The last feng shui master of Kampong Tiong Bahru
buried his compass under the root of a banyan
tree in 1947, after the British rezoned his
family’s ancestral land for a military depot. He
knew then: the land had been carved wrong. The
dragon’s spine bent under tarmac, the water
spirits drowned in concrete drains, and the
ancestors’ whispers turned to static in the wind.
That night, his firstborn son died choking on
his own tongue — no illness, no wound, just
silence in the throat.
By 1963, the kampong was gone. HDB blocks rose
like tombstones over the old graves. The master,
now called Ah Lian by neighbours who feared his
eyes, lived in Block 42, Unit 117. His grandson,
ten years old, began sleepwalking every full
moon — walking barefoot down the corridor,
pressing his palms against the wall where the
old well had been. The child never spoke. Just
stared at the ceiling, mouthing words no one
could hear.
The hard rule: no feng shui adjustment could be
made on HDB land without the consent of all
seven households below. No exceptions. Not even
for blood. The Housing Board had stamped it in
ink and steel after the 1958 incident in Kallang
— a geomancer who realigned a staircase and
found three families dead of sudden heart
failure within a week. The papers called it
coincidence. The elders called it the land’s
vengeance.
On the eve of Singapore’s independence, the boy
vanished. No note. No cry. Just his slippers
lined up neatly by the door, and a single red
envelope on the table — empty, but smelling of
burnt joss paper and sea salt. Ah Lian knew: the
curse was closing. The colonial boundary had
never been blessed. The land remembered. The
ancestors waited.
He climbed to the rooftop at midnight, carrying
a brass compass forged from his father’s funeral
coins. He broke the hard rule. With his bare
hands, he scraped the cement between two HDB
flats — the exact spot where the old well’s
mouth had opened. He laid the compass down,
faceup, and pressed his forehead to the concrete.
He whispered no words. Only the sound of his
breath, slow as tide going out.
At dawn, the boy was found asleep on the void
deck, curled beside a potted orchid — the only
flower that grew in that block without water.
His skin was cool. His lips were cracked. But he
breathed. And in his palm, clutched tight, was a
folded piece of paper. Not a note. Not a prayer.
Just a sketch: a dragon, coiled around a HDB
block, its tail wrapped around a compass — and
beneath it, in shaky script, the words: They’re
not gone. They’re waiting for us to remember.
Ah Lian did not smile. He did not weep. He
picked up the compass, cracked it open, and
threw the needle into the drain.
The curse was broken.
But the land still remembered.
And now, the boy would grow up knowing: some
doors, once opened, can never be closed again.
