By Natalie Wang

"It's perfect," Amanda beamed as the agent shut the front door behind them, already imagining the monsteras and succulents she would decorate the entrance of the house with.

"Yes," said her husband as he pressed the button for the lift. He had been silent the entire time the agent showed them around the flat while Amanda had chattered with the agent about window direction (Morning sun only, the agent had said. That's why the house a bit dark now, but it's a good thing, it's so hot these days.) He'd drifted along almost sullenly while Amanda had cooed over the pockmarked hardwood floor in the master bedroom (See, can save on renovation costs! You know how much it costs to do wood park-kay these days sis?) and didn't make a single snarky comment to Amanda when the agent had pointed out the outdated fixtures in the bathroom and said that they were still in good condition (The retro theme is very in now!). "Except for the ghost."

"What ghost?" Amanda's voice came out sharper than she'd intended as she peered at the other flats along the corridor. They all seemed to have families with children in primary school, judging by the scruffy white school shoes left outside the house. Her mother had told her, among many other pieces of well-meaning, house hunting-related advice despite the old woman having lived in her HDB for the last 30 years, that it was a good sign if people felt safe enough to leave their shoes outside. Her mother had also said that it was better to have children already in primary school than newborn babies because modern HDBs had such thin walls – as though she could control the ages of all her neighbours' children.

"The ghost that was hanging around the entire time we were in there." Her husband was startlingly matter of fact. "I didn't want to say anything just now, because it might have attracted its attention and then followed us out. But we should tell the agent that we'll keep looking for another place."

"Another place? Sweetie, don't be ridiculous."

She didn't need to look at him to know the incredulous face he was making, and she didn't want to see it, pointedly looking away from his direction as the lift doors dinged open.

They had been with each other long enough that she knew how he would shift to anger while she ignored him. She knew that it wasn't healthy, and she had read enough r/AITA posts on Reddit and been to enough therapy sessions to know that. But she never knew any other way to respond when he said something she did not want to listen to.

And of course, he didn't stop.

"Didn't you feel how cold the master bedroom was while we were there?"

They reached the first floor and she moved towards the bus stop, not looking back to see if he was following or even listening. She knew he would be there, frowning, his hands clenched by his side as he tried to think of a way to make her take his nonsense seriously. And that's what it was – nonsense. He was jumping at shadows in broad daylight.

"That's because the house has good airflow. And isn't that a good thing? We can leave the aircon off and save money."

"There was a ghost that followed us around the house," her husband said slowly. He took her by the arm to turn her around, and she was forced to squint at him in the afternoon sun. "And you still want to get it?"

She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, pushed her glasses up her sweaty nose, and met his eyes for the first time since they'd left the house. "Obviously," she said, as though it was the most sensible thing to be doing, and one had to be an idiot to consider otherwise. "And if it really is haunted –" she felt her face pull to give that dubious face she couldn't help but give every time her husband talked about his feelings and intuitions – "Maybe that's why the owner has listed the place under market value in the area, which is a great thing for our bank accounts."

"You actually want to live in a haunted house." Her husband looked as though he was on the verge of tearing his hair out, but his hands were gripped too tightly around her arms to do so. "You really don't think that it is a problem."

She slapped his hand away, hating his tone, his touch on her. "What I think is a problem is that the lease of our rental flat is almost up and our asshole landlord decided to jack up the cost of our rent and we can't afford anything else on the rental market and we weren't successful with any of our BTO ballots even though the government just sends us letters to keep applying as though we can just continue to wait. This owner doesn't want an extension on the flat so we can move in immediately –"

"Yeah, he's not living in it because he probably knows that it's haunted –"

"And we won't have to do too much renovation with our non-existent caches of money, and I can bet you that we're not the only ones considering this unit, so we're going to have to get back to the agent with an answer soon. Like, now."

"You can't seriously want to live in a house with a ghost in it!"

"I didn't see anything when I was there."

"Are you telling me you couldn't feel that there was something wrong with the place just now?"  

"No," she said, thinking instead of the kitchen which the agent had promised was renovated by the owner just five years ago, the large living room, the flat's high floor with unblocked views all around, its proximity to the train station, and of course, its price. It was further from her husband's family than he'd like, but the houses in that neighbourhood were stratospherically expensive, so that couldn't be helped.

"If it's really a problem, we can always find a priest or something to exorcise it anyway," she finally said. This was what they said marriage was about, wasn't it? Meeting in the middle and compromising? She was acknowledging his fears – now to deal with them and ensure that they didn't derail the actually important steps they needed to take in their life. "Did it seem like it was going to kill anyone who stays in the place? Or is it just the kind that will bang the doors a little at night?"

Her husband was still giving her a googly wide-eyed look as though he couldn't believe the words coming out of her mouth. She could hardly believe the words coming out of her mouth but the prospect of living at one of their parents' again was something she refused to consider, and they didn't really have any other choice if they didn't get this flat. "No," he finally said, looking as though he wished he were saying something else. "No killing or maiming. It was just… there."

"So why is it a problem?" She tried not to sound overly aggressive, but it was hard whenever he got into his moods. "If it's harmless?"

"For now."

"For all we know, it's just passing by," she said. "Or maybe it doesn't mean any harm. It could be like having a roommate."

Her husband didn't say anything at all, but he didn't have to. They had known each other long enough that she already could hear him speak, like he was an alter ego that had taken up residence in her brain. The moment the words left her lips she could hear his riposte with an observation about the grey cast on the agent's tired face when he had shown her the home, the deep eyebags under the owner's eyes, and the fact that if it had just been a passing spirit her husband had seen the house would not still be on the market. Not at the ridiculously low sum the owner was asking for. She heard all of this without him opening his mouth.

Finally, he spoke, quietly, as though they had actually fought and now the fight had gone out of him. "You'll be alone with it all the time."

For a moment, she shivered and felt all the hairs on her neck stand, even though there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. "But it's better than being homeless."

Her husband sighed. "We can move to my parents if you don't want to go back to yours. This isn't the only option."

"No."

Her husband sighed again and looked at the folder in his hand. It contained the printout of house listings she had compiled on Excel, and they were almost at the end of their options.

In that moment Amanda knew she had won, but all she felt was exhaustion.

When Amanda and her husband moved into the house, he didn't bring up the ghost again, as though he was aware of his own silliness. Amanda did her best to make her house look and feel as not-haunted as possible anyway. It was for her husband's benefit, she thought, and therefore for her own as well.

They didn't have the time to renovate the house into one of those gleaming boutique hotel Instagram spaces, but she did her best. It was her house after all – a space that was hers and where she didn't have to fight mothers or landlords for permission to put up a mirror or a shelf on a wall. Her husband was always busy with work and she had more time at home, so she unpacked their clothes, arranged their books in a secondhand IKEA Billy.

It turned out one of the walls in the freshly painted bedroom had mould blooming under it, so she spent an entire weekend laying bleach-soaked rags on the wall and then painting it over, breathing in the fumes the entire time. She bought a few rugs, which helped when the tiles got cold at night. She decorated the living room with secondhand fairy lights to give it that charming Pinterest effect, but when the bulbs would not stop flickering it all started to look like the set of a horror movie. So she switched to candles. IKEA tea candles, hand poured scented soy candles, and even the artisanal wood wick candles that promised to throw better light than standard ones. She also covered the house in plants – money plants in the kitchen and monsteras at the door, and Japanese peace lilies and snake plants in the living room, all plants that thrived in dimly lit places and didn't require too much effort to water. They crowded the rooms, turning the house into a lush jungle and helped to disguise the lack of furniture in the empty space.

Her husband's work took him out of the country every two weeks, so she was left in the flat on her own most of the time. Two months after they moved into the flat and he was gone for half that time, so he'd missed most of her decorating process. She had avoided sending him photos so it would be a surprise.

"You're late," she said when she opened the door for him, but kissed him on the cheek anyway and took hold of the luggage he'd set down so that he didn't accidentally roll the dirty wheels over the rugs.

"It's the new airport," he said. "I got lost trying to find my way out of it." He spun around, taking in the redecorated space.

"Our living room has become a jungle."

"Isn't it nice?" she asked. "Don't tell me you'd get lost in it."

"A jungle with fire hazards everywhere," he said.

"Don't be silly, sweetheart," she laughed. "The flames are all contained in the jars." She tugged his hand, trying to shepherd him toward the bedroom – he had been gone for a long time after all – but failed as his feet remained planted in place as he stared into the doorway of the bedroom.

"What?"

"Don't you see it?"

"See what?"

She craned her neck into the darkened room, trying to see whatever it was that frightened him through the flickering candles. She could only see their bed, the giant IKEA stuffed shark lying across it which she hugged whenever her husband wasn't around. She felt a pang of guilt seeing the pile of undone laundry on the floor and made up her mind to do it the next day. "I don't see anything."

He refused to say anything more, only grabbed his luggage and insisted that they stayed in a hotel that night. He would have run straight out of the house if she hadn't insisted that they needed to at least blow out all the candles and would not stop watching the doorway to the bedroom the entire time.

That night, Amanda lay on scratchy sheets gone grey with use, plotting and planning as she breathed in stale cigarette smells baked into the walls. When they returned to the house in the morning, her husband looked gingerly at the front door and would only go in after Amanda threw open all the windows and turned on every light in the house. He then took a quick shower and had to go back to his office, leaving Amanda alone in the house again.

That was fine. She was used to that anyway. The hours seemed to stretch thick and syrupy as she worked – clearing her emails, looking up job sites, cleaning the house, and in between, she looked up as many esoteric sites as she could.

She would fix this, she told herself.

Her husband was like a spooked animal when he came back home that night. He seemed like he would run out again at any moment, nervously slipping off his socks and shoes and not putting them away, as though he would need them again at a moment's notice.

"What is that white stuff outside of the master bedroom?" He reached a finger out to touch it, but then seemed to think better of it, recoiling as though he'd been shocked. 

"Salt," Amanda replied.  

He pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture she'd always found charming before now but only made her want to smack him now. Why was he still being so difficult when she was trying so hard? "Why do we have salt outside of the master bedroom?"

"To stop the ghost from going in there," she said matter-of-factly. She began pulling out the dirty laundry from his luggage – she'd been so busy the entire day she never had the time to do it before. "So we don't have to stay in a hotel anymore."

"Babe, this isn't right." She suddenly hated that endearment – why did it feel so infantilising now? "We need to move out."

His clothes were crumpled, the legs of his pants rolled inside out as though he'd taken them off after the end of the day and carelessly tossed them into the bag. She'd told him before not to do that because it always meant more tedious ironing after, but he never listened. "Dinner is on the table. Do you want to wash up first?"

"Are you listening to me?"

She gathered up all his clothes in her arms. "I heard you."

"And you're just ignoring me?"

"You're being very difficult right now."

"Difficult?" His voice was almost shrill as he shouted – she could hardly recall ever hearing him raise his voice.

"We used up most of our savings getting this flat. What are we going to do? Live indefinitely in hotels?"

"I don't know, but we can't live here."

"Why not?" her response came out as a half-scream. "I've been here by myself without you. I've been fine."

"Don't tell me you've been fine!" His face was very red. "Where are all the fruits you used to keep around the house?"

"I haven't had time to go to the supermarket –"

"You're lying. The entire comb of green bananas that were out here this morning are gone."

"So they went bad –"

"All of them? In one day?"

"You know our climate. It's been hot."

Except that it hadn't been. It was now the rainy season, and it'd been raining persistently, relentlessly, for the last week, and she knew that, and worse, he knew she knew that.

"I found them in the trash. They've gone black."

She waved a hand, or she did her best to with the entirety of her upper body since she was still carrying his dirty clothes. "I'll take it out. Once I'm done with the laundry," she said pointedly.

"You're not listening to me."

"I am not moving out of our house just because of some rotten bananas."

"This isn't just about bananas, and you know it!"

"No!" She threw down his stupid wrinkled mess of laundry on the floor, felt all the words coming out of her mouth like wriggling overfat maggots. The absurdity of his concerns, even as he stood before her shouting, wasn't lost on her. It was ridiculous that her husband kept citing ghosts and bad bananas – where was he when she was dealing with the mouldy walls and assembling the IKEA furniture? When she had to look up YouTube videos for hours to deal with clogged stinking pipes and eventually had to call a plumber herself? "It's because you don't like this place or this neighbourhood! It's because it's too goddamned far from your family and you don't like that this is all we can afford!"

"I have never once said that –"

"But it's true, isn't it?"

He pinched his nose, and again she felt desperately the desire to smack his stupid sullen face. "I never once wanted to say it, but you know a year ago we wouldn't even have considered this neighbourhood if you hadn't lost your job –"

That hurt as much as a slap to her face. "It is not my fault that my company decided to replace me with AI!"

"And what have you done since?"

She couldn't believe that this – this was what he was choosing to bring up. She'd done her best to not be a financial burden this entire time, had tried to be dutiful housewife and household manager while taking on as much freelance work as she could. Her job situation had always been unspoken between them. "I've done my best, haven't I?" She thought he'd known. It wasn't as though she could train herself for an entirely new industry overnight.

He let out a scream, covering his face with his hands the entire time. "This is all not what I wanted to say."

"So what did you want to say?"

"What I'm saying is that buying this house was a mistake. We can't live here." 

"Maybe you can't, but I can." She could feel the tears building up in the corners of her eyes now, hot and fast. "This is supposed to be our home. We've been looking for one for so long."

"Amanda, I –" He reached out for her, and in that moment, she thought he might just apologise, that they would then move on from this unpleasantness. But then he recoiled from her as though suddenly repelled. "We need to go." His face, flushed red just a moment ago, was now the same off-white colour as spoilt milk.

She turned behind her to see what it was he was jumping at this time. The candles in the living room flickered as candles did, but she didn't see anything. As she expected. She turned to him, and he was still transfixed by something – by nothing – behind the point of her shoulder, trembling ever so slightly.

This was ridiculous. "You go if you want," she spat. "Go back to your family since you keep wanting to go move back in with them."

She moved to turn around – if she was going to start crying, she should at least get some tissues – but he caught hold of her arm and moved to drag her toward the door.

She screamed – longer and louder than she had ever thought herself capable of doing, and still he didn't let go, only yanked her again while he fumbled with the keys with his other hand. His grip on hers was vice-tight, the sweaty clamminess of his skin intolerable. She kicked him as she wrenched her hand out of his grip and somehow, he was sent flying toward the floor.

His head slammed against the front door with a loud crack, then slid down to the tiles. He did not get back up, not even after she called his name, once, twice, thrice.

She gathered all the laundry on the floor into her arms again with shaking hands. Bent down to pick up a stray sock she'd missed. He still did not get up.

She went into the service yard and threw everything into the washing machine. At the dining table, there were already flies buzzing around the congealing dinner. She stared at it for a long moment, and decided she would deal with it in the morning. Or her husband could do it himself, since it was his fault for not eating earlier when she told him to.

He was still lying on the living room floor when she came back. 

Her husband was tired, she decided. He probably hadn't slept much in the hotel last night as well, and was likely still jet lagged. And the tiles were nice and cool.

She could do with a nap as well, she thought. In the morning when they were both well-rested, they could discuss the whole thing properly. She could show him the numbers of all the exorcists that she had looked up earlier and they could call one to come down if it would make him feel better. They could invite his family over more often, or go to their house. There were always compromises they could make.

She entered the bedroom, stepping over the line of salt that she had poured – yet another stupid attempt to reconcile with her husband and now she had yet another thing to clean in the morning. Dimly, she noticed that the mould was back on the bleached wall. The shape of it was still faint, but it seemed to have bloomed into a pattern that sent creeping tendrils further than she remembered, that stretched toward the ceiling loomed over her. Yet another thing to do – she'd have to take out the ladder again to reach the areas on top and sleep in the living room while the bleach fumes were present. Or she could tell her husband to deal with it this time and maybe he would understand how hard she was working.

As she settled into bed she suddenly felt as though someone was standing by the door. She'd set her glasses by the nightstand and her vision was all blurry – the tears she'd been fighting off were starting now and weren't helping at all.

"Sweetheart?" The shadow by the door did not move or respond.

She sighed. "Please don't be angry," she said, and the tears were coming down hot and furious now, she'd have to launder the sheets in the morning. "We'll talk about it in the morning, okay? I just need to rest now. I'm so tired."

The shadow stood by the door, not coming in as she sobbed and sobbed.  

_____