1963. In a damp HDB underconstruction block in
Kallang, Private Lim Kok Heng, 18, spends his
third week of NS sleeping on a steel cot with a
rice ball wrapped in newspaper — his only meal,
hoarded since dawn. The barracks smell of wet
cement and old kopi. No one talks to him. He
eats alone. He studies alone. He wins every
drill. Kiasu spirit: win alone, never share.
The latrine at the end of Block 47 has a name
now: “The Scream Room.” Two recruits vanished
there last month — one found with his lunchbox
empty, the other with his shoes neatly lined up,
untouched. Rumour says it’s a Malay woman from
the old kampong, drowned when they drained the
swamp to build the flats. She takes food. Only
food. No one believes it — until Lim sees the
shadow move.
On night watch, he hears the clink of a metal
bowl. No one else is there. The air smells of
pandan and burnt coconut. He watches. A
translucent hand, brown and thin as dried fish
skin, reaches from behind the cracked tile wall
and takes the halfeaten kaya toast he left on
the ledge. He doesn’t scream. He waits.
Next night, he brings two toast. One for him.
One for the ledge. The shadow takes the second.
A whisper, not in words — but in the way his
stomach suddenly feels full, warm, like his
mother’s soup after fever. He doesn’t know why.
He doesn’t ask.
The third night, Corporal Tan, a bully who
steals rations, kicks open the door. “You think
you’re special, Lim? You think ghosts like you?”
He snatches Lim’s rice ball, throws it into the
latrine. The shadow rises. Not fast. Not loud.
Just… takes. Then Tan screams. Not from pain.
From hunger. His stomach cramps. His eyes bulge.
He collapses, clawing at his throat — starving,
though he just ate.
The next morning, the unit finds Tan crying in
the canteen, feeding a stray cat with his own
breakfast. “I saw her,” he whispers. “She smiled
when I shared.”
Lim brings three rice balls every night now. One
for him. One for the ledge. One for the new
recruit who sits shaking at the far end of the
latrine, too scared to eat. The boy eats. The
shadow takes. And Lim? He stops checking his
marks. Stops hoarding. Stops winning alone.
By week six, the Scream Room is quiet. No more
vanishings. The ghost never speaks. But every
dawn, the kitchen staff find a single, perfect
kaya toast on the counter — no one made it. And
the boys? They start sharing. Not because
they’re told. Because they remember how full
they felt.
The army logs the incident as “food hygiene
violation.” But in the block, they call it the
Night the Ghost Taught Us to Be Human.
The unit graduates. Lim gets a commendation. He
doesn’t take the medal. He gives it to the boy
who used to cry at night.
Years later, when HDB Block 47 is torn down,
workers find a small ceramic bowl under the
foundation — cracked, but clean. Inside, a
single grain of rice. Still warm.
