A grieving mother latches on to a magical surrogate for her lost child. But small miracles come with big consequences.

“I’ll need a set of clothes he wore at least once,” instructs the voice of the Dollmaker (Daniel Martin Berkey). “Do not wash them.” We see a child in a coffin, as if asleep. “I’ll also need a lock of hair, and a valuable possession.”

With this set of directions, the Dollmaker creates an unsettling simulacrum of the deceased child, a creepy, dead-eyed doll that bears only rough resemblance to the child. But when the boy’s grieving mother (Perri Lauren) touches the doll, she experiences him as alive: warm, breathing, hugging her like her real, dead son. The father (Sean Meehan) sits in the corner, scoffing.

But there are rules. The doll loses all life if taken outside. And you have to put the doll back in the box after the timer runs out. If you do not, warns the Dollmaker, you’ll come to believe that the child is real. That he never died. You’ll forget you ever paid the Dollmaker make this poppet, and you’ll never willingly leave the house again.

Director Al Lougher spins out this short tale like an episode of Twilight Zone, and from the start you expect the doll to turn on its doting parents. But instead, the story is one of overwhelming grief, and even addiction, as the mother forgets all rules and is soon living every waking hour with the doll, convinced this creation of fabric and hair is her real son. In frustration, the father tries to reason with her, tries to pull the doll away from her, and as his own need for comforting grows, drags his wife, clutching the doll, outside.

This is not a simple story, though it barely takes nine minutes to tell. The pathos of the mother feeding the doll, caked oatmeal smearing across its dead lips as the father stands in the door and cries out that he couldn’t be the strong one for both of them, this is an artfully crafted bit of storytelling, capturing in one small, brief moment a world of pain and descent into madness.

Berkey is fabulously creepy and jovial as the Dollmaker, a supernatural car salesman, offering the grieving couple what they want, with a cost just warned enough that it is clear he knows what is coming.

Mother and father of the child play intense and personal, vulnerable roles, each facing — or not facing — the death of their child in their own ways. One turns to the doll and denial, the other tries to be stoic and solitary for his wife, but cracks when he sees her descend deeper into a fantasy where their child never died.

When he finally takes matters into his own hands, he has no concern for consequences.

After all, as the Dollmaker says, “Nobody ever asked for their money back.”