The Trepannist
Dennis Slumberton had been having a quiet day. He’d been having, in fact, a quiet week, and by his general estimation, as he considered himself in retrospect while awaiting the officer responsible for interrogation, he’d been having a fairly quiet month. Dennis believed that by any reasonable measure, he had lived so far a quiet life, undisturbed, mostly, by the affairs written about in newspapers and unperturbed by the regular if discomforting pangs of personal solitude that his circumstances afforded him.
His life story was immemorial enough to be summarized in a few sentences. His parents were working class. His father made a living as a junior manager at a pillow factory before seeking better employment at a mattress warehouse. His mother stayed home to take care of the house, and when he was old enough to be enrolled in school, she took part-time shifts as a seamstress making sleepwear. They never argued in front of him. Money was often tight but never so tight that the bills didn’t get paid or the groceries weren’t in the fridge. By the time he graduated high school, Dennis had scraped up enough of his own money from side jobs that he was able to attend some classes at a trade school and begin working for a small HVAC contractor. From there, life, which had already been somewhat auto-piloted, truly sank into an automatic series of motions regularized around his job.
Which is why it struck Dennis as surprising when a pair of detectives showed up at his door earlier that particular evening.
“Dennis Slumberton,” one of them had greeted. “You’re something of a person of interest. There’s no obligation, but in the effort of furthering an investigation, would you be able to come be interviewed at the station?”
With nothing better to do that evening, Dennis had agreed.
The station was only a few miles from where he lived, built into part of a hill in the city where the street level sat above two levels of basements, the first of which exited out into a parking lot behind the building. The cruiser pulled into that lot, and upon disembarking, Dennis followed the pair of detectives back up the hill and around into the front entrance. There, he signed a clipboard and came to an interrogation room not far from the main lobby. Only one detective remained. The other had disappeared into a neighboring room at some point along the way.
The detective introduced himself but Dennis didn’t catch his name. “Would you like anything? Water, coffee. Tea?”
“A beer?” Dennis joked.
“If only.” The detective smiled amiably as he sat down in the chair opposite of Dennis. “If I were chief, I’d petition the city to have a cops-only bar built in the basement. Maybe next to the range.”
Dennis laughed.
“So, if you can forgive me for a second, but I want to play a little rhetorical trick with you.” The detective paused to get up, open the door enough, slide his head through it and ask an unseen party in the hall to fetch a couple bottles of water for them. Then he placed the file in his hands on the table and sat down opposite of Dennis. His body reclined with a tired leisure that would temporarily relieve the pressure on his lower back. “So,” he said. “Why do you think we asked you to come down this evening?”
“I haven’t a clue, officer.”
The detective opened the folder and leafed through it. Dennis hadn’t paid enough attention to contents to identify what any of it was.
“That’s alright. I’m just going to ask a few questions about something that happened a few nights ago. Should have you out of here in just a few minutes.” Dennis wanted to ask why that would require driving all the way to the station, but before he could, the detective had already moved on. “When was the last time you were over in Peony Grove?”
“Lakeville?”
“Yes.”
Dennis thought for a moment. “That’s a bit of a drive. We had a job out there recently, though. I can’t remember. A month ago? A couple weeks?”
“A job?”
“It was a whole furnace replacement for a small office building. Everything went fine. I oversaw the installation on-site, like usual. I don’t remember anything major going wrong.”
“Would your employer know the exact dates?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“But you’re certain it was more than a few days ago.”
“Definitely. I wouldn’t make a drive like that without remembering it.” The detective read Dennis’ body language as the man shifted in his seat then and tried to veil a thin nervousness in his tone. “I don’t really go out much unless it’s for work, anyway.”
The detective nodded then and was quiet for a beat while he set his gaze on the contents of the folder again. Then he pulled a series of grainy photographs out from it and turned them around.
“Do you recognize this man?”
It looked like security cam footage, but the image of the man’s face was detailed enough to make his features obvious to anyone who looked at it.
“That looks just like me.”
“I thought so, too,” the detective said. “You’re not going to believe this, but this was taken from a street camera over in Peony Grove three nights ago.”
Dennis scowled as he leaned forward again to scrutinize the photo with greater attentiveness.
“There are a couple more photos from a few other cameras.” He slid a few more across the table for Dennis to look at. “Date and time are there in the corner. Near midnight.”
“That’s just not possible,” Dennis said. “Well, I mean, it’s obviously possible that there’s somebody in these photos, but it’s not possible for it to be me.”
“Because you haven’t been to Peony Grove in a few weeks, right?”
“Right. And I know where I was on Saturday night. I know what I was doing. It’s what I was always doing on Saturday nights.”
The sound of the door startled Dennis when a man entered and placed a pair of plastic water bottles on the table and disappeared through the door as quickly as he had come. The detective took one and immediately downed a few swigs.
“What you always do on Saturday nights,” the detective said.
“I play a loot shooter with a friend of mine online. Sometimes we just chat and drink, but usually we’re gaming.”
“You have a camera on? Voice logs?”
“It’s all text.” Dennis looked at the photos again and scowled harder. The detective noticed a patch of white scar tissue behind the man’s ear that he scratched at unconsciously. “He really does look just like me from that angle.” Then he reached for the unopened bottle of water, gently ripped the cap off and took a long drink.
The detective smiled with as much good nature as he could muster. “Well,” he said, “maybe he’s your doppelganger. Long lost twin. A statistical anomaly.”
“Must be,” Dennis said.
“You’re willing to let us review those chat logs?”
“Am I being accused of anything?”
“Not at the moment, no.”
“Then no. Not without a warrant.”
“All within your rights.”
“All within my rights?” Dennis’ nervousness had begun to turn over toward indignity. “Of course it’s within—I can’t believe this.” He slid the images from the security camera back across the table. “This has to be some kind of joke. Did you bring me here to just. Just.” He shook his head searching for words.
“Listen. Dennis.” The detective placed his forearms on the table, open hands revealing deep creases across his palms. “You can leave whenever you want. You’re not in custody. You’re not under arrest. We’re just asking questions, here. That’s all we’re doing. If you’re not comfortable or we’re stressing you out, we don’t intend to do that. If you want to leave, all you have to do is say so. We’ll even cover the fare for a cab.”
Dennis’ expression faltered and calmed toward one of a discontented animal. He motioned for the detective to continue.
“These photos were taken outside of Senator Greenwell’s home. I’m sure you’ve heard the news by now.”
Dennis visibly wilted. “No. There’s no way. I’m telling you that’s impossible.”
“Do you know what it looked like inside?”
“I’ve never been to his home. I don’t even know where it is.”
“This is part of a larger investigation. We were hoping you’d have at least some information about it.”
“I just work in HVAC, detective.” Dennis said. “I don’t get paid enough to think or notice anything. Other than what I need to. I just wanted to live a quiet, little, you know, stay out of the way. Just live without any problems. I went out there, you know, Lakeville, did that furnace installation and haven’t been back since.”
The detective offered him a pitiful look. “You’re gonna sleepwalk through your entire life with that attitude.”
“Please don’t make fun of my name that way.”
The detective’s apologetic smirk bore into an open silence. Then, “one last thing.” He shuffled a few more papers around in the slim file as he returned the photos to it. He plucked out one more photo, this time a soft-focused image taken from a digital camera and handed it to Dennis. “Are you familiar with this man?”
The man’s features were unremarkable, average. As Dennis looked at the image, he questioned whether it was due to the soft focus or some strange quality of the man’s face that made his features less distinct the longer he considered them.
“I’ve never seen him before,” Dennis said. Unconsciously, his hand moved up to itch the scar behind his ear. This time, the detective got a better look at it.
He looked up at the security camera. Unseen from their little chamber, someone began to move behind the monitors, gathering materials, making a call, placing accoutrements into a bag. The man was tall, gaunt, with sallow skin that seemed to have stretched too tightly across his head only to gather in long wrinkles around the backs of his hands. He moved as if a living skeleton acted as puppeteer for a loose bag of flesh.
The station chief looked over at the man as he assembled his things. “Should I call the procedure room?”
His mouth moved, unaccustomed to forming words, and it sounded not unlike how rust flakes off the screeching hinges of ancient metal on metal. “They’re already aware.”
The door to the interrogation room swung open and a man in scrubs entered with a gurney. Behind him came the taller man with his leather medical bag.
Dennis watched him lumber in and set his bag on the table. “What’s going on?”
“Just a simple procedure.” The detective’s tone seemed artificially reassuring. “We’re going to need you to get on the gurney, here.”
“What?”
“I am the region’s Trepannist,” the man said.
“Trepannist?” Dennis visibly tensed. “Aren’t you supposed to at least give your name?”
“I assure you, I am the only one in the whole district.” His tone carried with it a subtle uncomfortable smirk.
“Mister Slumberton, you are not under arrest, but we have reason to believe that you are the victim of a man we have been hunting now for close to a year,” the detective said. “And in addition, we also have reason to believe that our biggest lead is inside of your head.”
“I’m more than happy to give you any information I have—”
“That’s not exactly what he means,” the Trepannist said. He nearly smiled.
The assistant helped Dennis into the gurney and then, in perfect sync with the detective, strapped him down. The plastic bands jolted his wrists and ankles tight to the bed in a sudden, startling lurch. Then, with just as much suddenness, the assistant flicked a vein on his arm and, with a practiced hand that had done this countless times before, slid the barb of an IV feed into it with barely so much as a prick.
“What is this?” The IV had already begun to do its work.
“Jeffries v. Samaritan.” They had wheeled him into the hall. The strobe of the lights flickering past disoriented him more than the weightless sensation of the bed or the anesthetics at work in the IV. “Can’t conduct medical procedures in unsterile environments. Really just an excuse for activists to make the lives of people like you less pleasant.”
“Don’t. What?” The patterns the bricks made on the walls were blurring into a nauseating sequence of zig-zagging mortar greying with age or mold. “I don’t understand.”
They soon arrived at a room with large double doors and, for a moment, Dennis began to wonder if he’d suddenly been transferred to a hospital. But whatever was in the IV was taking control.
“Count backwards for me. And by the way,” the detective leaned closer, “our Trepannist here is top notch. You’ll be out of here and back home before you know it.”
As his consciousness drifted into the pleasant darkness of obscurity, the last words of the officer dropped into his gut with cold stones of dread. If he could have responded, he would have said, “this can’t be legal.”
An orderly had joined the pair, in addition to another officer in scrubs. “He’s out.”
The Trepannist had already begun preparing his equipment. “This will not take long.”
The detective’s partner met him at the door. “You verified contact? I had to step out of observation a few times.”
“I verified the scar.”
“That’s not enough. You know that.”
“We’ve got a bottle of water he drank from. The lab will confirm his DNA was all over the Senator’s house.” He scowled and changed topics before his partner could respond. “This is our first time getting a chance to interview a golem,” the detective said. “It’s worse than we thought. Our perp hides all traces of himself. These people have no idea who he is.”
“I don’t think we’re any closer to that.”
The detective scowled. “We’ll have to see. At least with Slumberton here, we can create an opportunity.”
Inside, the Trepannist secured a metal fixture to the man’s head as if it were a surgery or the project of an amateur woodworker. Tension screws pressed with rubber nubs into sallow scalp. And then he felt the sudden fixture of the mechanical device: a violent jolt. It began as if grinding against the bones of his skull and it hadn’t even made contact yet. Then the hole saw descended.
They had used a small dental vacuum to clear the blood away from the hole, and tonsures to remove the fragment of bone made by the saw. There, the Trepannist found what he was looking for. A small electrical device, part silicon and part organic, sat embedded in the pulsating mass of gray matter beneath the man’s skull. The Trepannist called for a couple of tools.
“It’s embedded too deeply to extract. We’ll just have to deactivate it and monitor the suspect for a little while.”
“Planning to bait the perp out to reactivate his golem?”
“That’s up to the detective.”
As he prodded the device, Dennis’ brain seemed to recoil as if in fright of having been found, but it had no where to go. The Trepannist replaced the fragment of bone and called for the assistants to patch him up.
A half-hour later, the detective stood outside at one of the station’s back entrances. The small protective awning did little to keep him dry in the rain, as the only place to comfortably enjoy a cigarette left one of his shoulders exposed to the mild downpour. His smoke drifted into the humid evening and intermingled with water like the swirl of foam through a cold mountain creek.
Beside him, the utility door swung open and then shut again with the cold groans of old metal. The tall form of the Trepannist had emerged, and a small smile bloomed like a grim mold over his lips when he encountered the detective.
“The procedure went well,” he said. “Irksome, however. I would like to fill you in on the details.”
“You can just put it all in the report.”
“Of course, as it shall be.” The Trepannist hesitated. “Still, the sooner the better.” His voice still carried the timbre of grinding metal, but softer then, elevated in pitch and almost, it seemed, aware of cadence and tone. Noise forced into the human reckoning of order. “Detective, let me show you something.”
He pulled off the long strings of black hair that hung down from his head. They fell together as one wig, and there above the shoulders, where he’d collected it, the detective’s eyes ran across the bald pale flesh of the Trepannist’s covered skull. Scars, old and new, cratered his scalp like seas on the face of the moon. His stomach churned.
“You people,” he started to say.
“I understand your distaste,” the Trepannist said. “But I do not reveal my head lightly to those outside of the craft, of course. I apologize, but I must draw your attention here.” He had turned, pointing a withered finger toward one particularly small scar: a circle no larger than the size of a dime. “I know my scalp better than I know either the front or back of my own hands,” he said. “And this scar has always puzzled me. An old one, but I cannot say how old. It was there when I chose the craft. Or perhaps, when it chose me.”
The Trepannist turned back to the detective and with stone eyes methodically returned the gothic wig to its home. “Your suspect, or victim. The golem. I had suspected it in others on this case, but never had you brought in a living specimen. This confirms it. The scar is identical.”
His cigarette had burned to the filter in the silence. Scowling, he jammed it into the ashtray there just past the awning, spattered with water, and considered lighting another one.
“You’re saying you might know our perp?”
“Frighteningly, no.” The Trepannist’s expression contorted into an expression of inward consideration and frustration. “I keep nothing from the department. And this I cannot keep, either. But I am expert in skulls and wounds, detective. I know same wounds when I see them. That is all.”
They were silent again as the Trepannist’s gaze returned to the world and the detective’s hand again reached for his case of cigarettes. He lit another.
“And the device?”
“As your team suspected. Handmade, custom. We made vivid photographs.”
“Is there one in your head, too?”
“I would have found it long ago, were that the case.” An amused smile, like creeping ivy. Then silence again, until once more, “A scar of that size for the craft we do is nothing short of extraordinary. And, apologies, but if I may.” He had turned and placed one decrepit hand on the door, his expression hidden by the wires of hair. The detective watched him talk while the end of his cigarette blazed. “Have pity on the man you saw this evening. Your interview with him may very well have been the most important event in his entire life.” Then he turned to the detective and offered a curt nod and another brief smile before lurching the door open and disappearing into the station.
*
The call came that morning. The detective grumbled into his barren residence as he fumbled for the phone next to his bed.
“I don’t know how he did it.” His partner’s voice came through the line. “We had the entire block locked down.”
“Slumberton.”
“Gone, man. Like the others. It’s bad in there.”
“Give me twenty minutes.”
Rain still dampened the evening air between the light cascade of sporadic drizzle and the remaining mist thick with the cold foam of night. It soaked up the headlights of his car, where light fell into the dull void before his car until illuminated only at the last minute. As he sat beneath the red glow of a stoplight, he prepared himself for the worst.
“Detective.” The responding officer pointed at the door to the meager residence. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I hope you never have to get used to it,” the detective said. “Take it easy out here.”
Inside, Dennis had been disassembled. Bones still stained red organized as if in a spreadsheet from smallest to largest in order in one room. Sinew and ligament, tendon, muscle laid tediously along hallway and floor in a fashion predetermined and exacted, each piece severed with the deliberateness of a dissatisfied employee. No passion or anger could be found in the crime, only a sick, ethereal and dispassionate violence.
“Another golem did this,” the detective said. But he said it to himself.
“Detective,” an investigator approached him. “No skull.”
“Bones are all over. You’ve cataloged them already?”
“With respect, detective.” The investigator’s gaze pierced his impetulousness. “No skin. No skull. No brain. Everything else. Our team is doing the catalogue now.”
“Do the cut strokes match the Senator’s?”
The investigator scowled toward the remains. “That’s actually something worth mentioning.” He paused, but then he motioned for the detective to crouch closer to a few of the bones on the floor. “We’ll know better once we analyze them at the lab,” he said, “but look here, at the ends of the bones.”
“You’re talking about the striations.”
“Look how they’re a little rough. Jagged.”
The detective nodded.
“This was his tibula. Left. But look over here.” The investigator motioned toward a smaller but no less elongated bone. “From his arm. Look at the knife strokes.”
“Finer.”
The investigator rose and brought his attention to the digital tablet under his arm. “Here. Closeups of the Senator’s bones.”
The detective waved through a few images on the screen. “These are rough, like on the leg. Is that what you’re getting at?”
“Matches close enough. Whoever did this to the Senator did this to the lower half of your victim here. But someone else, someone more precise, is responsible for the rest.” He took back the tablet and closed it out. “But we’ll know better when we bring everything back to the lab.”
As he left, the detective scowled into the dark. Rain had begun to intensify. Dawn remained some hours off. While standing under the light by the door, he fished around in his pocket for his cigarettes. The officer that first met him on the scene joined him.
“I could use one of those,” he said. His tone made it clear that he was trying his best to alleviate the darkness around them. The detective offered a smirk and held out his pack, but the man shook his head. “I don’t smoke.”
“Our numbers thin by the decade.” As his lighter flickered, he caught the other man’s puzzled expression. “Because we die,” he said, awkwardly attempting clarification.
“Detective, are you alright?”
“What?”
“You have something…” the man gestured to his ear. “I can’t tell. It’s dark.”
The detective scowled and reached his hand up to the side of his head. It came back wet. But rather than the cold droplets of rainwater he had expected, he found his finger tip smeared with the red body heat of blood. He returned his finger, carefully palpating his scalp behind his ear when the floor of his heart dropped into his stomach, as if his body realized the shape of the wound by tactile sensation alone.
There, plain as the cigarette in his other hand, his fingers felt the circular impression of a young scab no larger than the size of a dime.
###