Hobbarul

Horace never speaks. Not because he can't, but because he remembers what happens when he does. Beneath the surface of his quiet, awkward frame, something ancient stirs, something that was never meant to walk in daylight. As his foster parents tiptoe around the rot blooming in their home and classmates vanish without a trace, Horace watches. He feels his skin crawl in the night. Mirrors twitch. Tongues drop from the ceiling, and the spiral, the same spiral drawn by the vanished counsellor, the same one found scrawled in ash and blood, keeps appearing in places no one dares to look. His reflection no longer obeys him. He knows something is leaking through.

When Letha arrives, a girl with teeth under her bandages and a backpack that breathes, Horace begins to remember. Who he was. What he did. What was buried. They tried to fold him back under the bed, stitch the mouth shut, bury the name, but names have weight. Names summon, and now, the boy who was never a boy must decide if he can still pretend to be human… or embrace what’s always been inside him.

Hobbarul is a grotesque, psychological horror story about identity, hunger, and the monstrous truth behind childhood silence.