1952, Bukit Timah. The British still patrol the
roads, but the air smells of kerosene and durian
rinds. Tan Ah Kow, 47, walks the same path he
did as a tuition teacher for Eurasian and
Chinese kids — now, he’s here for cash. The last
unpaid bill: $12 from the MacKenzie family,
English expats who moved into the old Malay
kampung house after the war. He carries a ledger
with names scratched out — Indians who vanished
during the Sook Ching, Chinese who fled to China
after 1949. He doesn’t speak. He never does.
The house is empty. The furniture gone. Only a
single kerosene lamp flickers in the living room.
On the floor: a child’s slipper, rusted tin of
kueh lapis, and a folded letter — dated 1943,
written in English by a British officer to his
wife: “They say the land remembers. Don’t let
them build on it.” Ah Kow knows the rule: no one
sleeps in the house after 12am. The Japanese
burned the previous tenants alive for ignoring
it. The British turned a blind eye. The Malays
buried the truth under HDB concrete.
He leaves the money on the table.
But as he turns to go, the lamp flickers — not
from wind. From inside the wall. A voice, not
his, not English, not Malay, not Chinese — sings
a lullaby in broken Singlish: “Mummy gone, papa
gone, tuition teacher come, pay or sleep alone.”
He doesn’t look back.
At dawn, the MacKenzies return. The $12 is gone.
The letter is gone. Only the slipper remains —
now filled with earth.
The next day, the HDB contractor demolishes the
house. They find no foundation. Just soil. And
beneath it, a rusted tin of kueh lapis — still
warm.
Ah Kow never teaches again.
He opens a stall at Tiong Bahru market. Sells
kueh. Never speaks.
The customers say he smells like old newspapers
and rain on concrete.
They say he’s the only one who knows why the HDB
blocks in Bukit Timah never have basements.
And why, on quiet nights, you can still hear a
child’s slipper tapping on the stairwell —
counting down to midnight.
