R. A. Lafferty 
Fourth Mansions 

Seven very special people blending to create a higher form of humanity…A laughing man living alone on a mountain top, guarding the world…The returnees, men who live again and again, century after century…A dog-ape plappergeist who can be seen only from the corner of the eye…And a young man named Foley, very much like you or me, who begins to find out about these people and these things, and how they are shaping the destiny of the world…