She still walks the 432 steps of Block 78B every
dusk, thermos of sweet potato porridge in hand,
same as she did in ’52 when the British still
called it “New Town.” No one else goes near the
stairwell between Level 12 and 13 — not since
the ’78 fire that killed three children, not
since the neighbours swore the crying came from
inside the concrete.
The ghosts don’t speak. They just appear:
barefoot, in torn pinafores, holding out chipped
enamel bowls. She leaves porridge. One bowl for
each. Always three. She knows their names — Ah
Mei, Ah Kiat, Ah Ling — from the old land
registry she once typed by hand, before the
Japanese burned the records and the British
reissued them with erased names.
The world changed when the Occupation took the
maps. No one knew whose land was whose anymore.
The British rewrote ownership to suit the
postwar scramble. She signed the forms. She
believed in order.
Last Tuesday, the third ghost didn’t take the
porridge. She stood there, eyes hollow, and
pointed at the wall where the fire had scorched
the plaster. Beneath the blackened patch, the
brick bore a carved Chinese character — not from
the children. From the head of the local kampung
council. Her husband’s best friend.
That night, she broke into the HDB office
archives. The fire wasn’t an accident. It was a
purge. The council had hidden Japanese
collaborators in the block. The children?
Witnesses. The betrayal wasn’t the war. It was
the quiet men who kept silent to keep their
homes.
She didn’t call the police. Didn’t tell the
neighbours. She just stopped bringing porridge.
The next morning, the three bowls sat untouched
on the landing.
And the wall? The carving was gone.
The ghosts stopped coming.
But the porridge still gets cold every dusk.
She still walks the steps.
Just not to feed them anymore.
