Pencil sketch of a tattoo design with three skulls, roses and three scrolling banners reading See, Hear and Speak no evil, drawn in black and grey shading.

Skulls, roses and no evil banners design

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing three skulls arranged among several roses, with a scroll banner across each part of the composition. The banners carry the script phrases See no evil, Hear no evil and Speak no evil. The linework is sketched and the skulls and petals are shaded in graphite greys with soft highlights, on a plain light paper background.

Realism Skull Rose Banner Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wick had burned down to a bead of amber by the time you climbed the last of the iron stairs, and Mrs Tregear was already at the gallery rail with her back to you, pretending the wind was the only thing she could hear. Three brass plates hung above the lamp room door, dulled by years of polish: See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil. Her husband had screwed them up the winter the Ellen Gray went onto the Mare Rock, and nobody on Scarrow Head had ever asked him why.

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"Fog's coming in off the west," she said without turning. "Trim the lamp and keep your eyes on the glass."

You trimmed the lamp. You kept your eyes on the glass, and the glass gave you only the sea, a grey sheet going darker, then a shape with one swinging lantern in it. A voice came up over the swell, thin as a gull's, calling a name you had not heard spoken aloud since your father's funeral. It was your brother's. He had told you he would stay ashore this season.

Mrs Tregear's hand closed on your sleeve. Her grip was colder than the rail. "Plates are plates," she said quietly. "Nobody out there can read them."

You looked at the plates, then at the boat, then at the woman who had kept this light for thirty years without once answering a question she did not want to answer. You opened the shutter, took the signal lamp from its hook, and sent the bearing out over the rocks in long flashes, then shouted it through the wind until your throat tore: north by the Mare, keep the bell on your left, come in on the light.