Ghost Crab

Eliane Boey

The only thing you are certain of about me, is that I do not exist. I watch as you pass us, the ghost crabs of Changi Beach, eyes wide but unseeing. Our beach is older than the nation. It was here that, 80 years ago, the invaders emptied truckloads of men, blindfolded and bound, to be shot. The tender white sand cannot forget the damp warmth of blood and bones, and some nights, it reminds us, in the thin howl of the wind. That is why, although you love the beach, you know not overstay into the night. Night on Changi beach belongs only to the ghost crabs.

If the sand is damp, but the sulking clouds lean on our sagging sky and sigh a cool breeze on your cheeks, you will wrap your arms around yourself, in delight at the coming of crisp monsoon days. But more often, the sun is set deep in the sky, and bullies the clouds away, so you roof your eyes. I know all the ways you cope with being on our beach. You have no shell, and you don’t belong here.  

I am translucent, and that is one reason why you see through me. You arrive in the late mornings, in your hatch-backs and motorcycles, with your camp chairs and your boxes of food, to occupy our beach. Like the sand, which welcomes the froth and crashing of the waves to drown its memories of murder, the ghost crabs have learned to shunt ourselves in the gaps in the sand, and behind rocks, where you do not care to picnic. I stay on the move, because moving, you see me even less. When I tire of moving, I fold myself away in my shell, and then, you don’t see me at all.    

Ghost crabs are small, box-shaped, scuttling creatures, with quick, thin pincers that come to rest in a natural downward slant, because combing for weak prey, or sifting the sand for fair cast-offs is our lot. Our shells are tinted bluish grey like polished bone in the sun. We make dwellings in the sand, but you complain that it makes a mess of your beach. You forget that the only thing that doesn’t belong here is you. Ghost crabs are not unique to Singapore. What is unique is that in Singapore, no one knows they are there.

A while ago, there was a news story about a crab. A woman claimed to have been attacked by a ghost crab, while walking on the beach at night. You watched the video, and you sympathised with her fear. It came from nowhere, she said. It wasn’t supposed to be there. She did not see it until it reached for her. Thin and sharp, grasping pincers, and its hard shell reeking of the sea and matted with dirt and flotsam. She did not stay to hear its sounds, but ran away. Ghost crabs live off dead flesh, but we were once hunters. Twitching muscle, and the slow death of prey are no deterrence from the enjoyment of their meal. Stay away from the beach at night.

The night is our time. By late afternoon, your plastic food containers and bottles of soda are empty. You’d stay all night, and every day on our beach if you could, you say, but home calls. And the beach pushes you away. With reluctance and not a little relief, you leave. What are your houses like? Or your cosy flats? Have you ever scavenged, as we do?

When the dreamers who chase the golden hour have long gone, and soon too, the stragglers who light up, and open bottles on the sand that will cut our feet the next morning, it is almost possible to forget that the sun ever touched our beach. Watch now, as sand moves, and shadows separate, and seep from behind the rocks. Tired bodies that spent the day huddled frozen in the defense of stillness, or which did not cease to move so as to deny you a glimpse of a pinched blue face, step out into the sheath of the dark beach.

Under the bent trunks of the coconut palms, we stretch. Thin, spindly legs with sharp tips extending, until joints merge and single elbows form on each side of our bodies. Eyestalks shrink into our heads, on faces, young and old, that slowly protrude. Our faces are pickled by the sun and salted air. A few of us, elders mostly, have horns on our heads, which now recede into tangled hair. Shells molt. Some shed their hard exteriors for a softer draping of comfort. A shirt perhaps, which becomes them and reminds them of better times, but draws your attention in the day. Some shed their shells because they can, because in the darkness, the beach is ours. Watch, as we stand. On two feet, with arms that naturally fall downwards, but which now end in hands. When our transformation is complete, we find friends, brothers, and aunts again. Natural families are rare. The beach is where most of us find each other.

If you linger on the beach in the sliver of time when night becomes morning, and the ships anchored at the port’s limits are quiet, you may not see us. The ghost crabs that once lived in the open have learned to fear you. We fear your voices, where we are silent in the day. We fear your power to remove the things you prefer not to see. But tonight, the beach is abandoned to the whispering fronds of coconut palms, and the flare from the power station across the channel, which lights our quiet suppers together. The beach belongs to all of us, but not to those who do not exist.

Eliane Boey lives in Singapore, and her dark short story, “The Quiet Tailor” has just been published in the spring issue of the Mekong Review. She has an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies from NYU, and an MLitt In Philosophy from the University of St Andrews. She is working on her debut novel.