The Turn of the Lamp

In 1962, when I was six, we lived in a narrow wooden house on stilts at the edge of a rubber plantation in Perak. Our front porch faced a dirt road that led to the tin mines, and beyond that, a dark, stagnant river that locals avoided after dusk. We had no electricity, only kerosene lamps, and my father was one of the few men in the village who owned a small transistor radio. Every night, he would wind it up and we’d listen to the crackling broadcasts from Kuala Lumpur. My mother said the radio was our window to the world, but I thought that window let in more than just voices.

One evening, the radio began to play a strange, mournful song—a woman’s voice, high and thin, like wind through a cracked door. My father frowned and switched it off, muttering about interference from the mines. But the silence that followed felt wrong, heavier than usual. My younger sister, Minah, started crying for no reason, and our dog, a scrawny mongrel named Bakar, began to whine and scratch at the back door. My mother hushed us and lit an extra lamp, placing it on the windowsill that faced the road. ‘Keep the light on,’ she said, ‘and don’t look outside until the lamp burns out.’ I was too young to understand why, but I obeyed.

Later that night, after my parents had gone to bed, the lamp sputtered and died. The darkness pressed in from all sides, and I felt a cold draft from the window. I knew I shouldn’t look, but that dread—that terrible, creeping curiosity—pulled at me like a thread. I tiptoed to the window and peeked through the slats of the wooden shutter. The road was empty, but at the edge of the rubber trees, something moved. It was tall and pale, like a figure wrapped in white cloth, but its proportions were wrong—the arms too long, the head too small. It stood perfectly still, facing our house.

I wanted to scream, but my throat closed up. Then the figure raised one hand, slowly, and pointed at me. In that moment, the air turned icy, and a voice, thin and cracked, whispered my name. It said, ‘Ah Seng, come out and play.’ But the voice came from inside my own head. I stumbled back, fell over a stool, and my mother burst in, holding a parang. She saw my face, and without a word, she ran to the window, slammed it shut, and nailed a piece of old cloth over it. ‘Don’t ever open that window again,’ she said, her hands shaking. ‘That thing has been watching us since we moved here. It takes the curious ones.’

For weeks, I stayed indoors, but the whispers followed me. They came through the gaps in the walls, under the door, even from the radio when my father wasn’t there. I heard my name in the rustle of the roof, in the gurgle of the river, in the cry of night birds. My parents grew haggard, and Minah refused to sleep alone. Then, on the last night of the month, I woke to find the house silent, everyone sleeping as if dead. The lamp on the windowsill—the same one that had gone out—was burning once more, its flame a deep blue. And through the cloth, I saw a shadow pass by, slow and deliberate, pausing at the door.

I closed my eyes and made a promise to myself that I would never look out again, no matter what I heard. But as the flame flickered and the shadow loomed, I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. When I turned, it was my mother, but her eyes were empty, and her voice was not her own. She said, ‘The lamp has turned, child. Now you must light the way for another.’ And then she walked to the window, unlatched it, and opened it wide. The world outside had vanished, replaced by a void of white. And far, far away, I saw a small, dim light—a lantern swinging as if carried by someone walking away. My mother stepped onto the windowsill and dissolved into that white.

I never saw the real my mother again. The villagers said she ran away with a tin miner, but I knew better. That night, I took a hammer and nailed the window shut for good. I also put out every lamp in the house and swore to live in darkness. But even now, years later, whenever I pass a window at night, I feel its pull—that thin, hungry voice whispering, ‘Come out and play.’ And I know that the lamp never truly went out; it only waits for another curious eye to turn it.