This short story is the winning entry in Penang Monthly's Short Story Prize held in conjunction with George Town Literary Festival 2025. It is produced in its entirety.
THEY SAY THE hill no longer echoes. Not since the last eclipse.
But Aira still hears it—soft, low, like a drum being struck underwater. It comes in the early hours, when the world forgets to breathe. When the air grows thick with mist, and the trees on Penang Hill lean in just a little too close. The sound doesn’t make sense—not on any instrument, not by any science—but she knows it in her bones. It isn’t music. It’s memory.
And it always begins with the same rhythm.
Thud.
…Six seconds.
Thud.
No one else seems to hear it. Not the tourists queuing for the cable car, not the morning hikers. They go about their day in blissful ignorance, snapping photos and sipping coffee on the viewing deck, unaware of what this hill once kept hidden, of what it still does.
The hill has been reclaimed—by maps, by travel bloggers, by weekend joggers. Where once the jungle encroached without apology, now there are stairs carved into the stone. Railings. Snack stalls. Even a gift shop. Progress, they call it.
But Aira knows better.
She remembers what the hill took.
