The air in Block 412 still smells of burnt joss
paper when Tan Kiat wakes, his fingers sticky
with lamp oil. His brother, Eng, vanished three
weeks into NS — no body, no letter, just a
crumpled conscription slip tucked under the
altar’s brass incense holder. The army said
“accidental drowning.” The neighbours said “he
saw something in the canal.” Kiat knew better.
His mother had stopped cooking rice for two days
before Eng left — the old way, when the dead
refused to move on.
The state gave no compensation. No counselling.
Just a pamphlet: “Honour Your Service, Honour
Your Family.” So Kiat did what the kampong
ghosts taught: he married the dead. Not with
rings. With ash. He took his brother’s last
burnt offering — the one the spirit of their
grandmother had refused to consume — and mixed
it with water from the temple well near Tiong
Bahru. The ritual needed a bride. Not a woman. A
soul bound to the altar. The elders said if the
dead won’t rest, the living must wed them. Or
the house would bleed.
On the night of the full moon, Kiat lit seven
candles. He placed the ash in a red porcelain
bowl. He knelt. He spoke no words. The wind from
the open window didn’t blow. The ceiling fan
stopped. The altar cracked open — not with wood,
but with bone. A figure rose, thin as wet
newspaper, dressed in 1940s Malay kain sambal,
her feet bare and blackened from walking through
wet earth. She was the ghost of a girl who died
in the Japanese Occupation, her name lost when
the family moved from Kampong Glam to the new
HDB. Her bones were still in the old well. Her
spirit had been waiting. Not for peace. For a
husband.
The rules were clear: if the ghost accepted the
ash, she became his wife. If she refused, the
house would rot from within — rats with human
teeth, walls weeping saltwater, children waking
screaming at the sound of a distant tiktiktik
like a sewing machine stitching flesh. Kiat had
seen it happen to the man in Block 408. The
state sealed the flat. No one asked why.
The ghost reached for the bowl. Her fingers
passed through the porcelain. She didn’t take
the ash. She took Kiat’s right hand instead. Her
skin was cold like wet rice wrapped in banana
leaf. He felt his knuckles crack. His veins
turned black. He didn’t scream. He’d seen too
many men in NS disappear into silence. This was
just another kind of conscription.
The next morning, Kiat woke with a wedding band
forged from melteddown NS helmet brass around
his finger. The altar was clean. The ash gone.
His mother wept quietly, offering rice and tea
to the empty space where the ghost sat. The
neighbours whispered. No one came to the wedding.
No one dared.
At work, Kiat’s manager noticed the ring. “You
marrying someone?” he asked. Kiat just nodded.
The man spat on the floor. “Good. Means you
ain’t alone.”
That night, Kiat heard the ghost humming a Malay
lullaby — the one his grandmother used to sing
when the bombs fell. He didn’t sleep. He stared
at the ceiling. The fan spun again. The air was
warm. The smell of burnt joss paper lingered. He
wasn’t haunted. He was married.
The state still won’t acknowledge the dead. But
now, when the HDB maintenance men come to fix
the leak in the bathroom, they leave three
sticks of incense by the door. They know.
Everyone knows.
The ghost doesn’t speak. She doesn’t need to.
She’s his now.
And the next time a boy vanishes in NS?
Someone else will marry her.
