Lonely Souls

The Chipman Mansion 1907

“Agatha, get away from the window. You’re making me anxious.”

Agatha doesn’t move, despite her sister’s anxiety. It is the cat that has her attention–the cat sitting outside in the middle of the gazebo, its brown tail coiled about its feet as it stares at her. And it is–in fact–staring at her.

“This cat hasn’t left all day.” Agatha answers irritably, though her sisters are too busy with their embroidery to notice. “What do you suppose it wants?”

“It’s a stray cat Agatha, don’t trouble yourself.” Her younger sister Annie answers, tugging a thread through her hoop with a look of disdain on her haggard face.

They are all older women–much too old to be single and alone. Yet, here they are. All middle aged, all unmarried, and very alone.

Agatha slowly, reluctantly, peels her eyes away from the cat and returns to the piano. Though the idea of sitting and playing yet another tedious concerto has her head reeling. She needs to move. She needs fresh air.

“I’m going for a stroll about the garden, anyone care to join?” Agatha asks.

Her two sisters frown. “Why? It only just rained. The grounds will be wet and muddied.” Her older sister Eustice replies.

“Well that is when the air is best–clean and healthy.” Agatha answers with a soft smile. “My favorite.”

“I don’t wish to understand you Agatha.” Annie shakes her head.

Agatha sighs and walks out of the room, down the rickety stairs and out the main door onto the sweeping porch.

It was once a grand house, built in 1853, and the stately white pillars speak of a time when it held its head high. The gardens are wild and overrun with weeds, though the gazebo that her father carved stands proud at its center. The yard is guarded by looming pine trees standing sentinel around the house, a few sycamores, and an old oak with fat sprawling branches. To Agatha, it is a magical place, a place of refuge to her quiet soul. Her lonely soul.

“Eeeoooww.”

Agatha turns her head to see the cat, its golden eyes turned–watching her.

“Oh come now, what is it you want? You pesty little creature.” Agatha scolds, hiking up the skirts of her dress and marching down the wooden steps to the ground. She keeps her gaze trained on the cat, measuring the distance between them until she stands only a few feet away. The cat, a brown and black tabby, flicks its tail and narrows its eyes.

“You’re an inquisitive creature, aren’t you?” Agatha says.

The cat blinks. Only once, very slowly.

“Do you have a home?” Agatha asks, lowering herself until she is bent on her knees. She stopped worrying years ago about appearances, around the time her brother died and all her prospects vanished. The cat’s eyes follow her to the ground. “No, I don’t suppose you do.” Agatha rests her hands on her knees, trying to get comfortable. Though it is much too hard in a dress. “Do you have a family? Anyone that loves you?”

The cat’s eyes are two deep reflective pools of amber, with a black center that matches the void in her heart. There are a thousand things there, unreadable things–but they speak to her now, more than anything ever has. More than a church sermon, more than her mother’s last words: “Find someone, Aggie.” In these eyes she sees all her pain, all her agony. And somewhere at their center, she finds a stillness–a wisdom born of sadness and years upon years of wandering. Yes, she has found it. Finally, After years of searching, she has found a soul who understands her.

“You are lonely too, aren’t you?” Agatha says, in a tone much more warm and inviting than before.

The cat, to her utter amazement, gives a clear dip of its furry head.

“You understand me?” Agatha breathes, leaning forward on her hands, her fingers digging into the wet mulchy earth. The cat rises up onto its feet, its tail curling, poised to go somewhere.

“What happens to lonely souls like us?” Agatha whispers, feeling the cold wet seeping through her skirts. “Where do we go?”

The cat flicks its tail and darts off through the garden, winding its way through the weeds and around to the side of the house, where it pauses only to look behind at Agatha.

It is an unspoken language, but clear nonetheless. Agatha knows it wants her to follow, so she does. She walks in a dazed stupor, watching as the cat slinks behind the house and into the tangled brush of dead trees and shrubs. She pushes past the shrubs and steps over the rotting logs, the brambles tugging at the hem of her skirt, but she tugs herself free. The cat has stopped at the base of a very tall sycamore, resting on its haunches and licking its paw. Agatha comes to stop behind it, looking down. And there, barely visible beneath the dirt and knotted roots, is a crude headstone. It is a slab of rock, and carved in it are the words, Eliza Winters. Agatha has seen it before, as a child, but the headstone has always remained a mystery.

“Eliza Winters, yes. Who was she? Do you know?” Agatha asks, and the cat tilts up its head to cast its wide yellow eyes at her.

The cat circles over the grave, its soft paws patting the stone, and lets out a sad, “Meoww.”

“Was she your family?” Agatha asks, though it can’t be. The stone is much too old. The cat begins to paw at the dirt, mewling louder until it sounds as if a small child is wailing.

“Strange…,” Agatha scrunches her brow. “Well, I will be your family now.” She says decisively. She goes inside to get a saucer of milk, placing it at the cat’s feet.

The cat gladly laps it up. Agatha makes a ritual of it, bringing out a dish every morning. But to her dismay, the cat never comes inside. Instead it sits on the hidden gravestone, tail curled, waiting.

And every day it waits.

Agatha watches from her window. The cat stares pointedly at Agatha–glowering. The longer Agatha stares, the harder it becomes to look away. A voice that is not her own enters her mind. It sounds as if someone is calling to her from the end of a long tunnel: Come, it says. The cat narrows its eyes in a challenge. Find.

After several sleepless nights, Agatha knows what she must do. It is horrifying, but it must happen. She waits until night, when all her sisters are asleep. Dressed in only a nightgown and slippers, she takes a lantern and enters the eerie dark. Agatha feels a prickling at her back, a presence. Something–possibly someone–is guiding her forward. She cannot stop her feet now, even if she wants to turn back. She takes the shovel from the shed, then walks to where the gravestone sits. Where the cat is still waiting.

With a sharp thrust, Agatha strikes the earth and begins to dig. Grunting against the shovel's handle, she urges herself to push harder. Sweat is beading around her neck and temples, and her heart is hammering. But it is not from digging. It is from fear. The deeper the hole grows, the deeper her fear. Some things are meant to stay buried, Agatha. The words of her mother echo in her mind from years ago. A warning. Agatha had wanted to know about her grandmother, about why the family never spoke of her or said her name. Agatha’s mother had been unwilling to share.

But how does that saying go? Oh yes. ‘Curiosity kills the cat.’

The Chipman mansion, 1987

Beth lumbers down the sidewalk, head down, white converse slapping the pavement. Her head bobs to the beat of Madonna, the strings to her Dad’s walkman snaking from her ears. She is on her way to the library after another grueling day of school. For someone as studious as herself, school should be easy. But it’s not the work she has a problem with–it’s the people. The kids and teachers with their sneers of disgust, the laughter that seems to trail in her wake. The silence that sulks around her as she eats alone in the art room. The constant wondering if things will ever change.

But it is clear from the condition of her ratty sneakers and teal windbreaker pants that things aren’t likely to change. Her hair is a perpetual rat’s nest that no amount of brushing or Suave products will remedy, and her face a pimple pizza. Her glasses sit askew on her face from the time she dropped them and stepped on them, and her backpack is the size of a mountain. She has accepted it, and made peace with the truth. She is predestined to forever be alone.

It is as she turns the corner onto the last empty neighborhood street that something catches her eye. A flicker of movement. A flash of white. Beth lifts her head. Across the street, a fluffy white cat with calico patches in her fur sneaks into the bushes behind a fence.

Beth stops. She loves cats. If it weren’t for her mother’s allergy to basically all animals, she would have one by now. But as fate would have it, the universe couldn’t even grant her a cat.

Beth looks both ways down the street out of habit, then darts across the road, her backpack crushing her shoulders. It is only when she comes to a halt by the tall wrought-iron fence that she realizes just where the cat has taken her.

It is the old Chipman mansion, a Historic relic around these parts. Said to have been built in the 1800s, it is a two-story house with tall white pillars out front, and impressive Victorian style woodwork along the roof. What is most surprising is that it is still standing. It is completely abandoned now, the white paint peeling, a large hole gaping through the roof, the windows cracked and dusty, the porch sunken under a gaggle of weeds. It belongs to some lonely old hag living in a trailer at the back of the property who refuses to sell it. Beth can’t disagree–it would be a shame to see it torn down.

But the most likely reason it is left untouched is because it is haunted.

The story goes that the last true owners of the house were three unmarried sisters who lived alone, and never left the house. In fact, no one knows where they went. If they died, there were never any bodies. The rumor, however, is that they were witches.

It is then Beth sees the cat, tip-toeing on tiny paws over the dirt path. Beth follows along the edge of the giant fence that runs the length of the property. The cat turns and sees her. It stops and sits. Beth watches. The cat taunts her with its swishing tail.

“What do you want, cat?”

The cat blinks, looks up at the fence, then down.

“You want me to come inside?”

The cat dips its head.

Beth feels a strange tingling along her spine. A cool autumn breeze stirs the trees, leaves hissing in the wind. It feels oddly as if the universe is beckoning her forward.

Come, it says. Find.

Beth shivers, then glances over her shoulder. No one is watching. She shrugs off her backpack, letting it hit the ground with a thud. She stands tall, shoulders no longer burdened by academia. If only the cool kids could see her now: trespassing on private property like a rebel.

In a quick and reckless moment, she climbs up the fence and over, carefully lowering herself to the ground. Hands still grasping the metal in clenched fists, Beth gazes through the bars at the neighborhood she is leaving behind. The silence is heavy here on this side of the fence, ensconced in a dense thicket of wild shrubbery. The wind has stopped. The air is still. The outside world seems suddenly far away.

And maybe that isn’t so bad.

The Chipman Mansion, 2025

Beth never went back.

I watched as the police located her backpack on the outside of the fence, as they questioned neighbors and friends and family about her disappearance. But of course no one knew, because who is looking for lonely souls? Who is watching?

I lick my paw and curl my tail round my furry legs, settling in atop the crumbling stone wall in the garden, eyes alert. I am watching. My sisters are watching. Together, we are not alone.

In the fading light of an October evening, long shadows stretch over the white house, still empty. Still unchanged. Still…lonely.

But in the deep grey shadow, looking out from dusty windows, are a legion of golden, glowing eyes.