The Hunger of Hoary Peak

The year I turned eleven, my family moved to the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and my father, a geology professor, brought home a stray kitten he found near a talus slope. She was a scrawny, gray-furred creature with eyes like chips of obsidian, and my mother, a poet, named her ‘Tiberius’ after a Roman emperor, which I promptly shortened to ‘Tibby.’

Tibby was a peculiar cat. As a kitten, she was affectionate and playful, chasing dust motes and curling in my lap during cold mountain nights. But as she matured, she became strange. She would stare at the mountain for hours, her head tilted, as if listening to something. She began to eat voraciously, devouring her bowl of dry food and then begging for more, her meows turning into low, guttural growls when we tried to ignore her. My mother joked that Tibby had a bottomless pit, but I noticed the cat’s ribs starting to show despite her endless eating.

Our house was the last one on a gravel road, with the mountain looming behind us like a dark wall. At night, I would hear Tibby in the kitchen, knocking over cups and scattering utensils, her claws clicking on the linoleum as she paced. Once, I saw her at the window, her muzzle pressed against the glass, her breath fogging it in a perfect circle. She was staring at the moonlit peak, and for a moment, I swear I saw her teeth lengthen.

It was during a blizzard in February that things came to a head. The power went out, and we huddled around the fireplace, candles flickering. Tibby was nowhere to be found. My father went to the back door to check the generator and found it ajar, snow blowing in. Tibby slipped past him, out into the storm, her form dissolving into the whiteness. I called for her, but the wind swallowed my voice.

For three days, the blizzard raged. When it finally cleared, the mountain was covered in a fresh, pristine blanket of snow. I searched for Tibby, calling her name, my breath forming plumes of vapor. I found her prints leading up the ridge, but they were odd – they looked like they were made by something larger, with a strange fourth toe. The prints stopped at a ledge, and I felt a sudden chill, as if a shadow passed over the sun.

That night, I dreamed of the mountain. In my dream, I was standing at the peak, and the snow beneath my feet was blood-red. Tibby was there, but she was huge, her eyes glowing like coals, and she was eating, eating, eating – mountains, trees, sky. Her meow was a rumble that shook the ground.

I woke to find Tibby in my room, sitting on my pillow. She was emaciated, her ribs jutting out, but her belly was distended, as if she had swallowed a boulder. She looked at me with those obsidian eyes, and I saw something ancient and hungry behind them. She opened her mouth to meow, but instead, a low, grinding sound came out, like rocks tumbling in a landslide.

I never told anyone, but I knew then that Tibby wasn’t a cat anymore. She had become something else, a vessel for the mountain’s hunger, and she was waiting for the right moment to complete her transformation. I started locking my door at night, but I could hear her scratching outside, her claws gouging deep grooves in the wood, and her growling like the rumble of an avalanche.

In the end, I couldn’t take it anymore. One moonless night, I led her out to the talus slope where my father had found her. She walked with a new, fluid grace, her bones seeming to shift under her skin. I knelt down, and she touched her nose to my forehead. Her nose was cold, but it left a burning mark. Then she turned and walked into the dark rocks, growing larger with each step, until she was the size of a house, then a mountain, blending into the landscape.

Now, when I look at the Sangre de Cristo range, I see a silhouette that resembles a crouching cat, its head bowed, its eyes watching the valley. And sometimes, late at night, I hear a sound like distant thunder, but closer, like a cat’s stomach growling from deep within the earth. I fear that Tibby is not gone, but biding her time, and that one day, when the mountain’s hunger becomes unbearable, she will return to feed on the world below.