Cold Cat Mountain: The Peak (Cold Cat Mountain Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Blaze shook her head. She knew Matilda was right, feeding her own beast seemed to be alleviating the pain. It wasn’t a fail proof plan by any means but it seemed to be working.

  “Matilda, if I don’t come back from this you will have a lot of explaining to do.”

  Matilda hugged her wine glass close. “Who says it’d be you who wouldn’t return?”

  Blaze snorted. “Right.”

  Matilda dropped her head back, speaking toward the ceiling. “I’m serious. You’re the expert at spotting predators.”

  “Spotting them yes,” Blaze tossed a pillow toward Matilda. “Outrunning them, no.” They sat in amicable silence for a while, listening to the fire crackle in the hearth. Blaze pondered the Cold Cat legend. Snow leopards were an elusive creature. In fact, it was rumored at one point they may not exist. But for one to only show up when a person had gone missing? That had to be a local tale which had evolved into its own myth. The human brain often tried to piece things together when all else failed to make sense. Feeling drowsy, Blaze closed her eyes and fell asleep without ever having made it to her own bed.

  ~*~

  Matilda woke shortly before dawn with a start. Looking around she realized she was still in her own home. Relieved, she pulled her blanket closer around her shoulders, realizing Blaze must have covered her at some point during the night. Lying in the pre dawn light she battled a feeling of unease. She had dreamed of the snow leopard from Cold Cat Peak again. From her perspective within the dream she was being pulled and swallowed into the forest by hands she couldn’t see. Her last glimpse of the outside world had been of the white spotted cat, standing on a rock protrusion looking down on her as the wind blew snow across its face. Its dark eyes held hers as she fought to escape the hands that pulled her further into the dark trees.

  She sat up slowly as Blaze slumbered at the end of the couch. She fought a heaviness settling over her. Pushing it back, she prepared coffee and checked her emails. In two hours they would be at Portland International Airport, moving steadily toward the Iron Ridge Mountains of Montana. Sighing, Matilda poured herself a cup of coffee and watched the rain fall outside. Hoping her instincts had not let her down she moved to wake Blaze. She’d know if she was correct in a matter of days. If she was, nothing would ever be the same.

  “You’ve never had someone you love snatched,” I shot back, annoyed by her ignorance. “Any sense of safety kind of bites it after that. You watch your back because no one else can.” ― Katherine McIntyre

  ~Thirteen~

  Hoyd stood at the edge the thickly timbered tree line; the same spot he always stood. Looking down at the boulder he was standing on, surprised he didn’t see an impression from all the hours he’d logged standing on it over the years following his mothers’ disappearance.

  He’d never understand how a person could be there one minute, and be gone the next. His brain had never fully grasped his mother was simply no longer there. Since the day she’d waved goodbye and stepped into the tree line he hadn’t been able to return to the trees himself, save once. He’d decided he couldn’t let the forest dictate his freedoms. He’d gone in, alone. He longed for a sign, a footprint, a button from her coat, something. Instead he’d found himself face to face with the snow leopard he’d set free many years earlier. When he’d stopped, looking up at it, he knew there was more to the cat’s presence than he would ever fully understand. Now, years later, he was the only survivor to return from the mountain after having seen the cat. He knew he couldn’t go back. He never had. It was on this rock, overlooking the trees, he’d stood visage following that day. When he was younger he’d held out hope his mother would see him and cry out.

  She never did.

  In the rain he squinted his eyes, pulling his hat down low, surveying the mountainside. It had taken his entire world from him. And yet, he’d remained anchored to the very thief he hated. He knew one day there would be a reckoning. He’d been waiting for the day. He remembered his mother’s excitement when she’d received notice from the Sterling Group inviting her to conduct her studies on the mountain. It had been a huge step for them from their cramped apartment in the east to the mountains of Montana.

  The Sterling Group had recognized the intensity and passion Edith Merger brought to her work. Her research on Iron Mountain Ridge raised numerous questions from the scholarly community. It had also raised a great deal of scoffing and harassment. Edith was a single mother who had earned her degree in Anthropology long after Hoyd was in public school. She was ridiculed. When her paper had been presented to the great minds within her field for review on her theory regarding the disappearances on the mountain she’d been laughed at. She’d held her head up though. In spite of losing confidence in herself she’d forged ahead, asserting that whatever had plagued the Iron Ridge Mountains had a name, a face, and a behavior pattern that needed to be identified in order to end the trail of the missing.

  Hoyd took a deep breath, bending low at the waist to retrieve a small rock from atop the boulder. He turned it over in his fingers, examining it. Looking back up Hoyd pocketed the rock. He took a pebble each time he visited the only real memorial he had to his mother. On his desk, next to the family bible that had belonged to Edith, Hoyd had a large wooden bowl filled with the pebbles from his visits to her rock he’d collected over the years.

  He longed to step back into the trees again, surrender himself to whatever evil had prevailed itself upon his mother. He knew he wouldn’t though, and that was what created the ache he carried in his heart; the ache he’d never been able to put to rest.

  Hoyd recalled watching his mother’s face light up the first time she had seen the house that had been built by the Sterling Group for her to conduct her five year study in.

  Edith had immediately requested a special exotic animal permit and brought Kitty to the mountain. Her position was clear from the start. Edith maintained the snow leopard would be an asset to alerting she and her son of a predator while they lived alone on the mountainside. There was more to it than that though. Edith was fascinated by the cat once thought to be a myth itself. So elusive and cunning in its own right, it had taken years for the scientific community to prove it existed. The parallels between the cat and the creature were obvious, which fed Edith’s fascination.

  As usual, Edith had been right. The snow leopard paced in its large paddock when it became uncomfortable, which signaled Edith to call Hoyd inside, where they would wait and watch.

  Hoyd rubbed the moisture from his eyes when he recalled Edith bounding for the trees the day of her disappearance. He couldn’t explain it, and had never tried to share his youthful observations with anyone, but following a one-time encounter with whatever loomed within the tree line, long before she’d disappeared, Edith had returned different. She had never shared with Hoyd what exactly she had seen. However, she’d been agitated, insistent that she return for another sighting. Hoyd recalled how she’d paced more than Kitty at one point prior to her disappearance, moving relentlessly back and forth in front of the large picture window facing the mountain. Whatever was in the trees had somehow laid claim to her in a way Hoyd didn’t understand; in a way that could only be understood when seen firsthand. She’d stared out toward the mountain, arms crossed, searching restlessly.

  And then one day she had simply started running for the trees. She’d called out for Hoyd to stay behind. He’d waited for what seemed like hours before finally turning the agitated snow leopard lose, hoping it would find his mother.

  Instead, he lost both of them. However, sightings of Cold Cat, as the locales’ referred to it, continued to happen.

  His mother had never been seen again.

  Hoyd tipped his hat and eyed the mountain one last time, whispering.

  “Love you mamma.” He jumped down from Edith’s memorial rock and headed to his truck.

  Each time he visited felt worse than the time before.

  Losing someone without explanation was not something a person moved
on from.

  “...Mankind is not a race of noble savages - but primitive monsters hide inside us, elusive as Sasquatch...”

  ― John Geddes

  ~Fourteen~

  Early fall leaves swirled in the wake of their red research jeep. Matilda and Blaze had arranged to have it moved by the same team who’d driven and set up the motor home for them, leaving it at Glacier Park International Airport. Blaze was stunned by the beauty of Montana. Rugged mountains jutted up toward a brilliant blue sky. The crisp fall air was its own nectar, an aroma from high elevations was carried on winds that traveled upon glaciers. Blaze navigated around the sharp corners of the rising mountain pass, noting again the early fall colors dotting the landscape; it resembled a paint by numbers portrait. The deep blue October sky continued to boast brightly as they climbed higher, framing nature’s colors of reds, golds and yellows. As expected, the air had the anticipatory nip of winter to it; a warning snow would not be far behind.

  Matilda explained her contact in Montana would be meeting them at the Cold Cat Café. He was the one who had initiated contact with Matilda over a year ago. While his concerns mounted daily regarding the darkness that had taken over the mountain rising above his home town he knew enough to reach out for assistance. Not many people did. That set him apart in Matilda’s mind. Also she knew his background, and his mother’s. He had remained on in Stryker his entire life. It was a town that boasted only basic amenities, one of which was a general store. Blaze thought Matilda had mentioned a post office, and then there was the Cold Cat Café itself, which doubled as a bar.

  On the right of the two lane road, a large green and brown sign announced their approach to the Iron Ridge Mountains. Matilda smoothed the upturned corners of a worn map and nodded. “Almost there,” she murmured, as she reached out and thumped the miniature ruby slippers dangling from the rear view mirror. The Oz slippers twirled and sparkled in the bright afternoon light. The insinuation that they had metaphorically left the safety of Kansas was not lost on Blaze, who had been experiencing a new trepidation. Typically Blaze was the one to imply a safety net was absent, but on this day, Matilda also had a deep furrow set on her brow as she combed through the maps and historical data spilling across her lap. She looked uncomfortable, although Blaze did not consider that entirely surprising, since Matilda and she had never ventured so far together. The majority of their calls and research had been based in the Oregon and Washington area. Home.

  As a professional who’d spent her past career reading people, Blaze’s radar was sharp when it came to spotting uncharacteristic behaviors in others. As Matilda’s new partner in the pursuit of all things Cryptozoology Blaze was learning to walk a fine line between handing her the talking stick and facing the risk of being beaten over the head with it. Matilda had grown gradually more unsettled during the past twenty-four hours. Deeming it better to wait, and process her odd behavior later, Blaze pointed out the sign as they rounded another bend.

  She recalled a news article she’d read while studying for their research which stated a woman had never gone missing from the mountain before Edith. Only hunters who’d passed the point of no return, or Cold Cat Peak, had failed to return prior to Edith’s abduction.

  Stryker’s Citizens were asked to travel in two’s following her disappearance, and not to venture out after dark unarmed Matilda had warned Blaze that Hoyd had mentioned the need for a low profile as the local sheriff’s department advised all tourists, and local citizens, to steer clear of the Cold Cat Mountains. It was a warning that local citizens took seriously, for the most part.

  An old wooden cut out of a snow leopard hanging from hinges moved in the wind just above the road on the right; its tail pointing toward the Cold Cat Café with faded lettering stating it was seven miles ahead on the left.

  Blaze sipped her now cold coffee, pondering how old the sign was. From the faded paint and chipped spots on the snow leopard it looked like it had been dancing above the narrow two track road for decades. It had seemingly become the town’s logo, significant as an emblem to anyone interested in the legend and unsolved mystery of Kitty. Over the years many hunters, according to Matilda, had returned with stories of finding Kitty’s foot prints in varying locations all over the safe zone below Cold Cat Peak. Others in Stryker told different tales, the most interesting being Hoyd Mergers face to face incident with the cat as it stood above him on an elevated slope, issuing a warning with its direct gaze and exposed teeth. Hoyd had thought Kitty was going to leap, no longer recognizing him, but once he turned to run, so had the snow leopard. As Hoyd recalled over the phone with Matilda, he had looked back over his shoulder as he stumbled away. Matilda deemed Hoyd’s tale believable. He was the only one to venture out onto Cold Cat who hadn’t gone missing after sighting the cat. According to Matilda, Hoyd had entered Cold Cat in a youthful fit of rage, going back into the mountains five years after his mother’s disappearance. His earnest and forthright interview convinced Matilda he was an honest man who simply wanted to know what was killing the wildlife, hunters, and his mother. Thirty six people, all men and children except Edith, had entered Cold Cat Mountain over the past thirty years. Most had not returned.

  And then, in 2001 something changed. While most town’s people believed it had been the widow’s snow leopard who had been killing the mountains wildlife, and possibly the men who were disappearing, Kitty’s tracks stopped appearing altogether.

  There was obvious conjecture and theory about the turn of events, and those who did continue to venture out to Cold Cat disappeared, with no evidence. Knowing the average life span of most snow leopards in captivity hovered around twenty one years, it made sense to many Kitty may have finally succumbed to old age and the elements.

  However, Hoyd had a different theory. One that Matilda thought plausible. The snow leopard was avoiding the creature on Cold Cat, securing its own survival. What didn’t make sense were those who continued to go missing; and the stories from Search and Rescue personal and volunteers who continued to report they’d seen Kitty during their patrols. Rodney Kimes, a generational outdoors-man, whose family knew the Cold Cat Mountain range like most people knew the backs of their hands was the most recent to disappear.

  According to the police report, eight months earlier Rodney had gone out to set traps along a familiar route at the base of Cold Cat as he did every year. He had not returned.

  The town of Stryker again became the center of activity for all venues of belief systems. Groups camped in tents, huge school buses rolled into town loitering in the market parking lot bearing advertisements such as “Wendigo Hunters,” and “The Bigfoot Watch.”

  Satanists has also arrived, certain Lucifer had set up residence on the mountain and was calling his people. Blaze sighed as the higher elevation, or distance from civilization, caused the bluegrass on the radio to turn to static. White capped mountain peaks marched in jagged formation just ahead as she navigated the jeep around another bend.

  The slate black of the razor rocks lacked the mysterious beauty of the forests, instead the white peaks were ominous; the jagged rock a sharp contrast to the snows blanketing it. Matilda raised her eyebrows and removed her ear buds, slowly tucking them into her pocket.

  “Perched quaintly ‘mong the great scarred rocks that hand like tombstones on the mountainside…”

  Catching Blaze’s blank stare she held up a worn book. The River San Marcos. The mountains above them were monuments for some at least, not even affording the gift of having their names etched into the unforgiving slate to mark the time they had walked the earth prior to their fateful disappearances.

  Monuments indeed.

  Blaze checked the time as they turned into the Cold Cat Café parking lot and caught her first glimpse of a high country sheriff’s vehicle. There was no particular order to the parking. Back country four by four’s were parked randomly about, with men loitering around the tailgates holding beers, warily watching the approach of a vehicle they didn’t recognize.<
br />
  “Did we just time jump?” Blaze laughed to cover her mounting tension.

  Matilda pulled her pack out from under her seat. “Don’t make eye contact with them.”

  Near the door of the café two men slowly edged from the entrance, shifting the rifles they’d slung over their shoulders, maintaining close proximity.

  It was obvious people were edgy in Stryker, to say the least. Inside the dark café Blaze and Matilda took seats at a table in the back. Red candles glowed next to worn plastic menus. More men loitered at the bar, looking over their shoulders occasionally toward the women as they nursed their beers.

  A sudden rain pelted against the windows of the café, harsh and driven by wind. Neither Matilda nor Blaze made mention of the sudden onset of fog that seemed to be pouring itself down the Cold Cat Mountain Range as if from nowhere. The sky had been blue only moments before.

  “Relax. You look like you’ve been caught at something.” Blaze’s eyes flashed at Matilda’s comment. The jukebox could have been stuck on Monster Mash and Blaze wouldn’t have been surprised. An arrogance accompanied the open carrying of weapons. It felt sinister. Not wrong, but alarming for different reasons. As if Stryker had become its own sovereign nation under the assault of an unknown predator.

  “I adore imaginary monsters, but I am terrified of real ones.” ― Teju Cole

  ~Fifteen~

  The door slammed as rains that had seemingly moved in from nowhere pelted down the back of Hoyd Merger, the last man to see the legendary snow leopard on Cold Cat Mountain and live. He was an imposing man in his fifties who comported himself with an air of authority. He boasted a large black mustache; the gray growing in created a distinguished look he carried with an air of authority. He too was open carrying. The aged .45 beneath his coat rested snugly in a worn leather holster against his ribs.