The Vigil (2019)
Ronald Cohen: Mr. Rubin Litvak
Quotes
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Mr. Rubin Litvak : [Yakov follows a voice to the basement and sees a tape playing on TV with Mr. Litvak talking, Mrs. Litvak standing behind him] -Once told me that these demons who destroy us, who are born between the days of creation, given life but no soul and no form. These are not beings in the true sense of the word. They do not have a will, a connection to the Higher Power, but they are animalistic. These demons, they are parasites, the Mazzikin are interchangeable with the shedim, but I've spent the last five decades studying the one who followed me home from Buchenwald. I do not know where it came from originally, but what it has shown me is very, very old. I suppose it was lying in wait, hibernating in its way in the forest. Dormant until my pain awakened it. The Massik appears as a figure with its head turned like so, but all the way around. It is damned to look backwards, to stare in the past. This demon, it showed me dreadful things. 10 years ago I found an inscription in a text by Moses ben Shem-Tov. It says: The only way to escape the Mazzik is to burn its true fact the first night it appears, but if you do not do this by dawn, it will never leave you. For me, this time has long passed. When I am gone, the Mazzik will find another broken person, someone else chained to some terrible pain they cannot let go.
[Yakov sees Mrs. Litvak mouthing something behind her husband and peers closer to the screen]
Mr. Rubin Litvak : When it finds its next host, it will slowly consume their soul, just as it did to me. Chewing, gnawing down on the spiritual aspects, the five essences of us all. It worms its way through Nefesh, Ruach, Neshamah, and Chayah, and finally to Ychidah, the direct link to Hashem.
Mrs. Litvak : [on the tape] Behind you.
Mr. Rubin Litvak : [Yakov's eyes widen in terror] And so I make these tapes, I write it down, put it on the walls, explain it, in the hopes that whoever finds the Mazzik next, won't be doomed, consumed as I was.
