The Vigil (2019)

Lynn Cohen: Mrs. Litvak

Quotes 

• Mrs. Litvak : Why did you come here?

  Yakov Ronen : I'm Yakov, Mrs. Litvak, I'm the Shomer, I'm here to protect and comfort your husband's soul.

  Mrs. Litvak : Protect it from what?

• 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.

• Mrs. Litvak : Do you know my children?

  [Yakov shakes his head] 

  Mrs. Litvak : I drove them away, as far as they could go. They think they left on their own accord, that it was their choice. But I drove them away. I drove them away. You know why I made them leave?

  [Yakov shakes his head] 

  Mrs. Litvak : This is not a place for children. It was a bunker in the wilderness, a place you go to, but never return from. Do you know my husband?

  [Yakov shakes his head] 

  Mrs. Litvak : He was broken by memories. Those kind of memories that you saw.

  [Yakov's eyes widen] 

  Mrs. Litvak : They bite, they bite and the biting never stops. He was so lost he didn't know what to do.

• Yakov Ronen : Hello, Mrs. Litvak, I'm extremely sorry for your loss.

  Mrs. Litvak : Who is this man? I thought you were getting a shomer.

  Reb Shulem : He will be the shomer tonight.

  Mrs. Litvak : No.

  Reb Shulem : He's an experienced shomer, he sat the vigil for Moshe Kellner, Chaim Sturman.

  Mrs. Litvak : He won't work.

  Reb Shulem : I know that you had a very difficult and upsetting day, but this will be good, it'll be good.

  Mrs. Litvak : He needs to leave now! You have to leave now.

• Mrs. Litvak : It won't let you leave.

  Yakov Ronen : We have to go now.

  Mrs. Litvak : I've left many times, but where is there for me to go? My obligation is to my home, my Rubin. I can suffer, my pain was not his.

  Yakov Ronen : Mrs. Litvak, what won't let me leave?

  Mrs. Litvak : The Massik. He's playing with you, the way a cat plays with a mouse. It wants your pain, and it will make you see things, terrible things. Me, I am not enough for it, but your agony...

  Yakov Ronen : We're leaving, we have to go now. There is something very, very wrong here.

  Mrs. Litvak : If you run out, the Mazzik will make you crawl right back.