Hellbender

8/23/2026

*Hellbender* has all the furniture of folk horror: witches, woods, sigils, inherited powers, strange rituals and a mother keeping her daughter far away from ordinary society. The problem is that the furniture never quite becomes the house. Izzy has been raised in isolation, supposedly because she is unwell. Her mother knows the less reassuring truth: Izzy is a hellbender, a witch whose power grows through consuming living creatures and their fear. When a teenage drinking game ends with Izzy swallowing a worm, what should be a fairly insignificant dietary error becomes her supernatural puberty. That is where *Hellbender* is most interesting. Izzy discovers that the thing she has been protected from is herself, and that her mother’s restrictions have not removed her nature, merely post