screaming season

the helk

Growing up I was obsessed with spooky shit and chronically online so there was no creepypasta that I hadn't read. When stories of the helk became popular I was instantly hit with a rush of nostalgia, from what I had heard about it the helk sounded like something straight from the creepypasta's of my childhood. I couldn't find anything from a Google search so I found an internet forum for scary shit, I posted a question asking where I can find stories of the helk. A lot of people were just as confused as I was as they had not found any trace of the stories online either. A month after I posted that question I got a reply that was actually helpful
Jerry Belmont: "hi, I found one of the stories, I haven't found much more information than this but hopefully this will help"
There was a link to a website I had never heard of, the site was called "Mr. Bones campfire stories" it looked like a cross between the aesthetic of the creepypasta site and those old scary stories books from the nineties, those ones with the creepy black and white illustrations, I loved those growing up. This site seemed like a spooky nostalgic gold mine, I was excited by the prospect of browsing the stories before bed later but right now I needed to find more about the helk. I scrolled down to the story about the helk and I clicked on it, it was written as if it were a confession or something
"The helk has been around for longer than we know, there's no clear date of when it appeared but the first sighting of it was back in the 90's, the first photograph could easily have been manipulated as it was quite blurry and you could only sort of make out the outline of the creature but there have been others, many others. Since the first sighting people began to make up stories of what the helk actually looked like up close and what it does to you when it gets you, i personally have  seen the helk twice and there's something strange that I don't think anybody else has noticed. The first time I saw the helk I was on a camping trip with my buddies and someone thought it would be a cool idea to tell scary stories, my friend Amanda told everyone about the helk, a monster with sharp claws and dark blue eyes, she said it looked vaguely humanlike and walked on two feet. If it caught you it would shred your body to pieces and it would hang your head from a nearby tree. I had to go to the bathroom later that night so I zipped open the tent door and slowly crept out into the woods. I was on my way back when I heard something from the darkness of the woods, I shined my flashlight thinking that it was a forest critter of some kind but what I saw that night was no creature, it was the helk, exactly as Amanda had described it. The helk hissed and raised it's arms to block the light, I used this time to run back to the tent. I hurriedly zipped the tent closed as soon as I came in, my friend laughed when I told him what I saw, he thought it was some sort of joke that was planned by me and Amanda, I sent back to bed but woke up to Amanda's scream, she had probably found a critter in the woods or something, she had always been afraid of racoons and other forest animals. In the morning I saw Amanda's shredded skin had been strung up around our tent like it was fucking clothes on a clothesline. My friend (the one who laughed at me when I told him about the helk sighting) screamed as he pointed towards a tree where Amanda's body less head was hanging from a low branch.
The second time I saw the helk was when my wife was reading a scary story to my daughter. She didn't call it the helk when she was telling the story she called it the grimp but she described it the same way Amanda described the helk, except for the sound it made, amanda had told us the helk made a screeching sound but my wife had told my daughter that it sounded human and could mimic any voice it wanted to. I told my wife how similar that story was to the helk and she told me how it was the story of the helk too but she changed the name of it to the grimp because she thought  that name fit it better.

I stopped reading, I remembered my mom telling me of the grimp, I remembered lying in bed as she told me of the mobster that lived in the woods behind our house, that's not all I remember from that night, I vaguely remember this nightmare i had where the grimp was outside my house and it was trying to lure me outside using my mom's voice, it scared me so much, that was the only time I remember having that nightmare. This had to be a coincidence this story can't be about me, I scoffed at my paranoia and continued to read the rest of the story

That night I awoke to my wife telling my name from outside my door, she was yelling about how she had went to check on my daughter and accidentally locked herself out of the bedroom. I was about to go open the door when a hand grabbed my arm, I almost screamed but it was just my wife.. lying next to me with a fearful look on her face "don't go out there, that's not me" I layed back down and tried to ignore the voice outside the bedroom but the voice got louder, nevertheless i refused to open the door, in the morning the creature was gone, it was afraid of light, just like Amanda's story had said, but her story hadn't said anything about mimicking voices, that's what i know about the helk/grimp from having two encounters with it, with each change to the legend the monster adapts, whatever we say about it in our legends becomes true for the real version of it. I hear my wife's voice as I'm writing this, her voice comes from outside the window and shes telling me to come to the woods with her.. my wife died two years ago, whatever's out there is not my wife I don't know what's changed about the monster, I don't know how many people have changed a simple detail in a decades old tale. I'm afraid to face it but I'm worried that one day it will get tired of waiting for me to fall into it's trap, it will come for me itself.

I closed the page, my mom had died two years ago just like the authors wife, that had to be a coincidence, my dad couldn't have written this. I called my dad but nobody picked up, my fears were confirmed, the ringing of the phone was soon joined by another sound, my mom's voice, telling me to come for a walk with her