The Mahoning River cuts through Youngstown like a scar, a constant reminder of the city"s industrial past. Decades of steel production bled into its waters, leaving a legacy of pollution that clung to its banks and settled in its murky depths. Locals treated it with a wary respect, born partly from environmental caution and partly from something older, more superstitious. Don"t stare too long into the Mahoning, the old folks warned; it shows things it shouldn"t. Especially at night, especially from the bridges – Market Street, Spring Common, South Avenue – where the city lights painted wavering pictures on the sluggish current.
Sarah hadn"t believed the stories. To her, the river was just there, a brown, slow-moving ribbon dividing the city. Until one Tuesday night in late November. Walking home from a late shift at the downtown library, the air sharp with the first real bite of winter, she paused on the Market Street Bridge. The river was unusually calm, its surface like dark, flawed glass reflecting the city lights. But as she gazed down, a flicker of wrongness caught her eye. The reflection wasn"t quite right. The familiar brick facade of the Wells Building seemed twisted, its windows dark, gaping mouths. Further down, the reflection of St. Columba Cathedral"s spire appeared cracked, leaning precariously. Lights in the reflected skyline were fewer, dimmer, flickering with an unhealthy, greenish cast. It was Youngstown, but decayed, distorted, like a diseased negative of the city she knew.
She blinked, rubbed her eyes, looked up at the actual skyline – solid, familiar, mundane – then back down at the water. The reflection shimmered, momentarily clearer, sharper even than the real view, showing details of ruin – crumbling cornices, skeletal frameworks where buildings should be – before a ripple disturbed the surface, shattering the impossible image. Sarah shivered, pulling her scarf tighter, and hurried off the bridge, telling herself it was a trick of the light, the oily sheen on the water, her tired eyes. But the image lingered, unsettling and vivid.
She couldn"t shake it. The memory of that wrong reflection became an itch under her skin. She started taking detours, walking along the river path during her lunch breaks, pausing on different bridges on her way home, searching the water"s surface. The phenomenon was maddeningly inconsistent. Most days, the river reflected only the mundane reality of the city and the sky above. But occasionally, unpredictably, the dark reflection would surface. Sometimes just for a second, a fleeting glimpse of a ruined tower or a street filled with lurching shadows. Other times, it would hold for minutes, a stable, horrifying panorama.
She tried capturing it. Her phone camera showed only the normal reflection, perhaps slightly distorted by the water"s movement. Videos were equally useless, capturing ripples and light play, but never the inherent wrongness she saw with her own eyes. Was she losing her mind? She started researching, digging into local history archives online and at the library where she worked, searching for river-related tragedies, industrial accidents near the banks, anything that might explain the feeling of darkness associated with the Mahoning. She found plenty: drownings, bodies recovered, tales of illegal dumping of toxic waste far worse than officially acknowledged, even obscure mentions of strange riverside gatherings back in the early 20th century, hinted at being occult in nature. Nothing concrete, but enough to feed the growing unease, the sense that the river held more than just water and silt.
Each time the dark reflection appeared, she noticed more details, recognizing its twisted landmarks. The architecture was oppressive, brutalist styles mixed with something older, cyclopean, stained black with grime. Smoke, thick and greasy, billowed from the chimneys of factories that had been dormant for decades in her reality. The sky in the reflection was a perpetual, bruised twilight, tinged with sickly yellow or green. Sometimes, she could glimpse figures moving in the reflected streets – dark shapes that shuffled and jerked, their forms indistinct, barely human. The familiar bridges were rendered as structures of rusted, barbed metal or even glistening bone. There was no green, no trees, only decay, industry, and that black, oily river flowing through the heart of it all. Strange symbols, part industrial warning, part occult sigil, seemed scrawled or built into the facades of the reflected buildings. A profound sense of despair, neglect, and active malevolence radiated from the image, a psychic chill that seeped into her bones.
Looking wasn"t passive anymore. Staring into the dark reflection left her nauseous, headachy, with a lingering paranoia that lasted for hours. She started having nightmares, walking the streets of that other, darker Youngstown. A morbid fascination grew, a pull towards the river, a need to see it again, clearer, longer. Her perception of the real Youngstown began to warp. She found herself noticing the decay, the poverty, the darkness she"d previously ignored or accepted. The city"s struggles seemed amplified, echoing the ruin in the water. Once, while staring intently, she thought she saw one of the reflected figures, a tall, stooped shape in a doorway, turn its head and look directly out of the water at her. She recoiled, heart pounding, stumbling back from the railing.
The obsession demanded interaction. One grey afternoon, seeing the dark reflection holding steady near the Spring Common bridge, she picked up a loose piece of gravel and tossed it in. The image shattered, but reformed quickly, the ripples spreading like waves of darkness. Shining her powerful flashlight beam onto the surface only made the reflected city seem to recoil, the shadows within it deepening. She tried speaking, calling out "Hello?" Her voice sounded thin, absorbed by the heavy air, but a moment later, a distorted, gurgling echo seemed to rise from the reflection itself. Hesitantly, she knelt and dipped her fingers into the water. It was shockingly cold, unnaturally thick and viscous. For a horrifying instant, the reflection showed her own hand, but skeletal, dripping black ooze. She snatched it back with a cry, scrubbing it frantically on her jeans, though it came away clean. The contact left a tingling numbness, like static electricity, that lingered for an hour.
Then came the bleed-through. Subtle at first. The faint chemical smell she sometimes noticed near the river started appearing further inland, catching in the back of her throat when she was blocks away. Walking past familiar buildings near the river, she"d catch flickers out of the corner of her eye – a momentary glimpse of crumbling brickwork or a darkened window where there should be light, mirroring the reflected decay. Shadows near the riverbanks seemed deeper, stretching unnaturally long even in bright daylight. Other people started reporting oddities – fleeting glimpses of distorted figures near the bridges, strange oily patches appearing on riverside railings overnight. Technology glitched more often downtown, screens flickering, calls dropping, especially in offices with river views. Sarah felt a growing dread. The barrier was thinning. The reflection wasn"t just a passive window; it felt like it was pressing against reality, trying to seep through.
Her life began to unravel. The headaches and paranoia became constant companions. She struggled to focus at work, her thoughts drifting back to the river, the dark city. Sleep offered no escape, the nightmares becoming more vivid, more terrifying. She became withdrawn, jumpy, snapping at concerned colleagues and friends who urged her to see a doctor, a therapist. She tried to explain, but the words sounded insane even to her own ears. She found herself compulsively drawing the strange symbols she"d seen on the reflected buildings, filling margins of books and scrap paper with the disturbing sigils. Her own reflection became untrustworthy; sometimes, for a split second, she"d see the dark city superimposed over her face, her eyes empty sockets, her smile a rictus grin. A persistent metallic taste coated her tongue. The reflection wasn"t just showing her another place; it was changing her, infecting her.
Driven by a desperate need for answers, she spent a frantic weekend digging through the library"s deepest, dustiest local history archives. She found it in an uncatalogued collection of papers from a defunct historical society – accounts from the 1930s detailing attempts by a local spiritualist group to "cleanse" the Mahoning after a series of unexplained drownings and a particularly gruesome industrial accident upstream. The rituals, performed on the banks near where the Market Street Bridge now stood, apparently went horribly wrong. The accounts spoke of the water turning black, of horrifying shapes seen in the depths, of participants going mad or disappearing. The river wasn"t just polluted; it was psychically scarred, poisoned by tragedy and perhaps amplified by misguided occult practices, creating a festering wound in reality, a window onto a place born of the city"s accumulated pain and darkness.
Sarah didn"t know what to do. Could the bleed-through be stopped? Was Youngstown destined to slowly merge with its own dark, watery twin? She found herself standing on the Market Street Bridge again, drawn there by a force she no longer fought. The river flowed below, dark and indifferent. She looked down, bracing herself. But the reflection was perfectly normal. The city lights twinkled, the buildings stood solid and familiar, the water mirrored the clear night sky. And somehow, that was the most terrifying thing of all. Was it gone? Or was it just hiding, waiting? Or worse… had the bleed-through completed its first stage? Was she now seeing the dark reflection as normal? She dropped her keys, fumbling them in her numb fingers. They clattered on the bridge deck, then bounced over the railing. She watched them fall, hitting the water"s surface. But in the reflection, she saw them tumble down, down, into the dark, waiting streets of the other Youngstown. A figure stooped to pick them up, then looked up, directly at her, and waved. The river flowed on, its surface momentarily catching the moonlight like a single, vast, unblinking eye.