Monochrome line drawing of a skull with a crescent moon, two halved moon faces with eyes, sunburst rays and the words BRING ME NIGHT on a cream background.

Skull, crescent moon and split moon faces

Black and grey · Flash

A monochrome illustration shows a central skull with a crescent moon on its crown, flanked by two moon faces split open to reveal eyes. Sunburst rays radiate outwards, and the words BRING ME NIGHT sit above and below the skull. The linework is dark navy with hatched and stippled shading on a pale cream background, and the composition is symmetrical.

Skull Crescent moon Moon Eye Sunburst Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Marren had been told the moon on Skerrow came up sideways, and that if you watched long enough from the cliff its far side opened like a door. She watched every night for a month before the tide-clerk's daughter laughed at her and said it was only cloud lifting off the bay.

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Old Ada Thrale kept the lamp at the north stack and kept a skull on her mantel, a real one from the church crypt with a sliver of moon painted on its crown. Each evening she said the same words to the window: bring me night. Marren took it for a prayer until the winter the lamp failed and Ada sent her up the spiral stair with a tin of paraffin and a note in pencil.

At the top the glass was furred with salt and the sky was a pale green bruise. Marren rubbed a clear patch and saw the moon split in two, each half a face with one eye open, both blinking slowly at the sea as though counting the boats. She understood then that night was not something that arrived. It was something the island let out a little at a time, like breath through teeth.

She filled the lamp and struck the wick, and when the beam swept out it carried the dark with it across the water, rays fanning over the rocks until the bay was black and the boats came home by starlight. Ada was waiting at the bottom of the stair with the skull in her lap. "You saw them," she said. Marren nodded. "Good. Now you have to keep them open."