Black and grey tattoo of a small silhouetted figure with soft grey shading above its head, beside a tiny Roman numeral III, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small silhouette figure with Roman numeral on thigh

Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A small solid black silhouette of a standing figure sits on the outer thigh, with soft grey shading above its head that suggests smoke or hair. A tiny Roman numeral III sits to the right of the figure. The photo is a close, straight-on view against plain pale skin, with the background softly out of focus.

Thigh Silhouette Figure Smoke Roman numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stationmaster at Carrow Halt kept three bells on the wall, and only two of them ever rang true. Old Dunn said the third had been cast from the same metal as the level crossing gate, which was why it sang in a voice that belonged to the dead. Nobody at the halt believed him until the night the signal lamp went out and the 9.40 came through without stopping.

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A woman stood on the far platform that night, black against the lamps, her hair lifting from her head in a grey plume the way steam rises off a kettle. She did not wave and she did not board. She turned her head toward the line as though she were counting carriages, and when the engine came round the bend she was gone, and the third bell swung on its own and gave one long note.

Dunn's granddaughter, Maud, was sixteen and too clever to be frightened. She climbed the platform ladder with a tin of lamp oil and a bread knife for company and sat down under the bell to wait. At midnight the figure came back, closer this time, and Maud asked her plainly what she wanted. The woman lifted one long arm and pointed down the track, to where a lantern had been left burning beside a dead man's boots forty years before.

Maud walked the cutting with the oil and the lamp until the grey smoke thinned from the air and the third bell fell quiet. At first light she found a brass ticket stamped with a III lying in the gravel. She kept it in her pocket for the rest of her working life, and the 9.40 never missed Carrow Halt again.