Do you live there?" asked Lila, thinking that she had never seen the old lady in the village in the four years she had lived there herself.
"No, dear," answered the passenger, in her soft voice, "I'm just going to visit a friend. He was supposed to meet me back there at Phaan Thong, but his car won't start, so I decided to hitchhike -- there isn't a bus until seven, and I didn't want to wait. I knew some kind soul would give me a lift."
-Something in the way the lady spoke, and the way she never turned her head, but stared continuously into the darkness ahead from under her old yellow hat, made Lila uneasy about this strange hitchhiker. She didn't know why, but she felt instinctively that there was something wrong, something odd, something....dangerous. But how could an old lady be dangerous? it was absurd.
-Careful not to turn her head, Lila looked sideways at her passenger. She studied the hat, the dirty collar of the dress, the shapeless body, the arms with their thick black hairs....