Black ink drawing of three human skulls stacked on top of each other in front of an open-sided coffin outline, shown in cream on a black background.

Stacked skulls on a coffin drawing

Black and grey · Flash

Three human skulls are piled one above another, overlapping and facing different directions, set against a tall hexagonal coffin shape with vertical wood-grain lines. The skulls are rendered in dense hatching and fine stippled linework, with pitted bone textures and detailed teeth. The image uses cream ink on a solid black background, with no shading in colour.

Skull Coffin Bone Teeth Skeleton

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The drifts had closed the moor road on Tuesday, and by Thursday the only guest left at the Hollin Inn was Amos Tebb, a carrier with frost in his beard and an ash coffin lashed to his cart. He would not say whose it was. He said only that the hinges were brass and the wood must stay dry until the thaw, and he paid for his bed in silver before he had got his boots off.

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On the second night he tipped three skulls onto my mother's kitchen table. One came from the churchyard at Ravenseat, one from Gorsedale, and the third from somewhere he would not name. He stacked them one above another the way children stack tin cups, and they were yellowed and pitted, with the teeth still set in them. My mother crossed herself and went up to bed. I stayed by the range and watched the top skull slide a little, then settle, its empty eyes turning towards the stairs as if it had heard someone on them.

The snow stopped near midnight and the kitchen went so quiet I could hear the clock behind the bar. In the morning the cart was still in the yard with its sheet stiff with rime, but a single line of prints ran across the white towards the gate. They were far apart, each one a long stride past the last, and none of them had been made by boots.

The sack lay open by the door, empty. The skulls were gone from the table, and only the bottom one had rolled into the cold ashes, facing the high road.