1973. Tiong Bahru Block 47, third floor. The
lift still don’t work, so fifteenyearold Arif
climbs seven storeys every night with his
schoolbag full of OLevel notes and a bruised rib
from his uncle’s belt. He’s not running from
home — he’s running from the court. Two months
back, he saw Senior Sergeant Lim shove a pistol
into Tan Kim Seng’s mouth at the old bus
interchange, heard the crack like a durian
hitting concrete. He never told his parents. But
the police found his name in a lost school
register. Now he’s in Witness Protection under a
fake ID: “Ah Beng, son of Mr Tan.” The HDB flat
was assigned. No one asks why a boy his age
lives alone with a flickering fluorescent tube
and a rice cooker that never boils water right.
The wall beside his bed started sweating three
nights ago. Not condensation. Thick, dark,
smelling like old curry leaves and burnt rubber.
By week two, the damp spread into shapes —
fingers, a boot, a police cap. Arif scratched it
off with a spoon. It came back. He prayed at the
corner altar with joss sticks and canned
sardines. The ghost didn’t care. It just kept
dripping.
On the eve of his NS registration, the wall
split open. Not cracked. Split — like a durian
splitting from inside. A hand reached out. Not
skeletal. Gloved. Policeissue black leather, the
kind worn by the Special Branch. The fingers
tapped once. Twice. Then pressed a folded paper
into the gap. Arif didn’t touch it. He knew what
it was. His own testimony. Stolen. Rewritten.
The truth buried under “accidental discharge.”
He ran to the void deck. The old men playing
chess didn’t look up. The woman selling kaya
toast across the road didn’t blink. But the
concrete stairwell? The steps were wet. Not with
rain. With something slow. Sticky. And at the
bottom, where the stairs turn into the void’s
mouth — a single pair of boots, polished,
sitting upright. Like someone just stepped out
of them.
Arif didn’t sleep. He didn’t eat. He just stared
at the wall. The next morning, the damp was gone.
The hand was gone. But on his bed, folded neat
as a napkin, was his NS callup letter. His real
name. His real address. And under it, in
charcoal smudge: You finish service. Then I rest.
The rule? No witness can leave the country
before completing National Service. The second
rule? Ghosts don’t haunt houses. They haunt
obligations.
He signed the form. Put on the uniform. Walked
into the barracks with his mother’s prayer beads
in his pocket and the smell of wet wall still in
his nose.
That night, the wall stopped sweating.
The ghost didn’t follow him to Pulau Tekong.
But the boots? They waited.
At the gate.
Every morning.
Just watching.
