A long time ago, there was a witch named Matilda Dixon who lived in a town in Massachusetts called Darkness Falls. She wasn't a bad witch or a mean witch, in fact she was quite nice and well loved by all of her neighbors, especially the local children whom she used to entertain with stories. The hundred and fifty year old woman had also been well regarded by the White Council of which she had been a part.

One of Matilda's hobbies that would seem quite unusual unless one knew of Matilda's career and the fact that there was a Warlock in the area was her habit of collecting the teeth the local children lost and giving them money in exchange. For the first tooth lost, the child would receive a shiny copper penny, for any molars, a small silver coin, and for their final baby tooth, a gold coin. It was because of this hobby, that Matilda had been called the "Tooth Fairy" by the local villagers. Matilda did this not for the recognition it gave her, but to prevent the children's teeth from being used against them. Each tooth she collected was carefully ground into a fine powder and burned.

The Warlock who lived in the woods nearby - having grown tired of Matilda thwarting his plans - attacked Matilda in the dead of the night. Matilda ended up surviving the encounter which destroyed her home and left her with a curse which slowly ate her inside and out. The Wardens eventually caught up with and dealt with the rogue wizard, and a gentleman named Ebenezar McCoy found a counter to the curse, but it was too late and the damage had already been done. By the time the progression of the curse had been halted, Matilda was badly disfigured and the light of the sun would burn her wasted flesh if she stepped out into it.

To spare the villagers the horrors of the sight of her, she took to wearing her most concealing clothes and a porcelain mask to hide her ravaged face. Since moving about during the day was exceedingly painful, she took to going out either at night or when it was completely overcast. This caused some of the more superstitious locals to become suspicious of her.

One day, two children vanished seemingly without a trace. Many of the villagers blamed Matilda whom they had come to fear, and dragged her from her home to a makeshift gallows in an ancient oak that grew in the center of town. It was there that a Matilda who had been maddened by pain and grief over the betrayal of her neighbors cast a death curse that would have absolutely horrified the kindly woman she used to be.

"What I used to take in kindness, I will take in revenge." Matilda said moments before she was hanged.

Two days after Matilda Dixon's hanging, a young faery guided the pair of missing children out of the Nevernever and into the arms of their loving parents safe and sound as it had been hired to do by Matilda shortly after she realized where the boys could have gone.

Normally curses, even ones such as the one that Matilda cast as she died wouldn't last very long, but this one ended up anchoring itself to her unsuspecting line...