The HDB block at Toa Payoh 1974 had no lifts,
only stairs that echoed with footsteps that
weren’t there. Concrete cracked under monsoon
rains, and the walls sweated dampness like old
secrets.
Her name was Aisha, and she failed the OLevels—
math paper blank except for one scribbled line:
“I don’t know how to be useful.”
That night, the flat hummed. Not electricity.
Something deeper. The ceiling fan spun without
power. A shadow passed behind the bedroom door—
taller than any man, wearing a faded khaki
uniform. No face. Just a collar badge: R.E.M.
Her father stood rigid at the kitchen sink, back
turned, water running cold. “You’re not supposed
to see it,” he said, voice hollow. “It wasn’t
meant to be seen.”
She didn’t ask who it was. She knew. Her father
had been a warrant officer in the Malayan
Emergency. He’d served under British command,
then resigned quietly after the war. They never
spoke of it. But the flat remembered.
Three days later, conscription notice arrived.
National Service callup. Her file listed as
“unstable due to family trauma”—not a lie. The
real rule was: no one left the flat alive if
they saw the ghost twice.
On her first NS training day, she collapsed
during drill. Not from heat. From the voice
inside her head—her father’s, whispering in
Malay: “You’re not allowed to run. You must stay.
”
She was sent home. The next morning, the ghost
stood at the foot of her bed. This time, it held
a folded letter.
She opened it. A childhood photo. Her father,
younger, standing beside another man in uniform—
same badge, same eyes. The man in the photo was
dead. Officially. But his name was still on the
list.
She burned the letter. The flat screamed. Walls
split open like veins.
She ran down the stairwell. Two flights down,
she stopped.
The ghost wasn’t chasing her. It was waiting.
She turned back.
Inside the flat, the air was still. The ceiling
fan stopped.
The door closed.
And for the first time in ten years, her father
looked at her—not through the wall, but through
the flesh.
He said nothing.
But when she walked out, the key in her pocket
weighed less.
The system had broken. Not because she broke it—
but because she finally believed it could.
