The war ended but the air didn’t clear. In 1952,
the British left but the ghosts stayed—workers
who died in the docks, the factories, the tunnel
digs, now bound to the machines they once ran.
No one spoke of it. The Ministry just posted
notices: If your kin vanished during Occupation,
their name may still appear on payroll. Do not
replace. Do not question. Their labour is owed.
Lian, 19, passed the SIA technical exam with top
marks. Her father, a radio mechanic who vanished
in 1943 during the Japanese purge of engineers,
was still listed on the Sembawang Maintenance
Roster. She took his shift. The machine he fixed—
the big humming receiver that tied together all
colonial radio nets—still worked. Only now, it
hummed in two frequencies: one human, one… other.
She cleaned the dials with kopio residue and
rags. At midnight, the ghost came. Not a shape.
A cold that made her fingers stiffen midscrew.
The machine would blink—three times—then the
dial would turn itself to a frequency no human
could tune. The Ministry rule: Do not interrupt
the dead’s work. She’d seen a man try. They
found him the next morning, tongue blackened,
still gripping a wrench, his boots filled with
sand from a beach that didn’t exist in 1952.
Her father’s ghost didn’t speak. But it took her
hours. Every night, she’d arrive at 6pm. By 10pm,
the machine would be running clean. By 1am, the
ghost had taken over. She’d sit in the corner,
writing her notes on the next shift’s schematics,
her career rising in ink while her body grew
thin. She dreamed of becoming Chief Engineer.
Her father’s ghost wanted the job.
The hard rule bit when she tried to log a fault.
The machine locked. A voice—dry, like rusted tin—
came through the speaker. Not words. A single
phrase, repeated in broken English, the way her
father used to curse when the radio cracked:
“You take my place, girl? I took your mother’s.”
She froze. Her mother had died in 1947, not in
war, but from hunger after the Japanese took the
rice stores. The ghost had been in her mother’s
body first. Then her father’s. Now, it needed a
new host.
Lian didn’t cry. She brought her father’s old
radio from the kampong. The one he tuned before
he vanished. She smashed it open, pulled out the
copper coil, and slipped it into the Ministry
machine’s core. The ghost screamed—not loud, but
deep, like a whole street of silenced voices
finally heard. The machine exploded in blue
sparks. No fire. Just silence.
Next morning, her name was on the new roster.
Chief Engineer. The ghost was gone. No one said
why. No one asked. But the hawker stall near
Sembawang always leaves a bowl of kueh lapis on
the counter at midnight. No one ever eats it.
She never told anyone she heard her mother’s
voice, whispering: “You did good, chio.”
The city moved on. She didn’t.
She kept the broken coil in her pocket.
Every night, she still checks the dial.
Just in case.
