Colour tattoo on a forearm of a grandfather clock showing 13, with ghostly faces against a purple wash, in a painterly neo-traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Haunted mansion clock on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A grandfather clock with a blue, ornate hood and a pale clock face showing the number 13 sits at the centre of the design. Dark ghostly faces float across a purple wash behind it, and the clock's pedestal is shaded in greys and blues. Soft gradients and bold outlines give the piece a painted look, and the design fills the length of the forearm.

Neo-trad Forearm Clock Ghost

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Harrowgate had the longcase clock carried down to the hall on the first wet Tuesday of October, and it was Tobias Quill who was sent for to find out why its face said thirteen. He found the blue hood cold to the touch, the brass pendulum still, and a dozen small faces pressed into the damp wallpaper behind it, watching him the way neighbours watch a stranger on the step.

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He had mended clocks for thirty years and knew the difference between a worn escapement and something that wanted to be listened to. He oiled the pallet, set the hands and went down to the cellar for his tea. When he came back up, the hour hand had crept round to the thirteenth numeral again, and the faces on the wallpaper had shuffled closer, their mouths open as if they were counting along.

'They only want the last tick,' said Mrs Harrowgate from the stairs, though he had not heard her come down. 'My husband never let it strike the thirteenth. He thought it rude to keep them waiting.' Tobias asked what happened if it did. She shrugged, and her shadow shrugged a moment after her. 'Then the house gets one more guest, and the rest of us get to sleep.'

He wound the key until his wrist ached, then set the pendulum swinging and counted every tick aloud so the faces could hear him keep the time. At twelve he stopped it. The numerals went quiet. In the wallpaper one small face drifted down, studied the brass for a long moment, and closed its eyes with a sound like a hinge. Tobias left the clock running at twelve, took his fee in the morning, and never again walked into a hall without checking the hour first.