The Cesspit of July

The house on Lorong Koo Chuan was a four-room flat that had seen a century of damp and decay. My family had always been porous to the other side, but it wasn’t until I inherited Auntie Bee’s room that I understood why. Auntie Bee, my grandaunt, had been a medium in the 1960s, and her room, the one facing the main road, still smelled of joss sticks and old blood. After she went to the nursing home and passed, my grandmother moved in, and she too left the room with a lingering scent of camphor and prayers. When I took it over, I thought I was just moving into a room with history, but the room had a history of its own.

My new helper, Devi, was from Myanmar, and she refused to enter the room after sunset. She said the walls hummed. I dismissed it. But the first night I slept there, I dreamed of a well in the courtyard, dry and cracked, and a child in a yellow dress standing at its edge, her back to me. When I woke, my pillow was wet, and the taste of rust filled my mouth.

The room across the corridor, where my sisters now sleep, used to be mine. I remember when I shared it with my grandmother, my second sister, and a helper named Ros. Those were the days when the ceiling fan clicked like a metronome, and my grandmother would talk in her sleep in a language I didn’t recognize. She would say, ‘The cesspit is full again,’ and Ros would cross herself. I never asked what it meant.

One night, I got up to use the bathroom and saw my grandmother standing in the corridor, staring at Auntie Bee’s door. The door was ajar, and inside, the light was flickering. My grandmother whispered, ‘She’s back, the one who bought the house.’ I didn’t understand then, but now I do. The previous owner, a wealthy merchant, had built a cesspit under the flat in the 1920s. When the house was converted, the cesspit was sealed, but the door to it remains in the floor of my room, hidden under a loose tile.

Last month, I pulled up the tile. There was a metal ring. I almost opened it, but Devi flew into the room, screaming, ‘No, don’t!’ She said she saw a hand reaching out of the floor in her dream. I believed her, because I started seeing the child in yellow everywhere. She would stand at the foot of my bed, her face hidden, and point to the floor. I could smell it now, a sourness like fermented fruit, rising through the tiles.

I called a ”sifu” who cleans houses. He burned incense and chanted for three days, but all he found was a manhole in the void deck, covered with a padlock. He told me, ‘This is not a spirit. This is a residue. A spill that never dried up.’ He gave me a bundle of dried herbs and said, ‘Burn these, and tell it you are the new owner. The old agreement is void.’

I did as he said. That night, I lit the herbs and spoke loudly, ‘I am the new owner. The old agreement is void.’ The room grew cold, and I heard a gurgling sound from under the floor. Then, a voice, like water draining, said, ‘Why did you cover the well?’ I had no answer.

Now, I live with Devi, and we never speak of it. But every July, when the monsoon breaks, the smell returns. The child in yellow stands in the corner of my room, and she has a face now. It is my grandmother’s face, but younger, crying. She points to the floor, and I know the cesspit has filled with the tears of the unburied. I tried to move, but the room follows me. I see the manhole in every bathroom floor. The child is always there, waiting, her hand on the ring, ready to open what should never be opened.