Under the Skin

  ‘Well, I don’t sleep on a bed,’ said the shabby vodsel, folding his arms across his chest. His voice had lowered to a monotone again, a strange mixture of prickly insolence and unfathomable despair.

  ‘Really?’ said Isserley. ‘What do you sleep on?’

  ‘A mattress in the back of my van,’ he said, as if she was trying to argue him out of it but he’d ceased to care. ‘With the dog.’

  Unemployed, thought Isserley. Then, immediately: it doesn’t matter. Let him go. It’s over. Amlis has gone away. No-one loves you. The police are moving in. Go home.

  But she had no home to go to, not really. Not unless she did her job. Pushing back defeatist thoughts, she tried instead to reason with the vodsel at hand.

  ‘If you own a van,’ she challenged him politely, ‘why are you hitch-hiking? Why not drive yourself?’

  ‘Can’t afford the petrol,’ he muttered.

  ‘Doesn’t the government give you … um … an allowance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought everybody who’s unemployed gets an allowance from the government.’

  ‘I’m not unemployed,’ he retorted. ‘I own a business.’

  ‘Oh.’ Isserley saw, out of the corner of her eye, a peculiar change coming over his face. Colour had risen to his cheeks, and his eyes glistened, with a feverish enthusiasm perhaps, or tears. He bared his teeth, which were punctuated by the creamy Polyfilla of old food.

  ‘I pay myself a wage, y’see?’ he declared, his enunciation suddenly clear. ‘Whatever I can afford. Once I’ve paid my employees.’

  ‘Um … so how many people have you got working under you?’ asked Isserley, perturbed by the rictus of his grin, the intensity of his concentration. He seemed to have been roused from a coma, drastically infused with a potent cocktail of fury, self-pity and hilarity.

  ‘Well now, there’s a question, there’s a question,’ he said, thrumming his fingers against his thighs. ‘They may not all be turning up at the factory, y’see. Might have got discouraged by the locked gates. Might have got discouraged by the lights being off. I haven’t shown up there myself, for the last few weeks. It’s in Yorkshire, y’see. Lot of petrol to get to Yorkshire. And then, I owe the bank about three hundred thousand pounds.’

  The rain was easing off now, allowing Isserley to orient herself. She could set him down in Alness, if his craziness got out of hand. She’d never had anyone quite like him before. She wondered, alarmingly, if she liked him.

  ‘Does that mean you’re in trouble?’ she asked, meaning the money.

  ‘In trouble? Me? No-o-o-o,’ he said. ‘I haven’t broken any laws.’

  ‘But aren’t you a … a missing person?’

  ‘I sent my family a postcard,’ he fired back immediately, grinning, grinning all the while, sweat twinkling in his eyebrows and on his moustache. ‘Peace of mind for the cost of a stamp. Saves the police from wasting valuable time, too.’

  Isserley stiffened at the mention of police. Then, having ordered her body to relax, she got suddenly worried in case she’d let her arms sag into an angle impossible for vodsel musculature. She glanced down at her left arm, the one nearest him. It looked fine. But what was that horrible squeaking noise near her face? Oh: it was the windscreen wipers, scraping dry glass. Hastily, she switched them off.

  Give up, it’s over, she thought.

  ‘Are you married?’ she said, after a deep breath.

  ‘Now there’s a question, there’s a question,’ he responded, seething, virtually rising off his seat. ‘Am I married. Am I married. Let me think now.’ His eyes shone so fiercely they looked ready to explode. ‘Yes, I suppose I was married,’ he decided, as if conceding, with grisly good humour, a point someone else had just scored at his expense. ‘For twenty-two years, as a matter of fact. Until last month, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘And now you’re divorced?’ pursued Isserley.

  ‘So I’m told, so I’m told,’ he said, with a wink like a violent tic.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Isserley. Her head was starting to ache. The car was full of the heady stink of dog, the radioactive glare of psychic torment and the sudden blaze of noonday sun right in her eyes.

  ‘Have you ever loved anyone?’ the vodsel challenged her.

  ‘I – I don’t know,’ said Isserley. ‘I don’t think so.’ She would have to take him soon, or let him go. Her heart was starting to labour, and her stomach seemed to be going into spasm. There was a roaring sound somewhere behind her, which a glance at the rear-view mirror confirmed was another vehicle – a mammoth campervan, tilting from side to side impatiently. Isserley checked her own speed and was unnerved to find it was thirty-five miles an hour – slow even for her – so she drove a little closer to the edge.

  ‘I loved my wife, y’see,’ the dog-smelly vodsel was saying. ‘I loved her very much. She was my world. The full Cilia Black.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  As the campervan swept past, dragging its shadow over Isserley’s car, the vodsel began to sing, loudly and uninhibitedly.

  ‘Sh’was my world, she was my night, my da-a-ay; sh’was my world, sh’was every breath, I ta-a-ake, and if our love, ceases to be-e-e, then it’s the end of my world, for me-e-e!’ He shut up as abruptly as he’d begun, and was again grinning at her fiercely, tears leaking down his grizzled cheeks. ‘Get the picture?’

  Isserley’s head throbbed as she eased the car back towards the middle.

  ‘Are you under the influence of mind-altering drugs?’ she said.

  ‘Could be, could be,’ he winked again, ‘Fermented potato juice, made in Poland. Tough on pain, tough on the causes of pain, all for six pounds forty-nine a bottle. Bit of a disappointment in bed, though. And conversation’s a bit onesided, I feel.’

  The A9 was clear for several hundred yards in front and behind, the campervan having sped half-way to the horizon. Isserley let one finger rest on the icpathua toggle. Her heart wasn’t beating as hard as it usually did; instead, she felt sick, as if she might throw up any minute. She took a deep breath of dog-flavoured air, and made an effort to tie up the one last loose end.

  ‘Who takes care of your dog when you go out hitching?’

  ‘No-one,’ he grimaced. ‘She stays in the van.’

  ‘All day and night?’

  She’d posed the question without accusatory emphasis, but it seemed to wound him deeply. His manic energy flowed out of him in a gush, and he was left listless and dispirited.

  ‘I never stay out that long,’ he argued, monotone again. ‘I need my walkies too. She understands that.’

  Isserley’s finger trembled against the icpathua toggle, then she hesitated, swallowing down a surge of nausea.

  ‘It’s a pretty big van,’ the vodsel muttered defensively.

  ‘Mm,’ Isserley reassured him, biting her lip.

  ‘I need to know she’ll still be there when I get back,’ he pleaded.

  ‘Mm,’ said Isserley. Sweat was stinging the fingers of her left hand and her wrist ached. ‘Excuse me,’ she whispered. ‘I … I have to pull over for a minute. I’m not … feeling so good.’

  The car was already travelling at a crawl. She allowed it to roll into the nearest parking area and brought it to a halt. The engine shuddered and was still. Supporting herself with one quivering fist against the steering wheel, she wound open a window with the other.

  ‘You’re not a well girl, are you?’

  She shook her head, unable to speak.

  They sat in silence for a while, as the fresh air blew in. Isserley breathed deeply, and so did the vodsel. He seemed to be struggling with something, just as she was.

  Eventually he said, in a low desolate tone, but very distinctly:

  ‘Life is shit, you know that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ sighed Isserley. ‘This world is very beautiful.’

  He grunted disdainfully.

  Leave it to the animals, I rec
kon. Leave the whole fucking lot to the animals.’ That seemed to be his final word on the subject, but then when he saw that Isserley had begun to cry, he lifted his filthy hand and hesitantly pawed the air near Isserley’s shoulder. Thinking better of it, he folded both his hands into his lap and looked away, out of the passenger window.

  ‘I’ve had my outing for today,’ he said softly. ‘How about you just let me out here?’

  Isserley looked him straight in the eyes. They were shiny with unwept tears, and she could see a tiny Isserley reflected in each one.

  ‘I understand,’ she said, and flipped the icpathua toggle. The vodsel’s head tipped against the glass of the passenger window and rested there. The wispy grey hair growing out of his neck fluttered in the breeze.

  Isserley wound up her window and pressed the button to make the glass turn dark. As soon as the interior of the car was dim and private, she pulled the vodsel back from the side window and turned his face to the front. His eyes were closed. He looked peaceful, not shocked and apprehensive like the others. He might have been sleeping, snoozing an over-long journey away, a slumber of a thousand light-years.

  Isserley opened the glove box and selected a wig and a pair of spectacles. She fetched the anorak from the back seat. She dressed her fellow-traveller carefully, smoothing his dull, faded hair under a mop as black and glossy as his own might once have been. His brows were warm and bristly against the scarred flesh of her palms.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’

  When he was ready to go, she lightened the windows and started the car. She was less than twenty minutes from home, traffic permitting.

  Back on Ablach Farm, Ensel was first out of the steading as usual, to greet her. Everything, it seemed, was back to normal.

  Isserley opened the passenger door, and Ensel appraised what was sitting there.

  ‘A beauty,’ he complimented her. One of the best ever.’

  That’s when Isserley finally lost it.

  ‘Don’t say that!’ she screamed at the top of her voice. ‘Why must you always fucking say that!’

  Flinching at the violence of her response, Ensel seized hold of the body between them. Isserley seized hold too, struggling to keep him upright as he was dragged along the seat into the outstretched arms of the waiting men. ‘He’s not the best,’ she raged as she clutched and pushed. ‘He’s not the worst. He’s just a … just a …’ Slipping from all their grasps, the body fell heavily on the stony ground. Isserley shrieked in fury, ‘Fuck you!’

  Leaving the scabrous beasts to their bumbling and grunting, she drove to her cottage in a cloud of dust.

  * * *

  Two hours later, just as she was starting to calm down, she found Esswis’s note in her pocket, and re-read it, this time forcing herself to decipher the last few lines. Vess Incorporated had just one extra request of her, it seemed. They were wondering if she could perhaps see her way clear to supplying them with a vodsel female, preferably one with intact eggs. There was no need to process the female. Just wrap her up carefully, send her along, and Vess Incorporated would take care of the rest.

  13

  NAKED AND AFRAID of sleep, Isserley roamed her house from room to room, in the dark, hour upon hour. Her route was spiral, beginning in her bedroom, then along the landing to the other bedroom she never used, then downstairs to the rotten-floored hallway, the empty master bedroom, the front room filled with twigs and branches, the gutted kitchen, the clammy bathroom. She paced each one, going over and over in her mind the story of her life so far, and what she could do in the future.

  Among the things she considered, to take her through until the morning at least, was knocking down the inner walls of the cottage. The idea came to her in the front room downstairs, when she’d suddenly picked up a big stick and swung it with all her strength against the nearest surface. It was very satisfying: the plaster exploded on impact, exposing a dark cavity and a rib of rough wood. She hit it again, and more fell away. Maybe she would turn the house into one big room. Maybe she would knock the whole fucking place down.

  After bashing the wall for twenty minutes or so, she had a hole barely big enough to crawl through, and wielding the stick had ceased giving her the satisfaction of the first few blows. The scar-line where her sixth finger had been amputated was throbbing in pain, and the savagery of her swings was doing something bad to her spine. So, she gave up, and resumed pacing. Her bare feet collected debris. She moved from room to room, tapping the walls with her nails. The house creaked and rustled. Outside in the trees of Ablach Farm, owls were calling to each other, screaming like human women in orgasm. The wind was swollen with the sound of waves crashing on the sea-shore. Somewhere in the farther distance, a foghorn blew.

  It was well after midnight when Isserley finally went to bed, too tired to think any more. She had a number of half-formed plans now, and she hoped she’d stayed awake long enough to make sure the sun would be up by the time she awoke.

  She slept deeply, for what seemed like a very long time, but when she resurfaced, gasping in terror, it was still pitch dark. The sheets were tangled tightly around her legs, damp and humid, slightly abrasive with grains of plaster, fragments of twig, dirt. She touched herself all over: the flesh of her arms and shoulders was as hot as meat newly fetched from the oven, but her legs were stone cold. Of all the phases of sleep to be woken from, this was the worst.

  Cruelly, even though her system hadn’t got round to restoring its equilibrium, it had still managed to squeeze in her usual nightmare about being buried alive, abandoned, condemned to die in an airless prison.

  And yet … was it her usual nightmare? Glimpsing its after-image as it faded from her mind, she realized there was something different about it. The way it had made her feel was the same as always, but for the first time, the creature at the centre of the drama seemed to be someone other than herself. Not at the beginning, no: at the beginning it was unmistakably Isserley, being led down into the bowels of the earth. But by the end she seemed to have changed shape, size and species. And in those last anxious seconds before waking, the dream hadn’t been about a human being anymore, but a dog, trapped inside a vehicle in the middle of nowhere. Her master wasn’t coming back, and she was going to die.

  As soon as she was fully awake, Isserley disentangled herself from the bedclothes, hugged her cold legs in her warm arms, and began to argue herself back from the brink of panic.

  Of course the dog she’d dreamed of was yesterday’s vodsel’s dog, but there was no need to be having nightmares about it. The animal would be just fine. Its master would have left the windows of his van open a fraction, surely. And even if he hadn’t, vehicles weren’t exactly vacuum-sealed, and the weather was cool. As for imagining the dog was going to starve to death, well, that was stupid. When the dog got hungry, it would start barking, and eventually people would get irritated by the noise and search out where it was coming from. In any case, what was so important about the fate of a dog? Dogs died every day. She’d seen the flattened carcasses of lots of them on the A9, had driven over the remains herself, rather than swerve dangerously. They made a barely perceptible bump under the tyres. Their consciousness was rudimentary.

  Isserley rubbed her eyes and looked up. She’d put fresh batteries in the clock yesterday, as part of reclaiming a grip on her life: it now glowed 4:09. Maybe it would have been better not to know how many hours she still had to wait for sunrise. Maybe it would have been better not to wake up at all.

  She crawled out of bed, crippled as usual. What heaven it would be to get revenge on the surgeons who’d done this to her! She’d never even seen their faces: she’d been drugged into oblivion by the time they’d stuck their knives in. And now they were probably boasting to Vess Incorporated how much they’d learned from their mistakes, how there was no comparison between the miracles they could perform now and the crude experiments that had been Esswis and Isserley. In a fair world, she would be given the opportunity, before she
died, to tie those surgeons to a slab and do a bit of experimenting of her own. They could watch, tongueless, as she carved their genitals away. To keep their noise down, she’d give them big chunks of their own severed tails to chew on. Their anuses would clench as she penetrated their spines with iron skewers. Their eyes would blink blood as she sculpted brave new faces for them.

  Isserley switched on the television and began her exercises.

  ‘I can’t endure a lifetime without love,’ a voice whispered into her dark bedroom. The image materialized, a black-and-white little female clinging onto a broad-shouldered male looking away from her, towards the sky.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ he chided her gently. ‘You won’t have to.’

  Isserley reached out her foot to change the channel just as a sleek aeroplane flew off into dramatic gloom, propellers twirling.

  Warm colours suffused the screen, abstract and mutable. The camera image pulled back, sharpening into an iridescent circle of wet glass held between a giant thumb and forefinger, like a single spectacle lens smeared with soup.

  ‘Cultures such as this one,’ said an authoritative voice, ‘may literally be growing a cure for cancer.’

  Isserley stood staring into the fire she had made, almost mesmerized. She’d built a much larger pyre of twigs and branches than usual, and the flames blazed gold and apricot in the dawn. With effort she roused herself and walked past her car, which was already clear of the shed and facing out of the farm, engine running. Isserley limped across to the steading, her shoes scuffing awkwardly along the stony ground. There was something wrong at the base of her spine which exercise hadn’t yet managed to fix.

  ‘Isserley,’ she spoke into the intercom.

  No-one answered, but the great metal door rolled open. Just inside, as expected, sat the black plastic bag filled with the personal effects of the last vodsel. She grabbed it and left the steading immediately, just in case whoever was on duty was coming up from the earth’s depths for a chat.