The Servants of Twilight by Dean Koontz

have provided adequate seating for anyone else in the room. But Barlowe was so big that, to him, most furniture seemed to have been designed and constructed for use by dwarves. He liked deep-seated, overstuffed easy chairs and old-fashioned wing-backed armchairs but only if the wings were angled wide enough to accommodate his broad shoulders. He liked king-sized beds, La-Z-Boy recliners, and ancient claw-foot bathtubs that were so large they didn’t force him to sit with his legs drawn up as if he were a baby taking a bath in a basin. His apartment in Santa Ana was furnished to his dimensions, but when he wasn’t at home he was usually uncomfortable to one degree or another.
    However, as Mother Grace slipped deeper into her trance, Barlowe became increasingly eager to hear what message she would bring from the spirit world, and gradually he ceased to notice that he seemed to be perched on a child’s playroom chair.
    He adored Mother Grace. She had told him about the coming of Twilight, and he had believed every word. Twilight. Yes, it made sense. The world was long overdue for Twilight. By warning him that it was coming, by soliciting his help to prepare mankind for it, Mother Grace had given him an opportunity to redeem himself before it was too late. She had saved him, body and soul.
    Until he met her, he had spent most of his twenty-nine years in the single-minded pursuit of self-destruction. He’d been a drunkard, a barroom brawler, a dope addict, a rapist, even a murderer. He’d been promiscuous, bedding at least one new woman every week, most of them junkies or prostitutes or both. He’d contracted gonorrhea seven or eight times, syphilis twice, and it was amazing he hadn’t gotten both diseases more often than that.
    On rare occasions, he had been sober and clearheaded enough to be disgusted or even frightened by his lifestyle. But he had rationalized his behavior by telling himself that self-loathing and anti-social violence were simply the natural responses to the thoughtless—and sometimes intentional—cruelty with which most people treated him.
    To the world at large, he was a freak, a lumbering giant with a Neanderthaloid face that would scare off a grizzly bear. Little children were usually frightened of him. People of all ages stared, some openly and some surreptitiously. A few even laughed at him when they thought he wasn’t looking, joked about him behind his back. He usually pretended not to be aware of it—unless he was in a mood to break arms and kick ass. But he was always aware, and it hurt. Certain teenagers were the worst, especially certain girls, who giggled and laughed openly at him; now and then, when they were at a safe distance, they even taunted him. He had never been anything but an outsider, shunned and alone.
    For many years, his violent and self-destructive life had been easy to justify to himself. Bitterness, hatred, and rage had seemed to be essential armor against society’s cruelty. Without his reckless disregard for personal well-being and without his diligently nurtured lust for revenge, he would have felt defenseless. The world insisted on making an outcast of him, insisted on seeing him as either a seven-foot buffoon with a monkey’s face or a threatening monster. Well, he wasn’t a buffoon, but he didn’t mind playing the monster for them; he didn’t mind showing them just how viciously, shockingly monstrous he could be when he really put his mind to it. They had made him what he was. He wasn’t responsible for his crimes. He was bad because they had made him bad. For most of his life, that’s what he had told himself.
    Until he met Mother Grace Spivey.
    She showed him what a self-pitying wretch he was. She made him see that his justifications for sinful and self-indulgent behavior were pitifully flimsy. She taught him that an outcast could gain strength, courage, and even pride from his condition. She helped him see Satan within himself and helped him throw the