The Devil Aspect

by Craig Russell

Your mind—everybody’s mind—is like a great sea, a deep ocean. We all live our lives, every day, every one of us, sailing on the surface of that ocean. Do you understand me, Šimon?” The madman nodded, but his eyes remained manic, terrified. “But beneath each of us,” continued Viktor, “are the great dark fathoms of our personal oceans. Sometimes frightening monsters live in those depths—great fears and terrible desires that can seem to take real form. I know these things because I work with them as a doctor all the time. What is happening to you, Šimon, is that there is a great storm in your ocean; everything has been stirred up and swirled around. All of those dark monsters from the deeps of your mind have been awoken and have burst through the surface.

In the meantime, she would treat Dr. Kosárek with the appropriate professional courtesy and respect, but otherwise keep him at arm’s length. Arm’s length was fast becoming the measure of all relationships. That was the way of things now: everyone—every new contact, every encounter—had to be analyzed, assessed as a threat. Something that had always been there in her life without dominating it—her Jewish heritage—now had come to overshadow her interaction with everyone around her. Everyone and everything had now to be seen as a potential threat.

Arm’s length was fast becoming the measure of all relationships. That was the way of things now: everyone—every new contact, every encounter—had to be analyzed, assessed as a threat.

Everyone seemed blind to what was before their eyes: everyone could see the gradual accumulation of cruelties but not their clustering into some monstrous ultimate malice. They could see the clouds but not predict the storm.

“I’m sure you’ve been fully warned about me,” said Skála. “That you have to be careful at all times. The thing of it is, you have to be lucky all the time, I only need to get lucky once. See my chance and take it. I look forward to working with you too, Dr. Kosárek, because the very first chance I get I’m going to slice and peel that handsome face clean off your skull, while you’re still alive, and wear it as a mask. Then everyone will say how handsome I look.” He laughed. “Won’t that be something?”

“Maybe it would be best,” she said at last, “if you left the Devil alone in his hiding place.”

I believe psychiatry is at last slowly waking up to the fact that anyone can become mentally ill in exactly the same way anyone can become physically ill. And we all do—to one degree or another, at one time or another.

I could now see what everyone else saw when they looked at me. I could now see that I was nothing. And when I looked again I saw someone had ruined my dress. Someone had covered it in blood. I saw my reflection without a face and a pretty dress all ruined with blood.”

“Can’t you tell? He’s standing right behind you. The Devil is at your shoulder…”

“The greatest danger in seeking out the Devil, my dear Doctor, is that you might find him.”

“I am saying that you embarked on your journey of discovery without sufficient consideration. You set out in search of something that lives inside the mad, inside the sane; inside others and, of course, inside yourself. But you didn’t take the time to consider what you might discover.”

“The woodcutter’s wife went into the dark spaces of the forest. She sought out demons and spirits and elementals in those dark spaces. She went in hunt of that which frightened her most. That is what became her undoing. She found what she was looking for. She found me. And now, my dear Viktor, you stand in exactly the same dark spaces. You have arrived. You are now lost in the forest of the mind. You should take care that it doesn’t become your undoing.”

“To the light?” The patient on the couch smiled handsomely, malevolently. “Now, what use would I have for light? That’s not where either of us wants to go, is it? But I will lead you, fear not. Come with me and I will lead you into a darkness beyond your imagination.

So this, Viktor thought to himself, is where the Devil hides. On the edge of death.

“In quantum physics, there’s nothing insane about believing there’s not just one but many realities. I was using mathematics to find the crack in the mirror’s glass: the infinitesimally small breach that connects one world with its reflection, one reality to the next.

I knew I had to choose between the light and the shadow. I chose the shadow. I chose Satan the revolutionary over God the tyrant.

“It was then they realized that the Devil is just God in his night attire.”

You came in search of where the Devil hides—seeking out what you call the Devil Aspect. Why now? Because this is a most interesting time—a dark age is dawning, a great tide of blood and torment is coming this way. My kind of dark soul will soon become commonplace among men. Your Devil Aspect will dominate in the coming years. And much that will happen here in that time will entertain me greatly. So much death, so much suffering, such exquisitely banal evil.”