Colour neo-traditional tattoo of a haunted house, bats, a bare twisted tree and a yellow moon across a person's shoulder and upper arm.

Haunted house and bats on shoulder

Neo-trad · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A large tattoo covers the shoulder cap and upper arm, showing a gabled haunted house with lit yellow windows on the left and a gnarled, leafless tree on the right. Bats fly through purple and grey clouds beneath a glowing yellow moon, with spiral swirls and tall grass at the lower edges. Bold outlines and soft shading are used in purple, yellow, green and brown ink, and the scene is framed by the curve of the shoulder.

Neo-trad Shoulder Upper arm Bat Moon Cloud Bare tree Spiral Grass

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bats came out before the moon did, which Dell said was the house's doing and not the sky's. We had been driving the dust road since noon, the Chevy's radiator hissing like a kettle, and when the gabled roof rose out of the scrub at dusk I stopped the truck without being asked.

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Nobody had lived in the place since the Halvorsen boy walked out to the mesa and didn't come back. Dell knew the story, or said he did. Four yellow windows burned on the upper floor, the way they always do on that road, and a dead cottonwood leaned over the porch with its arms out, as if it wanted either a hug or a fight. 'Lamps,' Dell said. 'Somebody's left the lamps on.' Neither of us looked at the power pole, which had been lying in the grass for a decade.

We walked up the path through weeds taller than my belt. The front door hung open. Inside, a clock ticked on a bare wall, and on the kitchen table sat two tin cups beside a loaf of bread gone grey with age. Both cups were still warm. Dell picked one up, then put it down quick. Outside, the moon climbed fat and yellow over the mesa, and the bats wheeled through the purple clouds as though they were stitching the sky shut.

We drove off without looking back. It wasn't until the next town that I noticed my hat was missing, and I knew exactly which porch rail I'd left it on. Dell says I should go back for it. I tell him those windows will still be lit tonight, and someone will be sitting at that table, waiting for the cup I never drank from, and that is reason enough to keep driving.