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While it’s not so mysterious that Freud would reference Nietzsche’s Duality Dichotomy to explain the id—he often used philosophy and the Greek mythos to lend to his psychology endeavors—it can be insightful.
Such as how Nietzsche stated the Dionysian represents raw energy from which everything originates. The ancients referred to this state as a void. Kallum cited this asprima materia, the chaos of the universe.
To Freud, this raw energy embodied our most extreme emotions, from terror to ecstasy. In its purest state, the Dionysian is powerful yet equally destructive without a way to control and focus it. Not unlike the id when deprived of a counterbalance, which would enslave us to our desires.
When comparing the ego to the id, the Apollonian is a necessary contrast. It creates a way to incorporate the Dionysian. As Dionysus represents existential reality, Apollo gives us the means to live this intense, passionate reality without being consumed by it.
Otherwise, regardless of its evocative beauty and alluring creative genius while in the impassioned throes of the Dionysian, we are not actually free, as we’re still doomed to the self-destructive forces of our base desires.
While there is beauty in the chaos, like the fiery dance of the cosmos, there is also pain and tragedy in its unruly violence.
Freud stated that it is the excess, the id, that makes us violent.
It doesn’t take an expert in philosophy or having a doctorate in psychology to see the parallels.
These two forces must work in tandem to survive and exist in harmony. No matter how badly my logical disposition wants to argue, once all doubt is removed, the result is a life worth living, even if it’s chaotic and dark and painful.
Kallum consumes my excess, and I balance his extreme nature.
I close my laptop and move to the foot of the hotel room bed, where my suitcase is mostly packed. I drop the tear-shaped diamond in the palm of my hand, feeling the coolness of the rock as I pool the white-gold chain around the pendant.
Some distant part of me wants to keep this token of my past life, yet there’s now a stronger part that desires to release it and the pain its tied to. Like tossing an anchor away from a vessel, I set the necklace on the nightstand, freeing it one finger at a time as a buoyant relief untethers the weight within me.
If Devyn was here, I’d give her the pendant. A piece tied to my grief bestowed to her with the hope that it could somehow set her free also. That’s the part of me she needed, that she connected with. This memento should stay with her.
After a few hours of sleep, I’m mentally recovered enough to accept the outcome.
There’s no help for Devyn.
Even if I somehow exonerated her of Alister’s murder, she would still be charged with desecrating remains, and a whole host of other offenses. She’d serve a lesser sentence for these charges, but even then, she’d die in prison or an institution before she earned the chance at freedom.
I don’t know when Devyn’s symptoms first showed, but I know she had to be young. On average, someone with the juvenile form of the disease may live up to a decade after symptoms appear. With the little research I’ve done on her disease, I think Devyn could have potentially months to a year left.
I’d been trying to walk in her steps with each ritual scene, trying to uncover the reason—thewhy—that sparked her obsession with ascending into a philosophical existence.
The moment of clarity came when Mrs. Lipton confirmed a single theory, that her brother was terminal. The rest of the pieces connected in quick succession when I uncovered the medical journal at the mansion.
That was Devyn’s cave, her solitude of meditation for years. The journal could only belong to her.
Sometimes, two and two equals four. It’s just that simple.
Once the updated lab results come in and are matched to the proper medical histories of the missing locals, it will prove all thirty-three of Devyn’s higher men are—or were—terminal.
But Agent Rana already knows this. It’s why she’s been so guarded, keeping the recovered victims quarantined in the hospital. They’re all severely ill, and likely getting worse. I just hope my suggestion to obtain their records does help to get them treatment.
While there’s still the mystery as to why the residents kept this information about their loved ones hidden during the investigation into their disappearance five years ago, Dr. Markus’s theory on highly secretive societies is the most logical theory. People sworn to secrecy, clinging to the hope of their loved ones’ recovery.
I could delve further into the town’s groupthink dynamic but…
It’s no longer my case to solve.
Along with the profile that includes a list of suspects, I also sent her my notice.
I have to move on from Hollow’s Row.
Kallum is still concerned Devyn will reveal my secret, but that was never truly my fear. Even if she announced it to the entire world, it would be perceived as the ramblings of a clinically disturbed woman with no physical evidence to back her claim. No official would take the allegation seriously. She was obsessed with me during this case, she tried to cannibalize me. It would be easy enough to generate a profile showing how she twisted the crimes to justify her desire to use me in her ritual.
I do not want to be forced to do that.
