Vincent suffered from a cluster of serious mental illnesses, the most terrifying of which was schizophrenia. He knew he was schizophrenic. He knew the voices he heard were not real, that the voices often lied. But when they berated him for laziness, cowardice, uselessness, and alternately reminded him that he was the avenging angel Abaddon, it was very hard to ignore them. Especially when he hadn’t taken his meds in weeks.

  And, by the way, he could actually become a nightmarish monster. That was not a figment. That was not a hallucination. And once you accepted the fact that you could actually become a giant starfish-human mash-up, well, the things the voices suggested seemed less crazy. Watching the last twenty-four hours of television—the Ranch, Las Vegas—notions of sane and insane had become rather . . . mixed up.

  The only time the Schizos—his name for his usual voices—receded was when he turned into the creature, into Abaddon. Then he faced new voices, different voices that spoke not in words but in urges, and those voices, the Dark Watchers, reduced the Schizos to a background murmur.

Villain, Chapter 20