“It’s called ‘Truth or Lie,’” Mrs. Waters told us.

I could tell just looking at her that she was making this up off the top of her head. Practically pulling words out of thin air. Words that would grab our attention, words that would focus us, words that would make us do what she needed us to do.

“We go around the circle, and we each tell one truth and one lie. The person across from you has to guess which one is the truth and which is the lie. If the guesser gets it wrong, they go back to their desk. If they get it right, they stay in the circle and we move on to the next person. Who wants to start?”

I was insufferable then and I am insufferable now, so I shot my hand into the air. “I want to go first! Mrs. Waters, pick me, pick me!”

She almost rolled her eyes, which was no surprise; I had that effect on people back then. “Okay, Rachele. Tell us a truth, and tell us a lie.”

“No!” I said. “I want to be the first to guess!”

Mrs. Waters really did roll her eyes this time. “All righty. Sarah —” She turned to the girl sitting straight across from me — “tell us a truth, and a lie.”

I don’t remember what Sarah’s truth was, and I certainly don’t remember her lie. But I remember how she pouted when I correctly guessed which was which.

The class had gone halfway around the circle by the time we had our first elimination — Ben Markham, who burst into tears on his way back to his desk.

The circle shuffled closer to fill in his spot, and we continued.

When it was my turn again, I guessed correctly. And again on my third turn, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth. 

But my wins were quickly growing stale, and I was getting bored. The problem was, these truths and lies were so stupid. Worse, they were silly. Megan Knight’s truth was she had a cat named Corky, and her lie was she had a giant snail who ate cars. Scotty Spitzer wasn’t any better: his truth was he had a little brother named Tucker, and his lie was that Stone Cold Steve Austin was his big brother.

But when he made that claim — specifically, when he gleefully spouted the word “big brother” — I noticed that the girl across from me shifted weirdly. She turned in on herself, like a flower blooming in reverse. 

I locked in on her, suppressing a smile. “Celina, tell me a truth and tell me a lie.”

“I have a new puppy named George, and an uncle who lives on the moon,” she giggled.

“Those are dumb, Celina,” I complained.

Her smile froze.

“Come on.” I focused on her, noting the way she twitched, how her left ankle kept rolling in and out. “Tell me something that’s actually interesting.”

“I — I can speak Spanish. But my mom doesn’t like me to.”

“Your mom being stupid isn’t interesting, Celina.” Following an instinct I didn’t understand but never denied, I kept my voice gentle. “Tell a truth that’s important.”

“Stop,” Mrs. Waters said sharply. “Right now.”

I ignored her. “Tell us a truth about your brother, Celina.”

Celina immediately said, “I found my brother hanging in the garage. He had no shoes. His feet were purple and his tongue was too big for his mouth. I was in kindergarten when…when,” she finished lamely.

Then her eyes went wide and white as the oversized bone buttons on Mrs. Waters’ sweater, and she burst into tears.

I will spare you the fallout of that particular incident and move on to more important things.

As I grew older, I got better at making people talk. Better at finding words that grabbed attention, words that focus my targets, words that made them do what I wanted them to do.

When I turned twenty-one, I decided I wanted to be a cop. I was really good at it. So good I promoted three times in five years. I was a sergeant by age twenty-six.

I was on the verge of promoting to lieutenant when private industry came calling.

A law office, specifically. The attorney paid me well, but not as well as the lawyer who came knocking after him, who ended up not paying as well as the one who came knocking after her. 

When you get really good in the public sector, the private sector comes after you. When you get really, really good in the private sector, the government comes calling. 

And the government isn’t always good at being told “No.”

Officially, I worked for human resources as an interviewer. Unofficially, I was an Internal Affairs investigator on steroids. You would not believe the things I learned, or the catastrophes I helped avert.

That all went up in flames a few months ago.

During a very unconventional interview, the situation went off the rails in spectacular fashion and my subject told me things I wasn’t supposed to know.

Once again, I’ll spare you the details of the fallout.

Let’s just say that by the end of it, I was in almost incomprehensibly big trouble. As a result, I was terrified. When you’re that scared, you’ll do anything you’re told.

Sure enough, I was given a choice: Die, or do exactly as I was told.

I was told I would continue to work as an investigative interviewer for a multi-agency task force with the unassuming, weirdly charming name of the Agency of Helping Hands. I was told I would work under the supervision of an exceptionally brilliant and highly specialized psychiatrist. I was told that if I played my cards right, I’d be able to earn my own degree while working for this doctor.

I knew it was too good to be true. I knew it in my very core. But I also knew I didn’t have a choice.

So I took the job. 

I learned that the Agency of Helping Hands runs a prison. Officially, it’s called the North American Specialized Containment Unit, or NASCU. 

But everyone here just calls it the North American Pantheon.

That’s where I work now. My job is to interview the inmates. Some of these inmates are horrifying. Some are monsters. Many have never spoken a word to anyone. The rest gibber and taunt and terrorize, but they don’t ever say anything. 

They don’t really *talk.* 

And for a lot of reasons I cannot begin to explain right now, it is vitally important that they start talking. 

That’s why the agency needed me. It’s the only reason I’m alive:

Because I can make them talk. 

The agency started me with the easiest inmate in the facility, I guess to make sure I can really do what they need me to. They had me do a full forensic workup, the kind of thing I used to do for law offices. Personal history, physical report, mental condition, circumstances, and a transcript of the interview with my insights. 

I cannot describe this job. I really can’t. This facility, these inmates, even the other staff — I don’t know. I don’t what to do. I’m so scared. I freak out every time I think too hard. Panic attacks and night terrors have become my steadfast companions these past few months. But I guess that’s what happens when your understanding of the world has been inverted, and when that inversion has been burned to the ground. What happens when you live in a state of fear. 

So, rather than try and probably fail to explain it all — what I have to do, what I have to deal with, what will happen if I don’t — I’m going to just share that first report on that first prisoner. He goes by Numa.

For what it’s worth, I was told that Numa is the least dangerous inmate in the Pantheon.

Numa

Classification String: Noncooperative / Indestructible / Gaian / Constant / Moderate / Teras

On November 12, 1928, authorities received a distress call from a remote logging village deep in the Canadian Rockies. There is no extant proof of the village’s existence. Given the circumstances, the Agency of Helping Hands undertook extensive effort to ensure removal of all traces of the village and its inhabitants from the historical record.

A recording of the transmission exists in Agency archives. The recording is seventeen seconds long. Translated, it says this: “It came down from the mountain! It came for us! It’s here!”

What follows is a low, unsettlingly singsong roar – a sound without parallel, a sound that evolved to send the deepest, most primal core of the human mind into a panic. This panic does not recognize that a century has passed, or that thousands of miles now lay between it and the place that sound was made. 

Extreme weather and difficult terrain precluded timely assistance. All the authorities could hope for was to clean up the mess, whatever it was, as soon as they could. When they finally set foot in the village, they found death. 

Blood stained every inch of the village, coloring the snow and the ice beneath. Limbs, hair, viscera, and flesh were strewn across the paths. Wild animals and domesticated dogs alike were feeding on the carnage.

The initial hypothesis was that a pack of starving wolves had set upon the village, or perhaps that an unusually large bear woken prematurely from hibernation. Given the extent of the damage, some officials even postulated that the animal in question was an undiscovered and possibly isolated specimen of giant prehistoric cave bear woken by the constant rumble of the lumber mill.

Shellshocked authorities began to catalog the damage, so intent on their work that they failed to notice that one of their number had vanished – until one of the searche…

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