Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. A Blacksmith's Gift Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

A BLACKSMITH’S GIFT

Albie Zimmer sat up in his bed with his teddy bear clutched tight to his chest. He turned his head and watched the window with his ears. His eyes were like two pearly purple grapes—corneal clouding so bad he’d been blind since birth.

“I think I hear them,” he whispered to the teddy. A teddy he’d named, perhaps a tad unimaginatively, Teddy.

His mother and new father had left him more than an hour ago. In the old days, before his real daddy’s letters stopped coming back from France, he was hardly ever left home alone. Even when his mommy had to get a job and when they moved from the farm to the boarding house, one of the neighbors would sit with him—reading or listening to the radio. But when his mommy met his new daddy and they moved out to quiet plot of land where the blacksmith had lived his entire life, Albie had started to understand the loneliness of living without sight in a way he’d never known before.

The whipping winds ate up much of the sound outside, but the gentle pop and rumble of the Dodge truck was there. Albie pushed to the edge of the bed and wiggled his toes down to the cold wooden floor. He took four slow steps. He didn’t like his new daddy—and didn’t think his mommy did either, on account of how much she whispered apologies in his ears and let tears slip in the wee hours when she thought nobody was listening—but he liked being so alone in the newish home even less.

With a bang, a clang, and a tremendous bluster of icy wind, the door opened and Mark Harvey stepped inside his home. “Get out of the way, would ya!” he shouted and Albie skirted sideways, tripping over a stool and splaying out next to the chilled woodstove. “Look at the moron. Think you’d figure where that was by now, wouldn’t ya?” The man stomped by, but hands cradled Albie’s head.

“Oh, honey,” Albie’s mother, Victoria Zimmer, said into his hair. Her hands were cold and snowmelt dampened his cheeks, but he groped for a hold around her ankles.

“Get this thing out of my way!” Mark shouted, kicking the Teddy as he made back toward the door, a box of matches in his right hand. The teddy pin-wheeled outside and a bluster of wind picked it up, carting it over a drift.

Victoria breathed in sharply and Albie whispered, “Where’s Teddy?” knowing instinctively that his friend was no longer within reach and that he had to be quiet about it.

“Shh, I’ll fetch him in a few minutes,” Victoria said. “How about a hot apple cider?”

He nodded into her grip as she lifted him to his feet. The door had closed and all that remained from the outburst was a cold room and the once again solidified notion of permanent wariness under the roof of an unhappy blacksmith.

—

In July of 1930, Planter, Colorado saw its first stoplight come to town. During the first week of December 1930, snow spackled the bright yellow steel of that singular stoplight, clinging in patches like mange on a dog. The temperature had dropped suddenly that morning and the traffic officer on duty to man the light had slipped into Ruby May’s Café for a bit of coffee and a bit of warmth—the shrapnel in his thigh ached something awful in that cold and had his mind forgetting today was not a day to shirk duties.

The ceremonial horse-drawn hearse clopped through the light, keeping its pace slow despite the weather. The officer saw it and still drew a blank. The reason he had a decent job after the war was Dr. James’ College of Experimental Pioneering brought the sickly town back from brink of ghostliness. And now, Dr. Winston James himself was in a fine box within the covered hearse; still, the traffic officer sipped his coffee and watched out the window.

“I certainly hope the school carries on,” Ruby May said, leaning in close to peek through the snowy glass.

The traffic officer squinted at her and turned back to the window just as a Ford truck came roaring into the intersection, nailing a rear wheel of the hearse and sending the horses into a fit. “Oh, Lord,” the officer said and popped from his seat.

—

Victoria cooed softly to Albie. Teddy had disappeared and Albie was doing his best to be a man about the news, but he was only seven and the bear was his only toy aside from the strange Iron puzzles Mark kept in a trunk. Albie couldn’t figure out the puzzles and they were heavy and hard and cold in his hands. Iron couldn’t be cuddled or stroked or whispered to when his mommy and new daddy left him home alone.

“Get in here!” Mark hollered from the bedroom next to Albie’s.

Victoria sighed and gave Albie’s hand a soft pat as she rose from his bed.

“But…Mommy,” he whined.

“Please, Albie. We’ll figure something, but tonight, you’ll just have to do without.”

Angry, Albie flopped onto his side and faced the rough grains of the cedar wall. Life was unfair and the one good thing he’d had any control over was gone. He swallowed his sniffles and tears until he heard grunting and thumping next-door; for the three minutes of muffled noises, Albie let himself moan to the cool night air.

“Please, Teddy. Come back,” he said, knowing the bear was inanimate, knowing Teddy was gone forever, like his real daddy.

Albie fell asleep shortly after he heard his mother in the kitchen, putting on her boots and coat to visit the privy. When the moon was at its highest, a gentle triple knock landed against the outside of his window. He awoke only a modicum and rolled away from the sound.

—

“After your father finishes the wheels for the hearse, I’ll convince him to get you a new Teddy,” Victoria said. She smelled of hot metals and straw because she spent all the hours when she wasn’t cooking, cleaning, or sleeping, helping Mark in the shed.

“Okay,” Albie said, but didn’t believe it. His new daddy was always going on about money and complaining that Victoria spent more than Barbara Hutton.

“I will, I promise.”

“Okay, Mommy… Mommy, did you tap my window last night?”

“You must have been dreaming,” Victoria said and then patted his hand and left off to return to the shop, leaving Albie alone in the quiet room, where he listened to the gentle whistle of the wind finding cracks between the seams of the home and that mysterious tapping fall against one of the few windows as if called upon.

“Who’s there,” he whispered, but got no reply.

—

More tapping, this time at the high moon, found the boy’s window and awoke Albie a little further than the night before, but not enough that he sat up. Nighttime could be scary because most of the sounds weren’t from people, and this let his imagination run wild with Sunday school demons and devils. He began shivering, even before the metallic clink-scratch of his window coming open. He began shivering  even before a frosty gust of wind hit him.

“Mommy?” Albie whined.

No voice responded, but something cold and wet pressed against his chest. Albie was suddenly all the way awake and biting his hand so as to hold in the scream aching to leap from his mouth. His window fell closed, cutting off the cool, and letting the unhooked latch come together with scratch-clink.

Terror paralyzed the boy and the minutes mounted. The cold wet thing against him at first became a cool, wet thing, and then a cool, wet, familiar thing. “Teddy?” he whispered, squeezing at the sodden bear with exploratory fingers before bringing the bear tight to his face. “Teddy,” he whispered.

—

“Where’d you find it?” Victoria said the next morning when she roused Albie for breakfast. She wore surprise upon her entire body: stiffened back and legs, raised eyebrows, tilted head. Of course, Albie saw none of it, but he heard it all in the way the words came to him.

“It was…” he trailed. The knocking and its sudden appearance were confusing. “Did you bring it? Were you knocking again?”

“No,” she said, and before he could ask, she added, “I doubt Mark would’ve either.”

“Oh.”

“What happened to his eyes?”

Albie fingers played up to the teddy bear’s face and across the bare plane above the fuzzy snout. “I don’t know.”

Mark leaned into the small room. “Am I to feed myself?” he said and pulled on Victoria’s shoulder. He then spotted Teddy. “Made him blind like you, huh?”

Albie squeezed the teddy tight enough that water dribbled out of him.

“That thing needs a bath; dirty as a beggar,” Mark said and turned away after the departing Victoria.

Albie waited a moment, listening for distance in the footfalls. “Are you blind like me?” he whispered.

After breakfast, Mark took Albie out to the shop to make use of him. Albie stood shivering in the unheated building with tools in his hands, awaiting Mark’s orders. The wheels for the hearse were for the next job, but before getting to that, he had three barnyard gates to repair.

Albie leaned toward the focused heat coming from forge across the room. Mark asked for the hammer and Albie lifted his right hand. Mark took the hammer and began banging on the bent iron post where it sat upon the anvil. Every strike made Albie wince, but after the third strike, he dulled to it and his ears picked up a familiar tapping.

For a moment, Albie wondered if it was Teddy, coming to discover why Albie had left him in the bedroom. Mark quit pounding and a single tap rang out long after he’d finished.

“What’s that now?” he said.

Albie remained still as a statue.

“That your mum?” Mark asked and started across the shop, his feet grinding the gravel and frosty dirt of the floor. There was nothing to see outside the window. “When your pa went off to war, did your ma take you everywhere she went like a dirty trunk handcuffed to her wrist?”

Albie recognized the tone. The man flipped to anger at any little thing: real or imagined.

“No,” Albie said sheepishly.

The air in the room seemed to still as Mark’s footfalls raced across the shed, charging at the scared boy. Mark cocked back a flat hand, but stopped abruptly as the hearse door swung open and banged against the outside wall. Scents of alcohol and rubber overtook the smoke and steel of the glowing forge.

“How did…?” Mark trailed.

Albie dropped the tools he was holding.

“Pick those up,” Mark said absently.

Albie felt around the floor until he had his payload again. Mark stepped to the hearse and peeked inside. Satin lined the walls and a fine blue carpet on the floor. One cracked window and two more intact. The alcohol and rubber scent were especially thick within the hearse, but disappeared fully after a few seconds of the man’s interested presence.

—

“Can’t even teach your sorry self to cook, can we?” Mark said.

Victoria was later than expected and Mark stood by the counter trying to figure out a meal for himself, and since he was there, Albie. Dark out, lights cut up the laneway toward the house.

“Now what the hell is this?” Mark said as the milk truck approached rather than his Dodge. “What in the Lord’s name is this?”

Albie inhaled deeply through his nose and counted the quickening heartbeats in his head. The door opened and he faced the coolness.

“The truck broke down,” Victoria said, rushed.

“What do you mean it broke down?” Mark said, seethed in fact.

“In town. The transmission, it wouldn’t go into gear,” Victoria said, her words spilling as if racing against Albie’s heartrate.

“You were supposed to know how to drive!” A slap punctuated drive and Albie put his face down onto his arms, his lips to the top of Teddy’s ears.

“It wasn’t my—!” Victoria wailed.

Another slap silenced her. Albie moaned at the sounds of wood-on-wood screeching from chair legs set into clumsy motion.

“You women,” Mark said, this time it was women that bore all the emphasis, as if it were a slur. “I take you and that no-good child into my home and this is how you repay—?”

The kitchen filled with the scents of alcohol and rubber and the three cupboard doors began banging. Albie lifted his head and Mark lowered his cocked fist. The scent depleted as quickly as it came and the cupboards ceased slamming. Outside, the wind whipped and in a bedroom, a window had opened, bringing with it a cool undercurrent that sent iron shavings dancing about the floorboards. Victoria was teary-eyed and slack-jawed, which made the punch she took all the worse as it dislocated her mandible, knocking her cold.

Albie couldn’t help himself; he boiled over. He broke from his seat at the table in the direction where he’d heard his new daddy beating his mommy. He pulled back both of his fists—one still gripped Teddy—looking to strike, but tripped over the stool and went sprawling.

Mark began laughing and picked up the tossed bear. “This filthy thing,” he said.

Albie’s furious heart took a swift turn to heartbreak as he heard the rip of cotton. Teddy fell to the floor not far from where Albie was crawling to his mother’s side.

“I hate you!” Albie screamed, his voice ringing high as songbird’s.

“If your ma didn’t give me cunny, I’d let you die in the streets like the beggar you were bred to be,” Mark said and swung open a cupboard, snatching up the last of the bread loaf Victoria had baked two days earlier.

“I wish my real daddy was here!” Albie shouted.

“The Germans filled you daddy with—” A tapping at the frosty kitchen window silenced Mark’s curse and replaced it with curiosity. “Who’d be out here now?”

The milkman was long gone.

Albie found his mother and latched onto her, cowering as Mark came close and then stepped over the unconscious woman and her blind son. The chemical smells of alcohol and rubber filled the kitchen like poisonous gas and Albie felt the damp pelt of Teddy’s torn side come over his face; bringing with it a new scent, one that made his head swim and his guts contract.

“Maaah!” he wailed, and on the great inhale afterward, passed out, taking the chemical into his chest where it slipped into his bloodstream and then brain.

—

Albie seemed to come to at the sound of his own voice. Incredible heat surrounded him. He cried out for his mother, but she still wasn’t moving. Behind him, the main door slammed against the wall and instinct had him working by clumsy memory, while following the sensation of coolness pouring in from the open door.

“Mommy! Mommy!” he wailed, uncertain if he was crying as something had been wrapped tightly around his head. “Mommy!”

He grabbed onto her and she wasn’t moving, was barely breathing. He pulled with the might of five Albies. He had her limp body dragged out into the cold, cold snow, but where to go from there, he had no clue.

Before any clear thoughts filled his bruised mind, he tried for, “Daddy! Dad—!” but was cut off by the whinny of a horse.

The wrapping on his head made every sound dull, but he caught an unmistakable tapping coming from somewhere ahead. Letting go of his mother was not something he considered, so he continued to drag her thin body over the icy lane, toward the tapping. The cold burned into him with frozen teeth, burrowing deep like ticks.

“Is somebody here?” he called out and heard the tapping again, changing his course minutely. After four more steps, he bumped into something large and wooden. “Is somebody…?” he trailed, feeling around the object before him. It was a carriage, the rear door was open, and inside smelled heavily of alcohol and rubber.

“Al-eee,” Victoria moaned from the ground at Albie’s feet.

She hadn’t died! He knelt and grabbed hold of her with both hands, accidentally knocking against her hanging jaw, making her cry out, but also briefly awakening her more than before.

“Mommy, there’s a fire.”

Victoria, dazed and agonized, looked around the bright night, squinting against the flames rising from the home and the shed. “Wayafada?” she said, pushing to her knees. Ice had begun to form on her clothes.

Above them, a series of lightning taps rattled out from the rear of the carriage. Albie got beneath his mother’s armpit and worked to help her stand. Once her knees locked, she started to tilt and sway as if a buoy on heavy waves.

“Maaaw!” Albie screeched as he tried to keep her upright with every ounce of strength his little body could muster.

Suddenly the weight left him and he stumbled against the carriage as it rocked and his mother’s wet boot slithered across his chin and shoulder. He made to reach for her, but the rear door slammed shut with a glass shattering clatter and he fell back. A fresh tapping commenced, but was further away; around the front of the carriage perhaps. Albie no longer questioned the taps, knew in his heart they belonged to Teddy. Hands ached with snow, and without a jacket, his arms pebbled with goose flesh. The boy crawled as quickly as he could around front. The tapping led him to the ladder and once he was up, a stinking horse blanket fell heavily upon his shoulders.

“Who-who is thu-there?” he said, trembling.

By way of answer, he felt a touch colder than ice place the reins over his hands.

Disbelieving, he shouted, “I-I cannot stu-steer a cuh-carriage!”

Three heavy taps rang out and spoke words directly into Albie’s mind: Yes. You. Can.

“Nooo,” Albie whined, shaking his head.

This time, as if in an answer to the disbelief in his abilities, his mother moaned and then began coughing in throaty, wet barks.

“H’ya! H’ya!” Albie shouted, whipping the reins against the horses the way he’d heard and imagined countless times before.

—

Albie lay back on the bed with sores from the cold and something wet and heavy settling into his chest. His fever had broken, but it had been a long six nights since he showed up at the medical college in the hearse carriage his second daddy had fixed—mostly.

“Boy, can you hear me boy?”

Albie turned his head slightly at the deep timbre of the voice looming over him.

“Your name is Albie, is that correct?”

Albie nodded and then coughed.

“Here, have a drink.” The man put the red and white straw to Albie’s mouth and the boy dragged in hard. “Go easy now.” The man pulled the straw away.

“Thank you,” Albie said weakly.

“You’re welcome. Now, tell me what happened.”

Albie parroted the question, not quite grasping. His hands came to his head and found the wrapping gone.

“Start with the fire.”

Albie licked his crusty lips and said, “I do not know. I woke up and the house was burning.”

“Were you in the house?”

It came back to him and Albie told all, including how Teddy guided him.

“Teddy?” the man said.

“My bear. He knocks.”

“Knocks?”

“Yes, sir. It’s so I don’t get lost.”

The man made a curious noise in his chest. “This bear, is it missing two button eyes?”

“Yes, sir.” Albie tried to sit up and found that he lacked the strength.

The man clucked his tongue once and Albie did not care for the way that sound made him feel. “I want a straight answer now, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did your mother kill your stepfather?”

Albie gasped. “Oh, no, he hit her so hard I had to drag her out of the burning house.” Albie felt tears sprouting, but they seemed to fill his eyes. The lids were gummed together with morning crusties. “He hit her so hard because the transmission.”

“The transmission?”

“On the Dodge.” Albie rubbed the gunk, finding that he had to be tender because his eyes balls stung fiercely.

“Was someone else out there? Someone who knows about Teddy’s button eyes?”

Albie stopped rubbing and his eyes opened with a wet click. Bright, bright light invaded and he had to squint in a way he’d never done before. “No?” Albie said, half to the man and half to the oddity of the light.

“Then can you explain why you stepfather’s eyes were mutilated after he’d been drowned in his cooling trough? Or perhaps how he ended up with two buttons sewn into his eyelids over his halved eyeballs?

The tears really started coming and Albie shook his head. He no longer heard the man in the starchy blue uniform. All that light and all those colors and shapes he was seeing were bigger than the entire universe. Everything was fuzzy, but he could see!

The man grabbed Albie’s shoulders with his beefy hands and shook the sickly boy. “You listen to me! I want answers and—!”

“Excuse you!” a young woman stormed in. She had a ratty teddy bear in one hand and a strange set of glasses on a chain in the other. “This young man needs to rest.”

“I need answers!”

“Come back tomorrow. He’s not going anywhere.”

Albie jerked his head in quick chicken snaps, drinking in all he could around the room. The man stepped back, sneering at the woman, but relented and departed.

Once he was gone, the woman leaned over the bed. “Albie.”

Albie blinked and smiled. “I can see,” he said and then fell into a fit of coughs.

“I have something that might cheer you up,” the woman held out the teddy.

Albie’s already bright face lit up further when he touched the familiar surface. “Teddy!” Another bout of coughing ensued as he snatched at the bear.

The woman let the teddy bear go, but held up the strange glasses. “Was this in the hearse?”

“What is it?”

“It’s a phoropter; this set iss a bit of an antique. It belonged to Dr. James and it should be underground.”

“Underground?”

“Buried with him. It was found around the neck of that bear, on the carriage seat of the hearse you rode in on.”

“Oh,” Albie said, and that was all he could say. He looked down at Teddy, studied the best friend he’d never seen, and wondered what the button eyes had looked like.

XX