1834: The Mourning Curse

There once was a toymaker named Imre Gabor who lived in the mist-shrouded village of Maraheim, where the days were often gray and heavy, and the nights held an air of quiet foreboding. Imre was not a man with many friends, but he didn’t need them. His whole world was his son, Roland—a bright-eyed boy of nine, whose laughter could light up the darkest of Maraheim’s dreary streets. Imre had raised Roland alone since his wife died in childbirth, her last breath taken in the same moment Roland took his first. From that day on, Roland had been everything to him, the only light in an otherwise dim existence.

The village folk knew Imre well, not for his conversation but for his remarkable talent as a toymaker. His hands could craft wonders from wood—dolls that moved with lifelike grace, toys that seemed to carry a spark of something real, something beyond mere craftsmanship. Roland was often by his side in the workshop, a little shadow darting between the half-finished toys, his laughter filling the air as his father worked. Sometimes, Roland would bring his friends, and they would play with the toys while Imre carved quietly in the corner, a smile tugging at his lips.

But that was before. Before the accident.

It happened on a late February afternoon, cold and still. Imre had left the workshop to tend to an errand—a simple repair job for one of the villagers. It was routine, a task he could complete in his sleep. Roland had stayed behind, as he often did, playing among the tools and toys in the familiar space. But there are places in a toymaker’s workshop no child should ever wander, sharp edges and heavy tools that care not for the innocence of a boy.

When Imre returned, the world as he knew it ended.

Roland lay on the cold floor of the workshop, his small body broken and lifeless, a pool of blood spreading around him like a grotesque shadow. Imre's heart stopped in his chest, his breath caught between a scream and silence. He knelt beside his son, hands trembling, but the warmth was already gone. His boy, his beautiful Roland, was dead.

Grief took Imre like a storm, swallowing him whole. The days that followed blurred into one endless ache. The village mourned with him, but it was a distant, hollow thing. No one could reach him, no one could bring him out of the darkness that settled over his soul. The light in the workshop—the light that had once been Roland—was extinguished.

Weeks passed, then months, and the sorrow that had first left Imre paralyzed began to fester, to twist into something else. Desperation. Obsession.

It was in the dead of night, long after the villagers had given up on their visits, that Imre began his greatest work. His hands, which had once created toys to bring joy, now carved with fevered purpose. He crafted a doll—a perfect replica of his son. Every detail, from the curve of Roland’s cheek to the dimple in his chin, was painstakingly recreated in wood. This was not just a doll. This was Roland. His Roland.

When the doll was finished, Imre sat back, staring at what he had made. It looked so real. For the briefest of moments, he felt hope stir in his heart, a flicker of something beyond the endless grief. But as his eyes lingered on the doll, that hope crumbled. It was lifeless, cold—just like Roland had been when he found him on the workshop floor. No matter how perfect the likeness, no matter how masterful the craftsmanship, it was not him.

The emptiness gnawed at Imre, clawing at the edges of his sanity. He could not stop staring at the doll, willing it to move, to blink, to smile. But it remained still, its wooden eyes hollow and dark. Desperation twisted in his gut. There had to be a way—some way—to bring his boy back. There had to be more than this.

That’s when the whispers began.

In the quiet of the night, as Imre sat in the flickering light of a single candle, he began to hear them. Low, soft voices, hinting at things long forgotten, ancient secrets buried in time. Rituals. Magic. Forbidden practices that promised the impossible—a bridge between the living and the dead. The price, they whispered, would be steep. But Imre didn’t care. What was there left to lose?

The doll, sitting in the corner of the workshop, watched him. Its eyes seemed to glint in the low light, following his every move. Imre didn’t notice. Or perhaps, in the depths of his grief, he didn’t care.

Days passed, and the whispers grew louder, more insistent. Imre searched for the old texts, for the words that would guide him, that would give him the power to bring his son back. And finally, one cold evening, he was ready. The ritual was set. The blood must flow, the whispers said. A price must be paid.

Imre was willing to pay it.

When it was done, when the last words were spoken, the last drop of blood spilled, Imre collapsed to his knees. Silence filled the workshop—thick, oppressive silence. For a moment, nothing happened. The doll sat there, as it always had, motionless and cold.

And then, it moved.

A twitch of the hand, a tilt of the head, the faintest sound of breath. Imre’s heart leaped in his chest. “Roland?” he whispered, his voice trembling.

The doll turned its head, slowly, wooden eyes locking with Imre’s. It smiled.

But the smile... something was strange. The eyes that stared back at Imre were not quite as he remembered—dull and hollow, missing that spark of life Roland once had. Yet, Imre shrugged it off. Of course, he told himself, Roland was different now. After all, his boy had returned, but in a wooden form, a vessel of carved pine instead of flesh. The wooden lips curled into a grin that was just a little too wide, but Imre smiled back. How could he not? His son was standing before him again.

The doll rose to its feet slowly, stiffly, its joints creaking like a door long shut. Imre’s heart, broken and mended in strange ways, swelled. His hands shook, not with fear, but with the overwhelming relief of having his boy back. Roland—his Roland—was home. Imre’s mind, already fragile, pushed aside the oddness of the moment, the unnatural way the doll moved. What else could he expect from a child made of wood? He reasoned it was only natural that there would be differences. His son’s body had changed, but it was still Roland.

And so, Imre embraced him. The cold, wooden arms wrapped stiffly around his waist, the head tilted just so, but it didn’t matter to Imre. His son was in his arms again.

Over the following weeks, Imre barely left the workshop. The villagers whispered about the strange happenings, but Imre ignored them. Why would he listen to those who could never understand? They didn’t know what he had been through, what lengths he had gone to. They didn’t know the joy of having a lost loved one returned, even in a new form. They whispered about the doll, about its eerie presence, about how the windows of the workshop flickered with strange lights late into the night. But Imre grew more distant, more withdrawn, retreating further into the space he now shared with Roland.

There were moments, of course, when things seemed off. The way the doll’s eyes followed him, never blinking, the way its head sometimes seemed to turn even when Imre wasn’t looking. And yes, Imre had begun to feel weaker, more tired as the days wore on. His hands shook more often, and his breath came shorter with each passing week. But that, too, he dismissed. He told himself it was simply exhaustion. How could he not be tired? He had defied death itself, pulled his son back from the brink. It was only natural that such an effort would take a toll.

The doll was quiet, eerily so, but it stayed by his side, always watching. It had begun to move more freely, walking stiffly through the workshop, its eyes never leaving Imre. Sometimes, Imre thought he heard it whispering in the dark, soft sounds like a child's voice, but too low to make out. When he asked the doll to speak louder, it would only smile that too-wide smile.

Imre didn’t care. He had Roland again. And that was enough.

The villagers stopped coming by. At first, they had tried to help, to bring him food, to check on him. But as Imre’s isolation deepened, so did his paranoia. He refused to answer their knocks, convinced they couldn’t possibly understand his joy. They would see Roland and they would question, they would doubt. Imre couldn’t bear their disbelief, their judgment. They had no right to interfere. They couldn’t comprehend the bond he shared with his boy now.

The days blurred into nights, and Imre’s strength drained away. His once-steady hands trembled as he worked, the tools growing heavier each day. His skin grew pale, almost ashen, his hair thinning. But he was never alone. The doll—his son—was always there, always watching, always smiling. Sometimes Imre thought he could feel its cold, wooden fingers on his shoulder as he slept, a gentle touch, comforting.

As the months wore on, Imre’s health deteriorated rapidly. His mind, already fragile from grief, began to unravel further. He rarely ate, rarely left the workshop, consumed entirely by his obsession with Roland. He was fading, body and soul, but he couldn’t see it. All he saw was his boy, alive in a way, still beside him after everything they had endured.

One night, as the chill of winter crept in, Imre lay in his bed, too weak to rise, his breath shallow and ragged. The doll sat beside him, its head tilted just so, watching him as it always did. Imre smiled weakly, reaching out with trembling fingers to touch its wooden hand. His eyes, dull and glassy, filled with tears of gratitude.

“I’m so glad you came back,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “I knew you wouldn’t leave me. I knew...”

The doll didn’t respond, but it didn’t need to. Imre felt its presence, cold but constant, and that was enough. In his fading moments, there was no fear, no regret—only the overwhelming peace of knowing that his son was with him. The light slowly drained from his eyes as he exhaled his last breath, his hand still clutching the wooden fingers of what he believed was Roland.

Imre died with a smile on his lips, his heart full of the love he had held onto for so long. The villagers found him days later, his body cold, curled beside the doll. The workshop was dark, the air thick with something heavy and oppressive, but the doll remained intact, untouched by time.

They buried Imre, but as they walked away, many swore they saw it—the doll, sitting by the window, its eyes gleaming in the dim light, a smile still stretched across its wooden face.

And though they whispered of evil and darkness, Imre had died happy, never knowing the truth of what he had brought into his home. Never realizing that what watched him from those hollow eyes was not his son.

It was never Roland. It was never anything close.

The villagers would find his house burned to the ground days later. But even then, in the ashes, they swore they saw it—a doll, watching from the ruins, its eyes glinting in the smoke, a twisted smile playing on its wooden lips.