The Hunt

hit her, punching her in the chest and ribs and face, although the blows became less and less brutal as he built to a climax with each punch. She was almost unconscious again when she heard him cry out and felt him fall forward on top of her. His head fell beside hers. His heart was pounding against her bruised ribs. She could feel him begin to soften inside her. She began to moan in pain. If he heard her he paid no attention.

He left her tied and bleeding while he went into the bathroom to shower. When he came back the white wig and beard were restored. He untied her but left the gag in place; her shattered lips were swollen around it. He helped her get dressed, threw the bloody dress and corset and the black mask in the suitcase.

“We’re going to leave by the back stairs, the way we came in,” he whispered in her ear. “I want you to keep your head down, understand me? Understand?”

She nodded.

“You act drunk. If we pass anybody, don’t look up. You make one sound and I will break your neck like a dead twig.”

He held her up with one arm and carried his bag in the other. She kept her head down as he had ordered but no one saw them. He shoved her roughly into the front seat of the car and slammed the door, then drove back toward the Helgestrasse in silence. She stared at the floorboard, pressing a towel to her shattered lips.

Two years, chasing rules on freight trains, sleeping under railroad bridges and in the corners of dark tunnels, stealing to eat. Sometimes there had been laboring jobs, brutal work moving railroad tracks or clearing brush for a handful of marks that would barely buy a good meal. And sometimes there had been enough left over to pay one of the whores that lived near the rail yards—old whores, too sick or burned out to appeal to anyone else, smothering his rage in momentary passion while the humiliation burned his soul like a branding iron. A good- looking man like himself; a handsome man, a war hero for God c sake! Reduced to haggling over pennies with filthy, smelly human relics no self-respecting man would endure, screwing in tattered tents or on the ground when the weather was warm enough. But since no respectable woman would have anything to do with the wanderers, it was a momentary relief from the agony of poverty.

He could no longer remember exactly where he was that night. Brandenburg, perhaps, or Munster. Days and places had become a jumbled nightmare in which every place looked the same. Littered rail yards with feeble campfires to keep warm. Hands scabbed and blistered and encrusted with dirt. The endless sound of coughing. A warm summer night. Soft grass underneath them. And he looked up and saw the faces, lined up and peering over the edge of the ravine. Grinning, tooth-rotten mouths and hollow eyes, lined up and peering from the darkness. His rage had been tumultuous. He had thrown pieces of coal at them, grabbed’ one by the hair and flogged him with a stick.

“We paid her to watch,” the feeble voice pleaded.

And turning back he saw her lying there, her dress around her waist, laughing at him.

“You want a show, I’ll give you a show,” he bellowed. He had mounted her as a bull mounts a cow, roaring with anger, striking her with his fist as he thrust himself into her until he was spent and collapsed on tap of her and only then did he realize she was dead.

His first instinct was to run. But the old men had seen him. So he dragged and carried her to a nearby overpass and waited until a train came, hoisting her limp body over the railing, dangling her at arm’s length until the train was almost on him, then dropping her in its path.

By morning he had hopped another freight and was miles away and the dead whore was an ugly dream. But it was a dream that would not die and so when he was obsessed, when the compulsion would not go away, he relived the nightmare. And when it was over there was no remorse, no guilt, no anger left in him. Only blessed relief and dreamless sleep.

He returned her to within a block of where he had picked her up, pulled up to the curb and turned off the car lights.

“Look at me,” he said softly.

She stared at the floor of the car for several seconds but the softness of his voice made her finally look up at him. One side of her face was black and blue. Her eye was almost swollen shut. Her lips bulged.

He held up a sheaf of pound notes and wiggled them in front of her good eye.

“Two hundred pounds, luv. Now which do you want? Do you want this two hundred quid or do you want me to drive to the police station so you can turn me in for whacking you about? Two hundred, luv, think about it. Couldn’t make that in a fortnight, could you?”

She looked at him for a long time before she slowly reached out and took the money.

“Get out,” he ordered.

The girl moved painfully out onto the sidewalk. Ingersoll pulled the door shut behind her and the tires squealed as he raced off into the darkness.

Ingersoll awoke at four A.M.. The two months since the strange professor had visited him on the set lad flown by. They had worked feverishly editing the picture and he had seen the rough edit of Der Nacht Hund the night before. Everyone agreed that it was his best film to date. They had added simple titles so he could carry it with him to Berchtesgaden for a private showing to the Fuhrer. It would be the first public showing. The premiere was set for late February at the Kroll Opera House and would be a gala event.

For two hours, he and Heinz worked on his makeup. He had decided to go as a middle-aged businessman with latex masking that moved his hairline back, giving him a partially bald look. Heinz built up the bridge of his nose to give it a hard, almost hooked appearance; rubber fleshed out his cheeks and jowled his jaw line. Gray streaks in his thinned hair, a gray mustache and goatee and wire-rimmed glasses with clear lenses finished the process. He put on a tweed double-breasted suit and wore his fur-lined black trench coat.

He smiled in the mirror at the older man who looked back: