Michel Faber - Under the Skin

At closer quarters, though, the figure at the roadside proved to be a female, harried-looking, grey-haired, shabbily dressed. Isserley drove straight past, ignoring the appeal to shared gender in the eyes. A single instant was enough to communicate injury and dejection, then the figure was a dwindling fleck in the rear-view mirror.

Isserley was all geared up now, grateful to have had her mind on something other than Amlis Vess. Fortuitously, another hitcher was standing only a couple of miles further on. This one was a male, and fairly impressive on first sight, but unfortunately positioned in a spot where only the most foolhardy motorist would consider stopping. Isserley flashed her headlights, hoping to let him know that she might have picked him up had he not made it so dangerous for her to do so. She doubted that a simple flash of lights could communicate this; more likely he would simply assume she was beaming out ill-will, a jab of mockery.

All was not necessarily lost, though – perhaps she would see him again later on the way back, by which time he might have walked to a safer spot. Over the years, Isserley had learned that life often offered a second chance: she had even picked up hitchers who, many hours and miles before, she’d observed climbing gratefully into someone else’s car.

So, optimistic, Isserley drove on.

She drove all day, backwards and forwards between Inverness and Dunkeld, over and over. The sun set. The snow, which had retreated during the morning, returned. One of the windscreen wipers developed an annoying squeal. Fuel had to be bought. Through it all, nobody suitable reached out to her.

By six o’clock, she had just about decided why she was dreading meeting Amlis Vess so much.

It had nothing to do with his status really; she was an invaluable part of the business, he a thorn in its side, so he probably had more to fear from Vess Incorporated than she did. No, the main reason why she was dreading him was simpler than that.

It was because Amlis Vess was from home.

When he set eyes on her, he would see her the way any normal person from home would see her, and he would be shocked, and she would helplessly have to watch him being shocked. She knew from experience what this felt like; would do anything to avoid feeling it again. The men she worked with on the farm had been shocked too, at first, but they were used to her now, more or less; they could go about their business without gawping (though if there was a lull in activities she always felt their eyes on her). No wonder she tended to keep to her cottage – and why Esswis did too, she guessed. Being a freak was so wearying.

Amlis Vess, never having seen her before, would recoil. He’d be expecting to see a human being, and he would see a hideous animal instead. It was that moment of… of the sickening opposite of recognition that she just couldn’t cope with.

She decided to return to the farm immediately, lock herself in her cottage, and wait until Amlis Vess had come and gone.

In the mountainous desolation of Aviemore she caught a hitcher in her headlights. A little gargoyle gesturing in a flare of illumination, registering almost as an after-image on the retina; a little gargoyle foolishly attached to a spot where cars would be whizzing by him at maximum speed. Isserley’s maximum speed being about fifty, however, she had time to notice him. He seemed awfully keen to be picked up.

Passing him, Isserley thought seriously about whether she wanted a hitcher just now. She waited for clues from the universe.

The snow had died down again, the windscreen wipers lay still, the motor was purring nicely, she was perhaps in slight danger of dozing off. Isserley slowed, cruised to a stop in a bus bay, and let the car idle, headlights dimmed. The Monadhliath Mountains loomed on one side of her, the Cairngorms on the other. She was alone with them. She closed her eyes, slid her fingertips under the rims of her glasses and rubbed her big satiny eyelids. A massive tanker roared into view, flooding the cabin of Isserley’s car with light. She waited until it had gone, then revved her engine and flicked on the indicator.

On the second approach, passing by on the other side of the road, she noted that the hitcher was small and barrel-chested, with lots of exposed flesh so darkly tanned it resisted being bleached by the full beam of headlights. This time she observed that he was standing not far from a car which was parked, or possibly stuck, in a ditch off the road. It was a shabby blue Nissan estate, scratched and battered all over but not in such a conspicuously fresh way as to suggest an accident. Both hitcher and car seemed upright and in one piece, although the one was making exaggerated gestures to draw attention to the other.

Isserley drove on for a couple of miles, reluctant to involve herself in anything that might already be of interest to the police or a vehicle rescue service. Eventually, however, she reasoned that if a stranded motorist had any expectation of being found by such authorities, he surely wouldn’t be trying to hitch. She turned around then, and drove back.

The final approach revealed the hitcher to be an odd creature, even by Scottish standards. Though not much taller than Isserley, with a wizened, wispy-haired little head and spindly legs, he had improbably massive arms, shoulders and torso, as if these had been transplanted onto him from a much beefier creature. He was wearing a frayed and faded flannelette shirt, sleeves rolled up, and seemed impervious to the cold, thumbing the bitter air with almost clownish enthusiasm, making elaborate gestures towards his decrepit Nissan. Isserley wondered momentarily whether she had seen him somewhere before, then realized she was confusing him with certain cartoon characters on early-morning television. His kind weren’t the title characters, though; they were the ones who got squashed flat by giant mallets or burnt to a crisp by exploding cigars.

She decided to stop for him. He had more muscle mass packed in between his neck and hips, after all, than many vodsels twice his size had on their entire bodies.

Seeing her slow down and veer towards him, he nodded idiotically and held two stiff-thumbed fists aloft in an expression of triumph, as if awarding her two points for her decision. Above the crunch of gravel, Isserley thought she could hear a throaty whoop.

She parked as close as she could to the stranger’s own car without snaring her wheels in the ditch, and trusted that her flashing rear lights would warn any motorists coming up behind her. This really was a very awkward spot, and she was curious to find out if the hitcher would acknowledge it. That would already tell her something worth knowing about him.

She wound down the passenger window as soon as she’d pulled on the handbrake, and the hitcher immediately poked his tiny head into the car. He was smiling broadly, a mouthful of crooked brown-edged teeth inside two leathery crescents of lip. His brown face was bristly, wrinkled and scarred, with a mottled snout of a nose and two spectacularly bloodshot chimpanzee eyes.

‘She’s gonna skelp my bot, I tell ya,’ he leered, breathing alcohol into the car.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘My girlfriend. She’s gonna skelp my bot,’ he repeated, his grin deepening to a grimace. ‘I shoulda been at her place by teatime. That’s always when I’m supposed to be there. And it never happens, can you believe it, eh?’ He slumped a little in the window-frame and his eyes closed slowly, as if the power that was keeping his eyelids up had abruptly run out. With effort he roused himself, and continued, ‘Every week this same thing.’

‘What same thing?’ asked Isserley, trying not to pull a face at the beer fumes.

He winked, laboriously. ‘She’s got a temper.’ Eyes falling shut again, he sniggered, like a cartoon tomcat in the shadow of a falling bomb.