The Housecalls





​She hadn’t planned to return. Not tonight and not alone. But the house had been calling. Not loudly. Not with thunder or voices. Just… softly. Persistently. Like a memory tapping on the back of her mind, refusing to leave.


In the past few weeks, she’d dreamt of it more than once always the same: She would be standing just outside the front gate, her hand hovering over the latch. The garden wild. The air heavy. The windows dark, but somehow expectant. She never entered in the dream. She always woke up before the door opened.


“It’s just a house,” she told herself. “It’s just a place.” But that wasn’t true. Not entirely. It wasn’t the kind of house you forget. Even when she first saw it when she’s in her nursing training, standing next to her mother as they handed over the deposit he had felt it: the weight of it.


Too big and too quiet. Too many shadows. Why her parents had chosen such a huge house, she never understood. “Why such a big house?” she had asked. “For the future,” her mother had said. But what kind of future needed so much space?


As a child, she had found comfort in corners and cupboards, in tucked-away places she could understand. The house, with its long corridors and staircases that creaked like old bones, always seemed to be watching. Even now, living in a large KL condominium, she felt safer. Condos had rules, fire exits, lights that never went out. But this house? This house had secrets. And lately, it had been whispering to her in her sleep.


So when the night finally offered her an opening no husband, no brother, no daughter she took the key, and drive down from KL to JB. Its just a strange conviction that she had to go. Not tomorrow or next week.


Tonight. She know Johan was back in Singapore for the weekend. Her husband on another of his endless business trips. So she dropped her daughter at a friend’s place a few kilometers away and told them she just needed to “pick something up.”


By the time she arrived, it was almost 9pm.






The corner lot stood like a sleeping beast, a double-storey terrace with a garden big enough to park a car. She’d always thought it was too big.


Even as a child. She remembered the day they first came, she and her mother, to pay the deposit.


“Why such a big house?” she had asked.


“For the future,” her mother had smiled. She used to wonder why they ever bought this house. Back then, it felt excessive.


Too big for a family that preferred to keep to themselves. Too far from the lives they lived in Singapore.


“It’s a good investment,” her father once said. “You can’t get houses like this back home.”


And later, she understood. It wasn’t just about size or status—it was about possibility. About leaving behind something that couldn’t be taken away.


For Singaporeans like her parents, owning land in Johor Bahru wasn’t a luxury it was a statement. A quiet rebellion against rising prices and disappearing space. A dream they could touch.


Here, they could afford to imagine permanence. A garden to grow old in. A gate to come home to. A roof to pass down not just as property, but as proof.


“We made it. We’ve given you something. Something that’s yours now.”


But at the time, she didn’t get it. All she saw was a big, quiet house filled with strange silences and distant echoes. And now, standing here with the key in her hand and no one else around, she finally felt the weight of what they’d tried to build. It wasn’t just a house.


It was a legacy wrapped in bricks, stubborn love, and unread encyclopaedias. Still she never liked it. Not really. She preferred small spaces manageable, containable like their HDB flats. Like her KL condominium. Big, yes, but somehow it knew its limits.


This house? It had corners that whispered and staircases that remembered. She slipped the key into the lock. The metal groaned. The air inside was still and thick, like the house had been holding its breath. The bookshelf was exactly as she remembered. His dictionaries. His prized, Britannica encyclopedias still lined up like little gods.


She used to lose herself in them as a child. Holding the weight of the world in her lap, flipping through pages that smelled like ambition.


Her father was a collector of books. Whether he read them or not was a mystery. But the books weren’t the only things that remembered.


She didn’t switch on the lights. Somehow, the darkness made more sense. Light would have felt like an intrusion—too harsh, too real.


But this… this moonlit hush felt like slipping into a memory without disturbing it.






The silver glow of the moon poured through the windows like an old friend who knew better than to knock. It cast soft shapes across the living room: the bookshelf standing like a sentinel, the corner armchair draped in dust and time, and the familiar silhouette of the dining table where laughter once lived.


She walked slowly, quietly, letting her eyes adjust. She didn’t need much to see. She had been here before so many times both awake and in dreams. She stood in the living area, just before the sofa set. The same spot. The exact place. Where she had once sat across from him. That night. The memory returned with the weight of a stone dropped in still water.


Her father had been sitting casually alone in the darkness, talking in that quiet, firm way of his never needing to raise his voice to command attention. She had always found it both comforting and disarming, like being wrapped in a question you didn’t know how to answer.


She have been asking him questions and he answered them diligently… “There’s something in the cupboard. A package wrapped in batik cloth. Bring it here.” She had obeyed, not quite sure what she was looking for.


But when she opened the cupboard, there it wa sitting patiently on the top shelf like it had been waiting for her all along. Wrapped in old batik cloth. Soft with age, its colours faded but still breathing stories.


The patterns swirls of leaves and creeping vines felt familiar, like something she had seen in the corner of her childhood eye but never truly noticed. Inside, another layer. A red cloth. Not bright, but deep like dried hibiscus or old blood.


The kind of red that held memory. The kind that was never chosen by accident. Her father untied it with the same care he reserved for important things. Not reverence. Not ceremony. Just intention.


The kind of quiet precision that said: This matters. Like he had done this before. Many times. And perhaps never for anyone else. She remembered the way his face softened as he pulled back the final fold of red cloth. Not in awe, but in recognition. He smiled. Not at her. Not for show.


But at the keris. A small, private smile like someone greeting an old friend after many years apart. There was pleasure in it. And something else too. Something deeper.


Like sorrow that had made peace with itself. "There you are," his expression seemed to say. "Still with me." The keris.


Dark and quiet, with a blade that shimmered slightly even without light. Its hilt curved, carved, smoothed by time and use. It didn’t hum. It didn’t glow not yet.


But it commanded attention in that quiet way her father did. He reached out and held it. She hadn’t understood it then not really. Only that something passed between him and the blade. Not power. Not danger. But belonging.


That’s when it happened. Just for a moment his skin shimmered. Not brightly, not blinding. Just enough to make her eyes widen and her breath catch. It was like watching a veil lift. A brief golden shimmer, like the moon catching the surface of water. Then gone.


And he continued speaking. Calm. Unaffected. As if her world hadn’t just shifted.








She had kept that moment buried for so long. Tucked behind reason, sealed by silence. But now, standing again in the house, in that same spot in the living room with only the moonlight for company, she whispered to herself: “I saw it. I know what I saw.”


Everything in the house remained just as it was. Johan had done little to change anything. The same faded curtains, the same book-scented air. Even the clock on the wall ticked like it had been doing so out of duty, not purpose.


It felt like time had stopped here. Or perhaps it had simply chosen to rest. She looked around and her eyes landed on that spot the place she had stood with her father during that night.


The night of the break-in. It had become her quiet ritual: to return to JB whenever her husband left for one of his weekend business trips. This time, her daughter was with her, sleeping peacefully beside her in the master bedroom upstairs. Her father and stepmother had been sleeping downstairs, in the room near the kitchen.


It was late somewhere between the stillness of midnight and the breath of dawn when she heard a sound. Not loud. But not right. She rose without thinking, the weight of her footsteps softened by instinct. Descending the stairs, she saw her father too his bedroom door slowly creaking open. Their eyes met. He raised a finger to his lips. Silence. They both listened.


The sound came again a soft rustle. Metal tapping. Something shifting in the kitchen. He gestured gently. Told her to come closer. Guided her with the ease of someone who had done this before. “Stand there,” he whispered into her ear, guiding her to the bare wall between the kitchen and his room.


“Do not move. At all.” She obeyed. They stood together, side by side. Still. Breath quiet. Invisible. And then out from the kitchen door he emerged. A man dressed in black. Slim. Cautious. His steps deliberate, eyes sharp. He moved with the rhythm of someone who had done this before.


But he didn’t see them. Not even a flicker of recognition. He walked right past. Right in front of them. Never stopped. Never turned. Not even a second glance. Her father's finger stayed pressed to his lips. The intruder moved through the house like it belonged to him touching the TV, the radio, even the bookshelf.


Then he reached the dining table. She tensed. She had left some cash there earlier after buying groceries. The man picked it up. Held it. Examined it. Then, to her surprise put it back. She watched, confused. Why not take the money? What was he looking for?


He lingered a moment more, then turned and retraced his steps. Back through the kitchen. Slipping out of the broken window he must’ve entered through. Gone. Stillness returned. Her father looked at her. Not with shock. Not with fear. But something else like a teacher waiting to see if the student had noticed the lesson.


She couldn’t speak. Not then. But she knew something had happened. Something that didn’t make sense. And deep down, she knew: They hadn’t hidden.


They hadn’t escaped. They simply hadn’t been seen. He turned to her, his eyes calm. Not shaken. Not angry. With a small nod, he gestured upstairs.


“Go back to bed,” he whispered. “We’ll talk tomorrow morning.


Don’t worry. He won’t come back.”






She hesitated. Wanted to ask a thousand questions. But his voice left no room for them not in that moment. It was the kind of voice that wrapped itself around your nerves and made you feel, inexplicably, that everything was under control.


So she went. Back up the stairs, back into the warm tangle of blankets where her daughter slept peacefully, undisturbed by the night’s strange unfolding. But she couldn't sleep. Her body lay still, but her mind kept returning to that moment. To standing side by side with her father against that blank wall.

To the weight of his breath beside hers. To the silence. The stillness. The knowing in his eyes. She replayed the robber’s footsteps in her head—how he walked past them like they were part of the furniture. Or not even that.


As if they weren’t there at all. Had they really become invisible? Or had they become something else? Her mind kept circling that one thought, like a moth to a light it couldn’t touch: Had we become the wall too?


The next morning over breakfast, her stepmother took her daughter out to the garden to play, giving her a rare moment alone with her father. She watched him stir his kopi slowly, the steam rising in soft spirals. He looked unbothered, like nothing strange had occurred the night before.


But she couldn’t hold it in any longer. “What happened last night?” she asked, leaning forward. “How come the intruder didn’t see us? I mean we were right there. It was obvious. We weren’t even hiding.”


He sipped his coffee first. Then looked at her, eyes twinkling. “Oh, he didn’t see us,” he said casually. “He thought we were just another piece of furniture.”


She blinked. “Another what?”


“Furniture. You know, old, useless… something like a five-tier bookshelf to store dusty books.”


She gave him a strange look. “Five-tier cupboard?” she repeated.


“To store books?” He nodded seriously, as if that answered everything.


“Then what about the money on the table?” she pressed on. “Why didn’t he take it? He picked it up. He saw it.”


“Oh that?” he replied. “What he saw were some dried leaves from the garden.” She stared at him. Mouth slightly open.


Her mind stumbling into confusion. He took another calm sip of coffee. “You see,” he said, almost as an afterthought, “To him, nothing in this house looked valuable. Not the TV, not the radio… not even the bookshelf. All looked broken, old, worn out.”


She sat back in her chair, her thoughts tangling. Something inside her wanted to keep asking. To make sense of it all. To drag answers out of him. But she stopped. She could feel it that quiet edge. The more she asked, the deeper she’d fall. Not into clarity, but into a kind of labyrinth, the kind you don’t walk out of with straight lines.


So she exhaled and said only: “Ooooh…” she said finally, not knowing what else to say. He smiled. Softly. Patiently. Like a man who had lived with questions longer than most people lived with answers.


And then he said: “One day, you’ll understand. All this it will come to you naturally.” The sudden sound of cats fighting outside broke her train of thought. The house returned to silence. And then she remembered what she came for.


She made her way to the old study table the one she used to sit at years ago, the one facing the window with the stubborn wooden drawer that always needed a little nudge.


She opened it. Reached in. And there it was. Her father’s journal. Worn, soft at the edges, the cover slightly curled from age and use. She held it close, like something living.


The most precious thing, she thought—aside from the keris. Johan didn’t need to know. He probably wouldn’t even notice it was missing. She doubted he had ever opened it. But she had. And she remembered.


Her father had used the journal to write down new words. Phrases. Sentences he crafted like puzzles, built from fresh vocabulary. But that wasn’t why she wanted it. It wasn’t the words. It was the handwriting.




His handwriting was unlike anyone else's—elegant, fluid, almost like cursive calligraphy. Neat, steady, deliberate. Each letter stood with intention. Like he had never once rushed through a thought. Like everything he ever wrote down mattered. She used to sit beside him and just watch him write.


There was something calming about it. The rhythm. The precision. As though the pen was not merely ink on paper, but a mirror into the man himself. They say a person’s handwriting reveals who they are. She wanted to see him again. Not in photographs. Not in memory. But in motion. In the curves of his letters. In the quiet discipline of every line. She wanted to meet the man who lived between those pages.


But that wasn’t the only reason she came back. There was another journal. The one her father had mentioned only once, in passing.


The journal that held the art. Not art in the way people meant painting or poetry. But the other kind. The kind that didn’t have a name you could explain to strangers. The kind he spoke of only in low tones and sidelong glances.


The kind passed down not by blood, but by readiness. He had hidden it, she remembered him saying. “It’s in my room… but not for everyone to see.”


“Only the one who’s meant to find it will.” She hadn't understood what he meant then. But now, standing in his space with the weight of the keris in her memory and his journal in her hand she wondered.


Maybe the keris was more than a symbol. Maybe it was a key.


And maybe just maybe the book would reveal itself only to the one who held the key.....

She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for. All she knew was that it was a book. A journal filled with her father’s handwritten words not the usual vocabulary lists, not definitions or crafted sentences, but descriptions of his art. She remembered it clearly now just once, long ago.


She had been standing beside him in the study, quietly, unnoticed. He was so focused, his pen gliding across the page in that steady, graceful way of his. Lines. Symbols. Words that didn’t look like dictionary entries. She leaned in to see.


And the moment he sensed her presence, he closed the journal in one swift motion tucking it away beneath a stack of other books, like it had never existed. She didn’t ask. And he never said a word. Their conversation had shifted to something else entirely, as if it had always been meant to.


She spent the next two, maybe three hours combing the house. His room. The study table. The library. Drawer by drawer. File by file. But found nothing. Just old bills, yellowing paper, and scraps of thought too mundane to matter. And then her phone buzzed. Her daughter’s voice on the other end, soft but expectant. “Are you coming back soon?” She looked around one last time.


The house sat still, indifferent. Silent as ever. So she packed up, locked the doors behind her, and drove away. She would come back another day. When she was mentally ready. When she knew what she was really looking for. Because right now? It was like looking for a black cat in a blackout room with no light, and no idea if the cat was even there. She remembered a quote she once heard about philosophy.


“Philosophy is like being in a dark room, looking for a black cat that may or may not be there.”


How do you look for a black cat in a dark room?

You don’t search with your hands.

You don’t wait for the light.

You wait for the eyes to reveal themselves.

And maybe that’s what this was. Not a search. But a waiting.

A quiet attunement to what already knows you’re there.





nmadasamy@nmadasamy.com