The Hunt aka 27 Read Online Free PDF

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 Münster. 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 wa r m 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. H i s 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 w ith anger, striking her with his fist as he thrust himself into her until he w as spent and collapsed on tap of her and only then did he realize she w as 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 dr op ping 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 w a s a dream that would not die and so when he was obsessed, when the compu ls ion 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 lo ok 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 f or 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 m onths 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