From Fraidy Cat Quarterly: Volume 2
Ludland, South Dakota: 1,373 miles left
The late-model Corolla rumbled over long-neglected asphalt. Patty kept her eyes on the horizon. She’d crossed into South Dakota less than ten minutes ago. The state looked much the same as its sibling to the north. Flat plains of overgrown weeds and grass stretched out endlessly in all directions.
The town of Ludland lined both sides of the two-lane highway. A dilapidated church, some squat commercial buildings of an undetermined nature, and a handful of houses dotted the dull landscape. Patty only caught fleeting glimpses of their empty porches and darkened windows.
Still, Lundland was positively bustling compared to her former home at Bleakwater Lake. The compound had been a lone bastion of humanity in an otherwise unpopulated tract of unincorporated county land. Just Patty and the Family and Mother Mae. A little island of warmth and enlightenment in a cruel, and ignorant world. All they had was each other and that was all they needed. That was before, of course. Before Mother Mae’s revelation and the Family’s ascension. Before Patty’s sacred mission.
You’re getting woozy. Watch the road.
Patty blinked rapidly. Her eyes darted to the rearview mirror. Mother Mae was still secured in the back seat. Unmoving and bundled up in a puffy winter snow jacket, her figure was rigid and jostled stiffly as the car shuddered over yet another pothole. Patty worried that she might topple over despite being buckled in, but she stayed in place. The jacket’s hood was pulled over her eyes. Mother Mae’s cavernous cheekbones appeared from below the hood’s shadow, stretching her brittle, gray, skin taut above her thin, blackened lips.
Patty couldn’t tell if Mother Mae’s desiccated mouth was frozen in an approving grin or a frown of displeasure.
Watch the road!
“Yes, Mother Mae.”
Mud Creek Gap, Wyoming: 967 miles left
Patty was surprised. She thought that Mother Mae would have started to smell by now. She was 11 hours into her holy mission, and Mother Mae had ascended a full three days before Patty strapped her earthly vessel in the Corolla’s back seat and hit the road. Aside from the faint aroma of sandalwood and cinnamon wafting from Mother Mae, the only thing Patty could smell was herself— the raunchy onion-like funk of body odor mixed with a high, sour note of sweat. It disgusted her. She wished she could stop somewhere for a quick shower or to change clothes, but Mother Mae’s final orders forbade such luxuries. There were to be no stops for any reason except to gas up or use the bathroom. Any deviation from these orders would render Patty’s holy mission moot and the Family and Mother Mae’s ascension meaningless.
“I’m sorry Mother Mae,” she whispered. “Forgive my weakness.”
There was no answer from the back seat.
The car cruised down the highway, hemmed in by low hills on either side. It was night and Patty was the only person on the road. She hadn’t slept since leaving the compound. It wasn’t allowed. She blasted the air conditioner on full power and kept the radio at an ear-splitting volume, but her eyelids felt like they were made of lead. Would it really be breaking the rules if she took a short nap in the restroom at the next gas station? Just for a few minutes, then a quick whore’s bath with cold water from the sink. How could that hurt anything in the grand scheme of Mother Mae’s plan?
Patty’s head snapped up as the car hit a pothole at speed. She screamed and jerked the wheel from side to side. The Corolla fishtailed violently as Patty slammed on the brakes hard enough to send white smoke billowing into the air behind her.
She came to a complete stop in the middle of the road. Her heart hammered irregularly in her chest. She spun around to check on Mother Mae. She remained strapped into her seat but was leaning against the door. The side of Mother Mae’s hooded face rested against the window like a child who’d fallen asleep during a lengthy road trip.
“Oh shit.”
She put the car in park and frantically reached to unbuckle her seatbelt.
No stopping! No touching! Remember your orders!
Patty snatched her hand away from the seat belt buckle. She felt the urge to apologize but decided against it. Mother Mae hated excuses and apologies. “One person’s failure is the Family’s failure” she was fond of saying when someone screwed up. While the words always seemed to make Patty feel worse, it sounded true and everyone else in the Family seemed to agree with the sentiment. Only there were no other Family members to share the blame for Patty’s indiscretions now.
The Corolla’s engine shuddered back to life. Patty took a deep breath and placed her hands on the steering wheel. She took one last look at the figure in the back seat.
Mother Mae’s mouth hung slightly open. For a moment, Patty thought she saw something moving inside of it. She squinted in the dim illumination from the car’s dome light. Something twitched just behind Mother Mae’s small, white teeth, then went still. Patty waited, but nothing happened. Perhaps an errant fly had somehow gotten inside the car and was now making a home in Mother Mae’s head. Patty hated to think of the beloved prophet’s holy body being invaded in such a way. She told herself it was merely a trick of the shadows.
Nephilim, Utah: 678 Miles Left
The passage over the Rockies had been hard on the Corolla. The steep ascents and winding descents through narrow switchbacks had taken their toll. The car’s engine began sputtering and smoking after the road leveled out and the craggy mountains gave way to a barren desert.
Patty slowly walked from the trunk to the Corolla’s open hood, where its hot engine ticked and sizzled. Under different circumstances, she would have marveled at her surroundings. She’d never seen the desert before, and had only heard descriptions of it from Mother Mae. Earlier that year, she’d disappeared from the compound. She’d been called, she said, by the Great Ascended Masters, to wander the wastes of the American Southwest and receive an important message.
She was gone for more than a month. The Family began to worry. They even debated calling the police. But just as they were about to lose faith, Mother Mae returned. She’d been weak and emaciated, but her big, blue eyes were bright and wild with revelation. The Masters told her that it was finally time for Mother Mae and the Family to join them. To ascend and join the Masters in their interdimensional spacecraft far above Earth, where they would all live eternally as higher, enlightened beings.
There was a caveat. They could not remain chained to their earthly vessels, which were impure with base urges and unfit for ascension. They must all purify themselves, Mother Mae said, and shed the burden of their vessels before they could be delivered into the loving embrace of their intergalactic superiors.
The time was nigh, Mother Mae said, to begin a holy fast.
Patty kept her head down, focusing her entire will on putting one foot in front of the other. Her stomach was a hard knot in the center of her abdomen. How many days since she’d last eaten? She’d stopped counting after she left the compound with Mother Mae. Patty used both shaking hands to lift the bottle of antifreeze up to the engine’s reservoir. She was close to ascending. She could feel it. The process didn’t feel very holy to her, just painful and disorienting.
Patty tut-tutted herself and tried to push the heretical thoughts from her mind. She should feel honored. She was the last disciple. The chosen messenger. Mother Mae saw that in her. She knew Patty was meant for something special. She would be the one who showed the world the mistake they’d made by ignoring an enlightened prophet like Mother Mae.
Patty clung to those words in her final months at the Bleakwater Lake compound, while the other members of the Family began ascending. It started with cutting the group’s meals. They decreased their food intake over two weeks until, finally, there was no eating of any kind allowed. Patty watched as they shrank and collapsed into themselves, the shapes of their bones emerging from their arms, legs, and chests. At the very end, they were unable to move or speak or even use the bathroom on their own. Patty and Mother Mae comforted them in their final moments, whispering words of kindness and encouragement as they let go of their vessels. After they ascended, their empty vessels were washed and placed side-by-side on the living room floor. Patty and Mother Mae draped them in yellow satin sheets. By the time it was Mother Mae’s turn to ascend, Patty had to move carefully when passing through the living room, stepping lightly between the 27 still and shrouded figures. Brothers and sisters gone to their heavenly place with the Masters far above Earth.
Patty’s muscles cramped and seized up. The anti-freeze sloshed onto the ground. It didn’t matter. What she was able to get into the car was probably enough. Patty tossed the bottle into the dirt. She thought of Mother Mae and the Family and the Fast of Ascension. She pinched the loose skin hanging from her arms. She asked Mother Mae to help her to complete her holy task.
A police cruiser crested the horizon as Patty was opening the driver’s side door. She prayed to Mother Mae and the Masters that it would pass her by. Instead, she watched in horror as it pulled onto the dusty shoulder behind the Corolla.
Outsider! Interloper! Get him to leave!
The State Trooper was young and strapping, sporting massive biceps and a ruddy complexion. He approached Patty with a wide smile, asking if she needed assistance. She tried to assure him that everything was fine, but the heat and the hunger turned her speech into a slurred mess. The friendly look faded from the trooper’s face, and he ordered her to step away from the car. He was in the middle of asking her if she’d had anything to drink or was on any medications when he noticed the shape in the back seat.
“Who’s that?”
“My Moth-, uh, sister.”
The trooper put his hands on his hips and squinted at the windshield. The sun’s glare made it hard to see inside and Patty was grateful for that.
“She’s asleep. She’s not feeling well. It’s been a long trip.”
“Ma’am?” The trooper called out, waving at the still silhouette in the back seat.
He calmly told Patty to stay where she was. His hand moved slowly to the butt of his holstered pistol as he spoke. Patty watched the trooper walk to the back door on the passenger side and open it.
Denmon Heights, California: 87 miles left
Mother Mae was the last to ascend. She didn’t spend her final days in the living room with the rest of the Family, but in her sanctuary in the home’s master bedroom. She’d used her last hours in her earthly vessel to relay the instructions to Patty. By the end, Mother Mae’s slender face was a skeletal visage of its former, radiant form. Her hair, once a vibrant and luminous blonde, was baby-fine and fell out in clumps when Patty brushed it. Mother Mae’s mind, however, was lucid right up until the end. Her whole being seemed to burn with the fervor of righteous truth. She was utterly certain about her place in the universe, unshaken in the knowledge that she was a higher being and superior to the “billions of violent, unenlightened apes crawling around this polluted rock”.
There was no yellow shroud for Mother Mae. Patty followed her teacher’s detailed instructions to the letter. The rituals that preceded placing Mother Mae in the car had been solemn and beautiful in the quiet space of the little house. When she was finished, Patty buckled Mother Mae into the Corolla with gentle reverence. There was an overwhelming sense of excitement and purpose as she got behind the wheel. For the first time in her life, Patty felt like she’d found her place in the vast, chaotic universe. When she was done with her mission, she too would ascend and join Mother Mae and the Family with the Great Ascended Masters on their ship.
That feeling seemed impossibly distant as Patty rocketed down the freeway. The monotonous suburban sprawl swept past the car’s windows, acre-after-acre of subdivisions and shopping centers with the same big box stores. In the distance, through a haze of smog, she could see Los Angeles. Its skyscrapers loomed against the sky, bunched together like flowers fighting for sunlight.
You’re almost there. Just a little further.
The speedometer crept up. Patty tried to restrain herself. She was trying to outrun what she’d seen in Utah. What she’d witnessed in the back seat of the very vehicle she was driving.
She remembered the trooper leaning over Mother Mae. Her dark figure suddenly lurched in its seat. He let out a high-pitched yelp that was cut off almost instantly as something pulled him toward Mother Mae. He began to shudder, arms flailing as he tried to pull away. But whatever held him there was strong. The Corolla bounced up and down, its suspension creaking in protest.
Patty stood up, and whatever was holding the trooper in place finally released its grip. The big man spun away, hands clawing at a sunken, red crater where his face used to be. Jets of blood pumped out of circular holes punched into the macerated wreckage of cartridge and bone, pooling in the powdery dirt. The trooper’s hulking body dropped to its knees, then slid forward onto the ground, where it spasmed silently in the hot sun.
Patty screamed. No cars passed the gory scene and, at some point, she willed her feet to move and got back into the car. She thought about moving the dead trooper away from the road, but it took all her energy and concentration just to walk back to the car.
Mother Mae remained in her seat. Her hood had fallen back, revealing her mummy-like visage. Patty saw something sliding back into the cadaver’s eyes and mouth. They were narrow, black shapes that slithered out of view before she got close enough to see what it was.
Patty shook her head like a child trying to ward off the remains of a nightmare and slowed to match the speed of the cars around her. Surely they’d have found the trooper’s body by now. Surely they’d be looking for her. She was on borrowed time. But that was okay. She was so close.
Soon she would be done. She would be free.
Los Angeles, California: 0 miles left
Patty looked at her destination and felt a pang of disappointment.
Mother Mae had said her final destination was a “great river”, but all Patty saw was a graffiti-covered concrete trench nearly as wide as the freeway she’d entered the city on. The only water was sporadic puddles of stagnant brown liquid patrolled by clouds of buzzing insects.
Not a river, just an oversized, stinking gutter.
Still, this was the place where Patty would complete her divine mission. She stood in a deserted parking lot behind an abandoned factory, per Mother Mae’s instructions. Here, a portion of the tall chain link fence separating the “river” from the lot was cut away. Patty’s vision was too blurry to read the rusted sign hanging from it. It didn’t matter. Whatever warning or punishments it threatened would go unheeded.
Patty turned her back on the “river” and returned to the Corolla. She moved slowly, her shoes scraping against the rough asphalt. Her joints were filled with broken glass. It was hard to breathe. She prayed to the Great Ascended Masters that she’d have the strength to complete her final task as she opened the door and unbuckled Mother Mae’s seatbelt. She thought she heard something rattle in the corpse’s hollow chest.
Mother Mae was mercifully light. Her body felt almost insubstantial as Patty held it in her arms. She shambled across the parking lot and through the gap in the fence. The ground beneath her feet began to slope downward toward the bottom of the “river”. Her foot caught a deep fissure in the concrete and Patty went down hard, falling forward and losing her grip on Mother Mae. The body rolled unceremoniously down the ramp and onto the trash-strewn floor. Patty heard her two front teeth crack loose as her face slammed into unforgiving cement. There was pain, but it seemed far away. Unimportant like it was happening to someone else. She was much more concerned about Mother Mae’s earthly vessel, which now lay sprawled on its back in the muck.
Patty tried to stand up but only managed to push herself to her knees. She tried to apologize to Mother Mae, but her tongue was swollen and nothing came out except a low moan and thick strands of bloody saliva.
Don’t worry, my child. You’ve done well. So very well.
Mother Mae’s body began to move. A mechanical twitching that started in the fingers and toes and worked its way upward through the torso. Mother Mae heaved and squirmed under her jacket.
Her jaw wrenched open. Something long and black pushed itself out of Mother Mae’s mouth. It was smooth and tapered at the end to a sharp point. The whip-like appendage was joined by others, which wormed their way out of Mother Mae’s eyes and nostrils. They flailed in the air before dropping down to the ground, where they scrambled for purchase amid the muddy puddles and detritus.
A hallucination brought on by starvation, Patty thought. It had to be. The final, frantic thrashing of her dying brain. Another part of her— the part where Mother Mae’s voice had lived during the many miles of her journey— begged to differ. The two sides dashed against one another, unwilling and unable to reconcile. Patty’s lower lip trembled and her bladder let go.
The black appendages pushed out further. Mother Mae’s skull bulged and ripped like wet paper mâché. Her body sagged and deflated beneath her clothes. The thing crawled away from Patty, dragging the husk of her beloved prophet to the wide opening of a drainage pipe set into the side of the river’s embankment. The sound as it moved was like a dry hand caressing sandpaper.
The thing clambered into the pipe and disappeared. What remained of Mother Mae followed close behind, sliding into the darkness inch-by-inch until the tips of her shoes vanished into the labyrinth beneath the City of Angels.
You can rest now, child.
Patty would have laughed if she could. There’d be no ascension to the stars, only sightless slithering in the subterranean dark. She collapsed onto her back, breath coming in hitching gasps. She beheld the city’s skyline rising into a bright and cloudless sky. She saw the towering monuments, megalithic totems to man’s achievements in her dwindling vision.
Her last thoughts turned to the thing that was slouching toward the bustling metropolis, hungrily burrowing into its heart.
©️Chris W. McGuinness
Chris W. McGuinness is a writer who lives and works on the Central Coast of California. His work has been published in Lovecraftiana Magazine, Carnage House, Schlock! Webzine, Dark Dossier, the December Tales II anthology, and others. You can learn more at .