"The Dollmaker’s Curse"

It was a quiet little town, nestled in a valley and seemingly untouched by

Isabelle had always loved antiques. She’d spent most of her life hunting for
rare treasures in small, forgotten shops—until one day, she stumbled upon a
shop unlike any other. Its windows were dusty, the sign hanging above the
door cracked and faded, but there was something about it that called to her.

The Dollmaker's Curiosities.

The name alone sent a shiver down her spine, but Isabelle couldn’t resist.
She stepped inside, the bell above the door jingling eerily as she entered.
The air was thick with the scent of old wood, varnish, and something she
couldn’t quite place. The shop was dimly lit, and shelves upon shelves of
strange, unsettling dolls filled the room. Some were porcelain, others were
made of cloth or wood, and all had eerily lifelike eyes that seemed to follow
her every move.

Behind the counter stood an elderly man, hunched and frail, with a long,
white beard that reached his chest. His eyes were too bright, too alert, for his
age. He greeted Isabelle with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Looking for something special?” he asked, his voice a raspy whisper.

Isabelle nodded, unable to tear her eyes away from the dolls. There was
something magnetic about them, something that made her feel both uneasy
and mesmerized at once. She didn’t understand it, but she couldn’t help
herself. She had to have one.

Her gaze landed on a small, porcelain doll at the far end of the shop. It was
unlike any other—its delicate face was cracked, the paint on its cheeks
chipped, but its glassy eyes… they seemed to shine with an unnatural
gleam. She took a step closer, and her heart skipped a beat as the doll
seemed to smile at her.

“I’ll take that one,” she said, her voice trembling slightly.

The dollmaker’s smile widened. “Ah, yes. That one is special. I would be
careful with it if I were you.”

Isabelle frowned, sensing the weight in his words. “What do you mean?”
The dollmaker’s smile faltered, and his eyes darted nervously to the doll. He
hesitated, then spoke in a low whisper. “It’s cursed, you see. A long time ago,
a woman came to me, desperate to bring her daughter back from the dead.
She begged me to create a doll that could hold the soul of her child, so she
could keep her close. I did as she asked. But when the doll was finished…
something went wrong. The child’s spirit never found rest.”

Isabelle’s skin prickled as she listened, but her desire for the doll
overpowered her fear. “How much?” she asked, not fully understanding the
danger.

The dollmaker’s eyes darkened. “It’s not about the money. It’s about the
price you’ll pay. Once you take it, it never leaves.”

Ignoring the warning, Isabelle paid him and left with the doll in hand. The
moment she stepped out into the evening air, a chill ran down her spine, but
she brushed it off. She was just being foolish, she thought. It was only a doll.

That night, Isabelle placed the doll on a shelf in her apartment, its glassy
eyes staring back at her as she lay in bed. But sleep didn’t come easily.
There was something unsettling about the way it seemed to watch her, its
presence heavy in the room.

Around midnight, she heard a soft tapping sound.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

At first, she thought it was the wind, but the sound was too deliberate, too
rhythmic. Slowly, she turned her head toward the shelf where the doll sat,
but it was no longer there. Her heart skipped a beat as she sat up, her eyes
frantically scanning the room. The tapping continued, growing louder, now
coming from the hallway.

With trembling hands, Isabelle stood and stepped cautiously into the dark
hallway. The air was thick with an unnatural chill, and the tap-tap-tapping
grew louder, closer. She followed the sound until she reached the door to her
bedroom.

The door was ajar.

Through the crack, she saw the doll standing at the foot of her bed, its head
slowly turning as if it were watching her.
Panic surged through her. She slammed the door shut, her breath coming in
ragged gasps. The tapping stopped, but she knew—knew—that the doll was
no longer just an object. It was alive. And it was coming for her.

For days, Isabelle tried to rid herself of the doll. She locked it in a box, hid it
in the closet, but no matter what she did, it always found its way back to her.
Every night, she would hear the tapping, and every morning, the doll would
be waiting for her, its eyes glowing in the dark.

Desperate, Isabelle returned to the shop, hoping to find answers. The bell
above the door jingled as she entered, but this time, there was no greeting
from the dollmaker. She looked around, but the shop was empty, the air still
and oppressive.

Then, she heard a voice from behind her, soft and whispering. “You should
have listened to me.”

She spun around, but the dollmaker was gone. The room around her seemed
to twist, the shelves shifting as if the dolls were moving on their own. And
then, from the shadows, she saw him—the dollmaker, standing in the corner,
his eyes glowing with the same eerie light as the dolls.

“You should never have taken her,” he whispered, his voice a low growl. “The
curse was never meant to be broken.”

The doll in Isabelle’s hands grew warm, almost too warm to touch, and she
screamed, dropping it to the floor. But it didn’t fall. It floated, hovering in the
air before her, its cracked face contorting into a smile.

And as she reached out to touch it, the last thing Isabelle saw was the
dollmaker’s cold, empty eyes—before everything went dark.

The town still remembers Isabelle. They speak of her in hushed tones, just as
they do about the strange, silent shop at the edge of town. The shop that, to
this day, is always open. The dolls in the window never blink, but they watch,
and if you listen closely enough, you might just hear the faint sound of
tapping… from inside the shadows.

And if you’re not careful, you might find a doll waiting for you too.