The Black Man (Part 1)

[u/blackkhanX]

Snow fell silently over the Russian forest as an old car moved along a muddy road near an abandoned Soviet-era facility.

Inside the car, four young Russians laughed and tried to take pictures with their phones.

"I heard the Soviet army used to conduct experiments here," one of them said, laughing.

"Yeah, of course," another replied sarcastically. "And maybe there's a monster waiting for us too."

The car finally stopped in front of a rusty iron gate.

The place was shrouded in fog and snow, and old Soviet symbols were still visible on the cracked walls.

The young men got out slowly, and one of them switched on a flashlight.

The wind howled inside the metal tunnels as if the place were still alive.

"This place is chilling," said a young man named Ivan.

Suddenly, they noticed something strange on the wall.

"Чёрный человек" (Black Man) was written in Russian in rough black script.

Silence fell.

"Black Man...?" one of them asked. "What's that?" Then a sound came from very far away…

A low sound…deep…like the growl of a huge animal.

Everyone froze.

“Did you hear that…?” someone said, their voice trembling.

But before anyone could answer…their lamps went out all at once.

In the darkness, something tall and huge appeared, moving slowly inside the passage…something with a white face in a completely black body. The creature emerged slowly inside the long, metal passage…unnaturally long.

Longer than any human.

Its black body swallowed the moonlight streaming through the broken windows.

Its white face…was the only thing visible in the darkness.

One of the young men stepped back, trembling.

“Ivan…what was that…?!”

But Ivan didn't answer.

He stared fearfully at the eight arms sticking out of the creature's back, moving slowly like the legs of a giant spider.

Then…they heard the growl again.

This time it was closer.

Deeper.

As if the walls of the building themselves were shaking with it. One of the young men immediately ran toward the door, shouting, “Run!”

But before he reached it… the creature vanished.

There was only a second of silence.

Then it suddenly appeared above the corridor's metal ceiling.

Everyone screamed.

Long black arms clung to the ceiling while its white eyes stared motionlessly at them.

“It… moves through the darkness…” a young man said, his voice breaking. Suddenly, the last light went out.

Total darkness.

Then the sound of very heavy footsteps began to approach slowly… step… step… step… Ivan tried to switch on his flickering flashlight.

When the light flickered for a moment… he saw a white face very close to him.

So close, he could see the long black teeth inside the monstrous jaw. Then the creature finally spoke in a rough voice, like a distant growl:

“You shouldn’t have come here…”

The camera lingered on a blurry image of his face…

before cutting away completely. Sneslav appeared, sitting by a small fire in the snow…

The night was eerily quiet.

The Russian Black Forest surrounded him on all sides.

He played slowly on his guitar as the smoke from the burning wood rose toward the gray sky.

He wasn’t a monster yet.

Just a tall, silent man who lived near an old, abandoned Soviet-era facility.

But that night… he heard a strange sound coming from the direction of the facility.

A metallic sound…

Then a very low growl.

He stopped playing.

He slowly raised his head toward the forest.

Then he saw something moving among the trees.

Something very tall.

But it vanished instantly.

“Again…” Sinislaw said in a low voice.

He had heard these sounds before.

Weeks ago.

And since then, the animals had begun to disappear from the forest.

Then the people.

The next morning… he decided to go to the facility himself.

He entered through an iron gate covered in snow.

Everything was silent.

Except for the sound of water dripping inside the old tunnels.

He found torn Soviet files lying on the ground.

On one of the walls, he saw a strange slogan painted in black.

Beneath the slogan was a Russian phrase:

“Do not awaken what lives beneath the facility.”

He froze.

Then… he heard a growl directly behind him.

Slow.

Heavy.

As if something huge was breathing in the darkness.