Water Being (Amu’lukw) or Lake Monster (Amhuluk)
Amhuluk’s Catchphrase: “If you can’t handle the horns, go swim with the sharks.”
Amhuluk is not the kind of monster many creatures ever meet, and if they do, they don’t live to tell anyone about it. Luckily, I have met him many times and am very hard to kill. Amhuluk is a water and disease monster, originally from and still terrorizing Oregon in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. He may have once been a god but no longer. He does give me god energy sometimes. I actually met this particular monster right around the same time Shel, Frank, and I rescued my favorite frogman, Papa A (another great story for another time). Do not tell Papa A, I called him frogman. He’ll flip and that will be worse for you than me.
I call Amhuluk, Hulu. He pretends to abhor it. I am positive he secretly loves having a nickname. The name makes him feel more approachable but that is not his thing, not at all. He does not want anyone or anything to approach him. I’ve tried to get Hulu to relax over the centuries, make some friends, visit the school, but it’s all a no-go. He has perpetual angry wet cat energy.
Hulu invented being elusive and hard to get a hold of but when he does show his face, it’s a showstopper. He doesn’t want you to see him until you are underwater struggling for your last breath. Yeah, it’s pretty harsh but that’s how he rolls. He drowns everything and everyone he meets. Drags them to a watery grave. It’s not personal; it’s just his nature. He likes things soggy and dead better than he likes them alive. Since I technically don’t need to breath, he can’t kill me which drives him bonkers and is why I’m one of his only land-loving friends. Or maybe he is just tolerating me until he can figure out how to drown me. It will never happen. I would never say this to him but I am way more powerful.
I only see him a few times a year when I travel to the Pacific Northwest. He originally spent most of his time in the depths of a lake near Forked Mountain. Humans drained his original lake, yet another reason he hates them. I promised him I wouldn’t reveal his current location. He moves around from river to river, lake to lake, these days, refusing to get too attached to any of them. The world has gotten a bit too crowded for a monster as big as Hulu to hang out in one place for too long. I really, really want to share his location so more creatures could see him. However, Hulu wouldn’t speak to me for a decade if I published it. Even though, our conversations are a bit one-sided, I would miss them. Besides, he’d kill everyone who did find him so it’s in everyone’s best interest if I just keep that secret.
I love secrets. I have collected so, so many. I’ve decided to share some of them with you all. They are taking up too much space on my own pages. I’m running out of room for new spells, so I need to move them somewhere else. Somewhere else is here for anyone to enjoy.
The only people that have ever actually seen Amhuluk are the Kalapuyas. There is a pretty accurate American folktale about three children that tried to steal Hulu’s horns. Hulu’s quite proud of what he did it that story which disturbs me because I do love kids. Tons of monsters don’t, but I do. My energy is basically kid energy – everlasting summer nights, rollercoasters, and puppies. But, even I don’t like these kids from Hulu’s folktale. They were trying to steal his horns which are attached to his head. The only way to do that would be to rip them off. So, maybe they got what they deserved. Hulu impaled two of them then dragged them to a watery grave three times in front of their dad. It was pretty gnarly. The third kid was left alive with some disease that definitely killed him in some horrible way. The moral of the story is don’t play around when it comes to a monster’s parts. Don’t collect them. Period. I’m looking at you, Link!
And Hulu’s parts are super rad. He looks amazing. He’s got this multi-colored spotted fir with these spiral horns on his wicked head. He’s massive and travels with spirit dogs when he is on land. I don’t even know what the dogs are about, but I love them. I mean, I’d be terrified if I met him in the water and needed to breathe but when he’s in the forest and his hair is dry, blowing in the wind, and he’s got his pups with him. He’s got a chill vibe. This is the most accurate picture I’ve been able to find on the internet. I found the art on the site, A Book of Creatures. It still needs a few more details but it’s pretty good. Almost makes me think the artist has seen Hulu but that would be impossible. The picture does not include his spotted dogs that travel with him when he is on land. The dogs are way more fun than Hulu, a big reason I keep visiting him.
Amhuluk can also get epically big. So big that some storytellers have turned him into a kaiju. He’s smaller than Godzilla on land but when he gets in the water, he expands to be about the same size or even larger. The kaiju version of Hulu shows up in the movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters and then in the comic Godzilla Dominion from Legendary Comics, April 2021. Their depictions looks nothing like the real Hulu but it is still cool to see him brought to life in those artforms. I’m really hoping that version of him will appear in the new T.V. series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters which I’m pretty stoked for.
Another strange fact that only Hulu and I know is that the Kalapuya people can talk to him in their language. Hulu only understands this nearly extinct language. He’s never bothered to learn another one. I can speak to him telepathically because of my intense occult powers. Most cannot. Yet another reason I’m one of his only friends, and it also explains some of his angry cat energy. There are maybe 4000 Kalapuya descendants remaining, and very few speak the language. I did tell Hulu about an article I found about how Kalapuya descendants are teaching themselves the language, word for word from a dictionary. He was as close to happy as he gets. It is kind of monstrous that he is happy that he gets to talk to someone right before he kills them but again, that’s his nature. And, really, don’t we all just want to be heard?
When the masterpiece of a film, Spirited Away, came out, by the legendary animator, Hayao Miyazaki, it made me think of what Hulu might be, under all his metaphorical sludge. There was a moment in the movie, I thought the story was about Hulu. It wasn’t. It was actually about a river god named Haku, who saved a girl from drowning. You would think the Hulu I have described would have drowned the girl. The modern Hulu would definitely drown her, but there was a time he would have tried to save her. That time is just older than the recorded stories about him. Luckily, that time is not older than Hulu and me. There was a time when Hulu drowned things for a good reason. And just like in Spirited Away, a little girl changed Hulu forever. What happened to Hulu’s little girl and to Hulu was definitely man’s fault, and if I was one to hold grudges, I’d probably be killing a bunch of people too. But I’m more of a live-and-let-live occult spellbook. Hulu holds grudges and buries his feelings. After I visited him many, many, many times, he finally shared his biggest and saddest secret with me. Here is the tragic story that made Hulu the monster he is today.
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