I was born on Halloween, quarter past three in the morning, jaundiced and with a hole in my heart. Or so Mum told me, but she was grumpy about what a pain I had been, so I didn’t push for details. All Hallows’ Eve—hallow meaning saint—is the night before All Saints’ Day on November 1, and is when the departed and beloved are remembered through prayer and song (vespers being Latin for evening). The practice goes back centuries, and includes a rich Celtic influence and history.

We knew none of this growing up in Southeast Asia, though I did spend ten years in a school run by the Catholic Marist Brothers. Come the Qingming Festival or Tomb-Sweeping Day, the period around the fifteenth day after the spring equinox, the local Chinese community would fan out to respective resting places of the deceased, enduring merciless mosquitoes, vicious fire ants and other rustic challenges, bringing brooms, shears, flowers, incense and votives to honor and commemorate those who left before us. Most of us kids would not have known or remembered these family members, and would be grumpy about being dragged out to the boondocks during the weekend, away from our shiny trinkets, plastic games and library books. We did not understand
what it meant for the elders to not be; they existed as curious photographs in sepia, and as greyscale
ceramic thumbnails cemented on tombstones.

During the seventh month of the Lunar or Agricultural Calendar, our island of Singapore perpetuated large-scale carbon release through ubiquitous burning of joss sticks, faux currency and other creature comforts that a resident would need in the afterlife. Think paper Rolexes, mâché Mercedes Benzes, cardboard gold ingots, jewellery, stately mansions—an annual interdimensional transfer of wealth through the veil, beaming resources across to the Underworld more effectively than Roddenberry could have envisaged in Star Trek. This Hungry Ghost Month, observed primarily by Buddhists and Taoists, also permitted the gift recipients to visit the living as spiritual tourists—the gates were open for thirty days to all, not just the Persephones and Orpheuses. But
again this festival offered me as a child no insight into the realm beyond; at best an olfactory nuisance, if not a risky environmental trigger for my mild asthma. We learned to be careful though, not to kick the random red candles and assorted offerings we came across on public kerbs and burnt grass patches, the entrails of someone’s dreams and wishes, still smouldering with cloying patience.

I remember the instant Death entered my mind. I would have been ten, or nine. The idea utterly horrified me: Annihilation. That those around me—family, friends, anyone—would cease to be, that I would too. I still see my old bedroom in that afternoon light, my door in beige enamel (by ICI-Dulux) with half-worn clothes hanging off a maroon plastic rack. My vermilion bedsheet with its miniature rainbow swatches. A car screeching outside my casement window as it approached a newly-installed speed bump. I stopped breathing then. No one had put the idea in my mind, it just came into being. That we may become Nothing after one infinitesimal moment, that moment, any moment. I dissolved into tears, inconsolable for hours, bewildering my parents because I could not speak, suffocated by the thought of death; when I finally could speak, I admitted nothing. The terror was mine to keep.

There were other, more direct terrors. School run by pious priests was strict but caring, prudent but nurturing. Teaching facilities were basic, and spartan for Physical Education: we ran along the main roads outside the school, and within the grounds of the multi-denominational cemetery-crematorium-columbarium next door. Though born in the tropics and smack on the Equator, I dreaded the sapping humidity by each afternoon; to be the last in class plodding past mossy cherubs and cracked gravestones, with rays of the setting sun in my sweat-lidded eyes and not another soul in sight, was sometimes more than my (healed) heart could bear. Since I was
always gasping for breath by that stage, I couldn’t in self defense muster The Lord’s Prayer we’d learned from school.

Even within the safety of our most cozy, middle-income terrace house, the short dark corridor from the living room to the kitchen and sole toilet—unlit to save on electricity—could suggest to me untold horrors, awakening monsters in my mind. My legs would be rubber, especially when Mum had on TV some black-and-white ghost drama, vengeful brutalized female spirit returning in human form to wreak faceless justice on the evilest men. And by “faceless”, I mean just that. There were no viewing-age advisories then!

*

When Peanuts aired on local broadcast TV during Western festivals in the early 1980s, I fell in love. I eagerly taped every installment on VCR, including It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, for repeated viewing during meal times. Linus in his pumpkin patch was a riot.

Dressing up as ghouls and ghosts though, was completely out of the question for us—it would have been anathema, a sacrilege. We deployed heroes like Jackie Chan to take care of Qing Dynasty eunuch zombies and such. Parents took children to an Underworld theme park (Tiger Balm Gardens, built by two Burmese-Chinese brother tycoons), complete with Hellish dioramas painted on sculpted porcelain, to teach the consequences of Evil. My parents, being teachers, needed no help putting in me the fear of sloth and love of studying. The one time we visited the park, I grimaced throughout but believed none of it; I believed in Science! Naturally, I wouldn’t be caught dead inside the park after dark. Many years later, the same property added a Chinese cultural museum and full-service restaurant, allowing a quick tour of the Netherworld between dinner courses. More recently, a sustainable hotel made from shipping containers popped up at the site, presumably enjoying full occupancy regardless of actual bookings.

Over the decades the older generation is gradually passing on, with more of global culture and commerce flowing in, more expatriates settling into the community. Hobbyist shops and dollar stores bring in affordable art-and-craft materials, throwaway costumes. Cosplay has grown from the fringe into a multi-convention business yearly. Candy and chocolate shops, artisanal offerings have exploded across the island. Like Christmas come too early each year, it has become a running gag to spot which store brings out Halloween items by, say, July. Small private gatherings on October 31st turn, over a few years, into neighborhood mega-block parties with maps and instructions, welcoming doors thrown open to strangers arriving from afar via taxis and private
hires, togged out in witchy hats and broody cloaks, their toddlers grasping empty pails and little bags. Halloween is defanged and declawed, neutered and domiciled, its greatest impact being noise pollution past midnight, and traffic jams from makeshift roadside parking.

The world is one giant pumpkin patch, and Linus van Pelt would be so delighted.

*

I drive through the cemetery at noon, air-conditioning at full blast, peering out for the correct memorial hall; Google Maps doesn’t cover private roads. Another co-worker’s parent, another friend’s immediate relative, sometimes another colleague—there are more wakes now, and more frequently. I eventually find the right place to park, and step out into the blazing heat. A diesel lawn mower feeds noisily on wild lallang (cogongrass), scaring off a few foraging mynas. I don’t remember these grounds being so sprawling. Did I jog down this particular path, forty years ago?

Condolences and conversations on rickety chairs under a creaky ceiling fan, speaking praises of the departed, recounting a life well lived, whispering prayers for peace beyond the veil; a good person: fair, funny, there when you needed help. A good crowd at the wake: few here out of obligation, fewer here in a hurry to leave. But the boss buzzes me on my phone and I make profuse apologies to go, promising a follow-up lunch, a coffee.

I walk along the macadam path towards my car, bemused that I’d been terrified here. Yet if this were night, would I feel the same? What is fear, I wonder, what am I truly afraid of? I exit through the ornate cast iron gate, returning to the world at large.

The real fear is that of irrelevance. The real terror is of oblivion. Of death in my heart. The terror of passing without having lived, that I chose not . . . wrongly, but that I chose untrue, chose not my truth. The fear that I blew it, blew my one life, my one chance. That I’ve done evil by others, unknowing; that I’ve been vain and capricious and shallow  and rapacious and—

A barrage of honks from the cars behind jolts me back to this world. The traffic light has been green for a while. I floor it and zip off, embarrassed. Where did that come from?

I pick up our son straight after work, for a Halloween party by a business acquaintance turned family friend. “Didn’t like the costume your mom picked out?” I ask chirpily, receiving a pre-teen shrug in return. There is indeed a massive tailback before we reach the party, and I have to park three blocks away. Mother and child set out in the main entourage to raid the surrounding lands, while I hold our friend’s home fort in air-chilled comfort, dishing out popcorn and all things Hershey’s, occasionally sipping the excellent drink I was handed before the rest left. Monsters prowl the streets. Thor strolls by with his posse, waving Mjölnir breezily. An incorrectly-weighted T-Rex topples over, gently, a few houses down the Jurassic mile. Boromir staggers past but remains heroically upright, half a dozen arrows protruding from his heart.

A lively young Qing Zombie couple walk-hop up to me with outstretched rigor-mortis arms, two Mini-Zombies in tow. I check my decades of life-preserving instinct and, instead of screaming, smile and offer the undead family generous scoops of snacks. Close up, Lady Zombie certainly isn’t wearing regulation attire and I make sure not to stare—Madam, do you mind, there are children about, including yours! Their Halloween rations distributed, I close shop and retreat into the fort, keen not to be incriminated in case my wife returns soon.

It’s my birthday, and I am looking forward to a peaceful night.

Ping Yi writes poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction, after a three-decade detour in public service. His work is in Orbis (nominated for Forward Prize), The High Window, The Lake, La Piccioletta Barca, Eclectica, Poetry Ink, Sheila-Na-Gig, Vita Poetica, and Artemis Journal. Ping Yi lives in Singapore with his spouse and their son.