The Same House

I walk pass the same house everyday.1

It is almost a habit to take the lift to the eleventh floor, before taking the stairs at the extreme end of the corridor down to the ninth floor, where I live. I do not like the sixth level, never have and probably never will.2

And I walk pass that house everyday.3

I do not know how to put it in words.4

Before the house became what it is today, there used to be a kindly old man who stayed in the house all by himself, and everytime I returned from school, he would be there, smiling and waving at me. And everytime, the child of me would return the wave, the smile and the greeting.5

But the child in me... was scared.6

We Chinese tell many stories to scare ourselves; parents criticise their children and praise others so the demon who comes will not think highly of their own child, so their own child won?t be taken away by that jealous demon; the lunar seventh month is the festival of hungry ghosts, and to utter someone's name in the night during the month is to condemn the person to the hungry ghosts.7

To step on an offering is to invite a ghost to possess you.8

And to talk to a ghost was to die young.9

But around two or three years ago, the kindly man never appeared in the house again. The plants outside the house were cleared, and I seem to recall some new neighbours.10

New neighbours who moved out soon after. New neighbours who never came back. And there were no more new neighbours after that.11

I pass the house when I walk back from school with friends, a project in mind.12

"This house hasn't been inhabited in a long time," I tell them, "but there used to be an old man. He disappeared one day."13

They shudder, and accuse me of trying to scare them. However, as I offer them a smile, I swear? someone was smiling at me too. However, when I attempt to look around, all I can see are my two friends following me.14

Even now, I am no stranger to death, but I hated funerals, hated the sad, depressed mood I always see. Two out of four grandparents had passed away. I had played, as a child, in the crematorium, without actually knowing what it was. With a child?s mind, I had looked at rows after rows of photos of the deceased. Children, adults, grandparents... All staring at me. Still, the child I was had only laughed as she chased her brother down.15

So I walk pass the same house everyday.16

I see others slipping their own unwanted advertisements they had gotten from their mailboxes under the door. I see people no longer leaving advertisements on the door, probably having realised that there was no one in there to read them. Though other houses have been sold, and bought, this house, alone, remains it usual silent facade. 17

And when I pass the same house everyday...18

I see nothing.19

But I long for the old kindly man and his smile.20

I long for them as I pass the same house again today.21