Choo Mei Lin wakes at 3am every day, not to
alarm, but to the smell of burnt joss paper
clinging to her uniform. She works the night
stall beside Block 43’s old lift shaft, selling
kueh lapis under a flickering bulb, while her
mother’s spirit lingers in the concrete
stairwell — a ghost not of death, but of
unfulfilled filial duty.
In this world, ancestral worship doesn’t fade
with time — it binds. If a child neglects the
altar, the ancestor’s spirit becomes tethered to
the nearest living structure: a drainpipe, a
playground swing, a HDB stairwell. The
government banned ancestral altars in public
housing after ’72, but the rules still bite:
neglect the rites, and the dead don’t rest —
they haunt.
Mei Lin’s mother, once a kampong herbalist who
sold tangyuan under the stars, never stopped
whispering through the walls. Even after the
fire that took her in ’68, the rituals continued
— Mei Lin lighting incense at 11pm on the 15th,
bowing thrice, leaving a single banana. But last
month, she missed the mooncake offering.
The next night, the stairwell’s third landing
wept black water.
Her rival, Tan Siew Hoon — daughter of a retired
police officer who still keeps a porcelain
shrine in his HDB living room — began selling
“ancestral peace cookies” beside her stall. Each
cookie, wrapped in red paper stamped with a
ghostly handprint, claims to “release the spirit.
” Siew Hoon’s stall queues stretch past the void
where the old banana tree once stood. The estate
believes the cookies work. Mei Lin knows they
don’t. They just sell faster.
The rule bites when the altar’s silence becomes
a wound. On the 15th of this month, Mei Lin
forgot the banana.
At 4am, the lift shaft groaned. Not from age.
From weight.
Three figures stepped out of the dark — her
mother, her grandmother, her greatgrandmother,
all in faded batik, their feet bare and cracked
like old pavement. They didn’t speak. They
didn’t need to. The air turned sour with burnt
rice and camphor. The scent of her mother’s last
offering — durian, not banana — still clung to
the wall behind the lift.
Mei Lin dropped her tray.
The next morning, Siew Hoon’s stall was gone. No
trace. No note. Just a single banana, placed
neatly on the third landing, still fresh.
That night, Mei Lin lit three sticks of incense.
She placed the banana. She bowed.
At dawn, the black water stopped.
The lift shaft no longer wept.
But Mei Lin never sells kueh lapis again.
She now stands beside the stairwell at midnight,
holding a small brass bowl.
And when the new tenants ask why she’s there,
she doesn’t answer.
She just lights another stick.
The ghost of her mother watches.
And waits.
