This reminds me of that story “The Drum” from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The one where the kids want this cool drum these gypsies in the woods have, but they’re told they have to be bad in order to get it. So they go home & do all this bad stuff & act like little assholes, but instead of getting what they want they drive their mother away instead, & in her place is a replacement mother with a glass eye & a wooden tail. Borgman doesn’t have quite that level of weirdness, but it’s still plenty weird, & they both feel kind of like a folktale or a fable. Don’t get tempted by the dark side, people. Wooden-tailed mother or no, it’s not going to end well.