“Why do you torment me?” Stan-Stan growled. Then he shouted, “I can’t get your voice out of my head! What do you want from me? I have nothing to do with you! Leave me alone!”

Since this was something a schizophrenic might say to his demons and also something Stan-Stan said to Winter [his contact] almost every time they met, Winter had to admire the subtlety of it.

“I need a favor, Stan-Stan,” Winter said.

The reeking mass of rags and sores leapt at him, jamming his unrecognizable features to within an inch of Winter’s tortured nose.

“Arrrgh-gnarr-ach,” Stan-Stan remarked.

“Be that as it may,” said Winter, struggling not to gag on the stench of him, “It concerns a town called Maidenvale.”

The House of Love and Death, by Andrew Klavan, p. 135