Rain slicks the cracked steps of Block 43, Tiong
Bahru—abandoned since ’87, swallowed by creepers
and the whispers of exresidents. Lina, 42,
sleeps in her oneroom HDB flat above a defunct
char kway teow stall, counting coins from her
night shift at the airport cargo bay. Her son,
18, got drafted. The Ministry won’t defer. No
relatives. No savings. Just a faded photo of her
husband, drowned in the Kallang River the year
Merdeka was declared.
She doesn’t believe in ghosts. But the HDB
maintenance crew found a child’s shoe inside the
elevator shaft of Block 43—same size as her
boy’s. And last Tuesday, her bank account
received $3,200. No sender. No receipt. Just a
note, written in chalk on her door: For the boy
who walks in silence.
That night, she climbs the broken stairs to the
sixth floor. The air smells like burnt joss
sticks and saltwater. A woman stands at the
window—translucent, wearing a 1950s cheongsam
stitched with seaweed. No face. Only the shape
of someone who wept until her eyes dried up. The
ghost doesn’t speak. But Lina feels it: the
weight of a promise. The spirit is bound to the
block. Every soul who died here during the
Occupation, the riots, the HDB evictions—still
paying rent in memory.
The rule bites: A spirit cannot take life, only
what was lost and never grieved. Lina knows this
from her mother’s kampung tales. The ghost
offers the money. In return, Lina must give up
the last memory she has of her husband’s voice.
Not the photo. Not the ring. The sound of him
humming Sally Brown while fixing the radio—his
only song, the one he sang the night he left for
the river and never came back.
She agrees. That night, she dreams of him. The
hum fades. The tune dissolves into static. When
she wakes, she cries—but not for him. For the
silence. She can still see his face. But the
voice? Gone. Like a radio tuned to dead air.
Three days later, her son’s NS documents clear.
He gets his rifle. He marches. He doesn’t know
where the money came from.
Lina returns to Block 43 at dawn. The ghost is
gone. The chalk note has vanished. But on the
floor where she stood, a single white
chrysanthemum rests—grown from cracks in the
concrete, petals trembling with dew. No one
planted it. The building’s been empty for
decades.
At the hawker centre, her neighbour asks why
she’s been quiet. Lina just smiles. Sips her
kopi. Says nothing.
She still wakes at 3am. Still counts coins.
Still hums. But the tune? It’s not Sally Brown.
It’s something new. Something she doesn’t
remember learning.
And sometimes, in the quiet between the MRT
rumble and the distant call to prayer from the
mosque, she hears it—just for a second—a whisper
in Malay, Chinese, and English, all at once.
Not a voice.
A memory. Being returned.
