The HDB block on Pasir Ris was condemned in ’92,

left to rot till the government rezoned it for

“heritage nostalgia” — a loophole letting

private buyers snap up empty units at 30% market

value. Mei Lin sold her aunt’s durian stall

permit and her husband’s old NS boots to pay the

deposit. She didn’t care about the rumours. Her

boy, Jie Ming, was due home from basic training.

He’d slept on army cots for six months. She

needed him to breathe real air.

The flat still smelled of wet cement and old

fish sauce. The previous owner — a Malay widow

who vanished after her daughter drowned in the

void deck well — left behind a rusted tin of

kaya jam and a single red candle stuck to the

fridge with duct tape. Mei Lin lit it. For luck.

For silence.

At 3am, the kettle whistled. No one was in the

kitchen.

She found Jie Ming standing by the window, shirt

unbuttoned, staring at the wall where the

wallpaper peeled like burnt skin. He didn’t

speak. He just pointed. On the wall, written in

chalk that hadn’t been there before: YOU TOOK MY

HOME. I TAKE YOUR SON’S SLEEP.

The next morning, the neighbour downstairs — a

retired Chinese nurse who’d lived there since

’78 — slipped Mei Lin a folded note. They don’t

haunt the rich. They haunt the ones who forgot

the kampong. Mei Lin’s hands shook. She’d never

told anyone she grew up in a stilt house beside

the Kallang River, where her father sold sambal

stingray to British officers before they hanged

him for smuggling rice to starving villagers.

The government buried that story with the

kampong. She buried it too.

That night, the lights flickered. The red candle

melted into a puddle shaped like a child’s

handprint. The wall cracked open. Not with wind.

With pressure. The ghost didn’t scream. It

showed her: a row of HDB flats rising over the

drowned kampong, each unit sold to a new owner

who paid cash, who didn’t know the soil still

remembered the hunger. The ghost was the land’s

memory. And it didn’t want to be erased again.

Jie Ming woke up with a fever. His arm bore a

bruise shaped like a banyan root.

Mei Lin went to the void deck at dawn. She laid

out the kaya jam, a bowl of nasi lemak, and her

husband’s NS belt buckle — the one he kept even

after he left her. She whispered, We didn’t

forget. We just learned to pretend.

By noon, the chalk writing vanished. The kettle

stayed quiet. The wall sealed.

Jie Ming was discharged early. They moved out

the next day.

But in the HDB records, Unit 405 still lists Mei

Lin as owner.

And every Tuesday, a bowl of kaya toast appears

on the 5thfloor ledge — left by no one.

The ghost didn’t take her son.

It took her silence.