Wednesday, June 5, 2024

On the Threshold: How a Visionary Novel Healed a Personal Wound



So much of the inspiration for my work, On the Threshold, comes from the notorious Amityville murders of 1974. Chances are that many children growing up in the 1970’s found the murders to be disturbing and unforgettable.

When the tragic Defeo family moved into their famous house, it is my understanding that the father named their home “High Hopes” and set up a friendly sign stenciled with those very words. What many fail to grasp is that the song from which the name derives is not so much a song of hope as it is a song of futility. Specifically, the song tells of a determined ant trying to move a rubber-tree plant—something plainly impossible. My profoundly-personal feeling is that the father unconsciously knew that it was futile for him to think that he could remedy his son’s antisocial tendencies by moving the family to a beautiful house in Amityville. This might also help to explain why the father chose to paint the house a somber black. One other note: the father had the “High Hopes” sign written in a Gothic, Germanic-looking script. Could it be that he had already noticed the fact that his antisocial son loved loud, violent WWII movies? More to the point, the father must have at least unconsciously noticed that when his son watched those loud, violent movies, he did not identify with John Wayne and the Americans. Rather, the son rooted for the Nazis.

At any rate, so much of my work deals with the workings of the unconscious mind and the wisdom and knowledge stored there. That thematic topic runs throughout the text and is augmented by the fact that one of the protagonists just happens to be a film critic who employs phenomenological film theory as a means of understanding the workings of the unconscious mind. The novel had to include such a character, though—and looking back at the Amityville murders, it is no mystery why.

Before Butch Defeo committed the murders, he watched a movie on the late show: Castle Keep, a WW-II picture starring Burt Lancaster. Could it be that the movie appealed to something in the murderer’s drug-addled unconscious mind? The movie tells of Hitler’s army storming a Belgian castle. Plainly, the murderer identified with those German soldiers tasked with the violent conquest. And if that’s true, the murderer’s unconscious mind could very well have equated his father with those holding authority over the castle—both the Belgian count and his friend, the American officer portrayed by Burt Lancaster. In short, as the murderer watched the movie that fateful night, he came to equate the castle, the setting for the movie, with the family house there in Amityville.

Let’s remember, too, that as the murderer watched the movie, he watched it at full volume. He did this because he enjoyed the violent sounds of war. This is important because the cacophony must have weighed upon the family’s collective unconsciousness as they slept and heard the terrible clamor. By the time, the murderer burst into their rooms and demanded that they roll over onto their bellies, the family was already in a state of something like shellshock. As for why the murderer would demand that the family members roll onto their bellies, this, too, is no mystery at all: the murderer made such demands only because he could not bear to look upon their faces and to risk eye contact in that moment he pulled the trigger. 

One other point that is important to understand: following the commission of the horrible crime, the murderer took it upon himself to trim his beard in a distinctive way—and in a way that he had never worn it either before or since. The question is why. Here’s the answer: in trimming his beard in the way that he did, he made it look something like the way the Belgian count wore his beard in the movie. In a sense, when the murderer trimmed his beard, he was telling himself that he had conquered the castle and that he was in charge now and that he would be the count from this moment forward. Again, though, the point is that the murderer unconsciously saw his own experience in the movie. His conscious mind saw a WW-II picture that fateful night, but his unconscious mind detected the archetypes that spoke to his own condition.

These aforementioned themes abound all throughout my work. Without a doubt, the WW-II film, Castle Keep, predetermined the decision to set my tale in a castle. (In the interest of full disclosure, I named my castle after the building where the English Department meets at my alma mater, Hiram College.) 

Most important of all, the idea of phenomenological film theory has always informed my thoughts on the unconscious mind. Ultimately, film theory ignited my obsession with Plato and his idea of inborn knowledge. Deep down inside, I’ve always know that the resolution to the riddle of the universe exists within us and has always been there.


On the Threshold
M. Laszlo

Genre: SciFi, Historical Fiction, Magical Realism
Publisher: Awesome Independent Authors Publishing
Date of Publication: February 2024
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1922329584
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1922329585
Number of pages: 342
Word Count: Approximately 90,000 words
Cover Artist: Rose Newland

Tagline: Obsessed with solving the riddle of the universe,  Scotsman Fingal T. Smyth conducts an occult-science experiment during which he unleashes a projection of his innate knowledge. 

Book Description: 

Obsessed with solving the riddle of the universe, a Scotsman named Fingal T. Smyth conducts an occult-science experiment during which he unleashes a projection of his innate knowledge. 

Fingal aimed to interrogate this avatar to learn what it knows, but unfortunately, he forgot how violent the animal impulses that reside in the deepest recesses of the unconscious mind can be. The avatar appears as a burning man who seeks to manipulate innocent and unsuspecting people into immolating themselves. 

With little hope of returning the fiery figure into his being, Fingal must capture his nemesis before it destroys the world.

Amazon     BN



Excerpt:

Autumn, 1907: late one morning, some kind of torrid, invisible beast seemed to wrap itself all around Fingal T. Smyth’s body. Each one of his toes twitching fiercely, he exited the castle and scanned the distant, Scottish Highlands. Go back where you came from. As the entity wrapped itself tighter all about his person, Fingal blinked back his tears. I’m melting, I am. Aye, it’s the heat of fusion.

Gradually, the beast’s heartbeat became audible—each pulsation. At the same time, too, the illusory heat of transformation emitted an odor as of oven-roasted peppercorns dissolving in a cup of burnt coffee.

Over by the gatehouse, Fräulein Wunderwaffe appeared—the little German girl wearing a plain-sewn robe and square-crown bowler. In that moment, she no longer seemed to be a sickly child of seven years: her inscrutable expression resembled that of a wise, indifferent cat.
Perhaps even some kind of lioness. Fingal cringed, and he recalled a fragment of conversation from three weeks earlier.

“She suffers from a most unnatural pathology, an anguished, maniacal obsession with cats,”

Doktor Hubertus Pflug had explained. “Ever since the poor girl was a baby, she has always regarded it her fate to one day metamorphose into a glorious panther, for she believes herself to be ein Gestaltwandler. Do you know this word? It means shapeshifter and refers to someone who possesses the power to take the form of anything in nature.”

The heat radiated up and down Fingal’s spine now, and his thoughts turned back to the present. Aye, it’s a change of phase. I’m melting into a chemical compound. Despite all, he greeted the girl and willed himself to flash a grin.

Fräulein Wunderwaffe did not return the smile. Hand on heart, the little girl drew a bit closer.

Then, as the hot, animalistic presence undulated all across Fingal’s body, the little girl’s eyes grew wide. Until the little girl’s expression turned to that of a vacant stare.

A moment later, her feet pointed inwards, she removed her hat and undid her long, flaxen hair.

Again, he cringed. “If you’ve noticed something, ignore all. This hasn’t got anything to do with you.” A third time, he cringed.

A most ethereal, lyrical, incomprehensible hiss commenced then: from the other end of the winding, decorative-brick driveway, each clay block shining the color of blue Welsh stone, a sleek Siamese cat with a coat of chocolate-spotted ivory had just appeared. And now the creature raced toward his shadow.

As he looked into the animal’s big, searching, blue eyes, the chocolate Siamese studied the off-center tip of his nose. Then the animal turned away, as if to compare the peculiarity with that of some disembodied visage hovering in the distance.

Out upon the loch, meanwhile, a miraculous rogue wave suddenly arose—and now the swell crashed against the pebbly strand.

Not a moment later, a cool flame crawled across Fingal’s throat. The strange fire rattled, too—not unlike the sound of fallen juniper leaves caught up in the current and dancing against the surface of a stone walkway.

Crivens. By now, the alien, pulsating presence held him so tight that he could barely breathe.

Before long, he fell to the earth, and as the dreamlike flame continued to move across his throat, he rolled all about—until the illusory sensation of cool warmth wriggled and twisted and dropped into his neck dimple.

He crawled over to the little girl and grabbed her ankle. “Get on up to your physician’s room, eh?

Please. Go on and wake Doktor Pflug and tell him what’s happened.”



About the Author:

M. Laszlo is the pseudonym of an extreme recluse who lives in Bath, Ohio. Rumor holds that he derived his pen name from the character of Victor Laszlo in the classic film Casablanca. 









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