Youngstown"s circulatory system isn"t just the visible grid of streets, avenues, and decaying railway lines on the surface; it"s also the vast, hidden network of storm drains snaking beneath the asphalt and concrete, an unseen, subterranean vascular system designed decades ago with sturdy brick and mortar to carry rainwater, melting snow, street debris, and often less savory effluents away from the urban landscape and, eventually, inevitably, into the murky, chemically-tinged embrace of the Mahoning River. Most of the time, this sprawling, lightless network is silent, save for the occasional gurgle of water rushing through after a downpour, the distant echo of heavy traffic rumbling overhead, or the scuttling of rats in the larger conduits. But sometimes, according to persistent local whispers, fragmented anecdotes shared in hushed tones in dimly lit bars, and half-forgotten urban legends passed down through generations like worn, tarnished heirlooms, these drains carry other sounds. Sounds that don"t belong in the realm of the mundane. Sounds that hint at something else dwelling in the city"s underbelly.
Leo Martinez, a man whose life hadn"t quite gone according to plan, worked the late-night sanitation route, piloting the lumbering, groaning garbage truck through the older, quieter, more dilapidated sections of town nestled close to the river. The routine was deeply ingrained, a monotonous cycle performed under the cloak of darkness: the biting pre-dawn chill that seeped through the truck"s cab, the rhythmic, jarring clatter of emptying heavy plastic residential bins into the truck"s hungry compactor, the powerful hydraulic groan and crush of the machinery compacting the city"s refuse, the brief, stark flare of headlights illuminating deserted streets lined with darkened houses and shuttered storefronts, the pervasive, inescapable smell of garbage mingling with the damp night air and the faint, ever-present metallic tang from the nearby river. It was a familiar, solitary rhythm, a predictable cycle in the city"s nocturnal life, offering a strange kind of lonely peace. Until he started hearing the singing.
It wasn"t every night, not consistently enough to predict. Just occasionally, usually when the air was particularly still and heavy with dampness, often after a light rain had ceased, leaving the streets slick and reflective. It was faint at first, almost subliminal, easily mistaken for the whine of distant machinery or the wind. But it was undeniably clear upon closer listening, seeming to rise directly from the heavy, cast-iron storm drain grate situated on the corner of Elm Street and Watt Street, an intersection perpetually shadowed by decaying, multi-story warehouses and overlooking a particularly bleak, debris-strewn stretch of the riverbank.
This wasn"t radio music drifting from an open window, nor the drunken caterwauling of late-night revelers. It was a voice, distinctly female, singing a simple, hauntingly mournful, wordless melody. The sound quality was peculiar, distorted and ethereal, as if filtered through layers of earth, brick, and flowing water, like a very old, damaged phonograph recording played across a great distance or from beneath a deep well. The first few times Leo heard it, navigating the bulky truck through the narrow streets, he dismissed it readily – the wind whistling through the grate slots in a peculiar, resonant way; faulty plumbing or a sump pump in one of the nearby abandoned buildings creating strange harmonics; or simply his own tired, sleep-deprived mind playing tricks on him during the monotonous, lonely hours before dawn. But the melody was too distinct, too deliberate in its phrasing, too saturated with an aching, palpable sadness to be easily ignored or rationalized away.
He found himself developing a cautious curiosity, which then morphed into a growing, unsettling preoccupation. He started adjusting his route slightly, timing his arrival at the Elm and Watt intersection during periods of quiet. He began lingering near the specific drain grate whenever his route took him past that corner. He"d cut the truck"s noisy engine and extinguish the bright headlights, stepping out into the cold, heavy silence of the street, stand by the heavy iron grate, and just listen, straining his ears against the ambient quiet, holding his breath. Sometimes there was nothing but the distant, low hum of the city"s electrical grid or the faint, constant murmur of the river flowing nearby. Other times, after a few minutes of patient, almost reverent waiting, the singing would begin, soft and ethereal at first, seeming to well up from deep within the earth beneath his feet, a fragile thread of sound in the vast darkness. It was beautiful in a chilling, heartbreaking way, saturated with an inexplicable, ancient sorrow that resonated deep within his own often-lonely existence. It never lasted long, usually fading out abruptly and completely if a car happened to pass by on a nearby street or if Leo inadvertently made too much noise, like the scuff of his heavy work boot on the pavement or a cough.
He mentioned it hesitantly one morning to his supervisor, Sal, a gruff, pragmatic man whose cynicism was as thick as the grime on the sanitation trucks. Sal, predictably, laughed it off, clapping Leo on the shoulder. "Singing drain? You"re pulling my leg, Martinez! Probably just some bum sleeping it off down there, got himself a bottle of something strong for company and thinks he"s Caruso. Or maybe the damn river rats finally formed a choir, learned to carry a tune. Don"t worry about it, just keep the route moving, alright? Time is money." But Leo knew, instinctively, viscerally, that it wasn"t human, not in the usual sense. The ethereal quality of the sound, the way it seemed to emanate not just from the drain opening but from the very fabric of the city"s damp, decaying underbelly, the profound, almost unbearable sadness it conveyed – it felt fundamentally wrong, otherworldly, ancient.
He tried, more than once, to record the phenomenon on his smartphone, crouching low beside the grate, holding the device"s sensitive microphone as close to the iron slots as he dared, shielding it from the wind. He managed to capture several minutes of audio on nights when the singing was clearly audible to his own ears. But later, listening back in the harsh, unforgiving light of day, the playback revealed only the normal ambient street noise – the distant whine of traffic on the freeway, the hum of electrical transformers, the sighing of the wind – and perhaps, if he strained his ears and boosted the volume to distortion, a faint, ambiguous, low-frequency hum where the clear, mournful singing should have been. It was as if the sound deliberately refused to be captured by technology, existing only subjectively, transiently, for the listener present in that specific moment, in that specific liminal place between the surface world and the darkness below.
Curiosity slowly curdled into a consuming obsession. Leo found himself thinking about the singing drain constantly, the haunting, wordless melody replaying in his mind during his off hours, interfering with his sleep, making him jumpy and distracted. He started spending his breaks and days off at the downtown public library, poring over local history archives, digitized newspaper records, and old city planning maps, focusing his research on the specific area around Elm and Watt streets. He confirmed its proximity to a section of the Mahoning River with a grim history, notorious for numerous drownings over the decades – industrial accidents, tragic suicides, and perhaps even unsolved disappearances masked as accidents. He learned more about the old, sprawling textile mill nearby, now partially collapsed and heavily overgrown with invasive vines; its industrial runoff, likely containing harsh dyes, solvents, and other chemicals, had indeed flowed directly into the storm drains in this vicinity for decades before stricter environmental regulations were enacted and enforced (or ignored). Digging deeper into digitized newspaper archives from the 1930s, he found several brief, scattered articles mentioning the sudden, unexplained disappearance of a young woman, a mill worker named Clara Nowak. She was last seen walking home alone near the river after finishing her late shift at the textile mill. Her body was never found, despite searches. An interview published years later with a surviving relative mentioned, almost as an aside, that Clara had possessed a beautiful singing voice and had loved to sing, often humming traditional folk melodies to herself while she worked the looms.
Could it be her? A trapped spirit, her sorrow and her song imprinted on the location, a psychic echo endlessly reverberating through the dark, wet drains connected to the river where she possibly met her end? Or was it something else entirely? Something non-human, perhaps ancient and elemental, drawn to the city"s hidden waterways, using the labyrinthine drain network as its domain, its hunting ground, mimicking human sounds, specifically sounds of sorrow and vulnerability, to lure unsuspecting prey into its subterranean realm?
One particularly damp, foggy night, about a month after he first heard the singing, it was different. It was still the same haunting, mournful melody, instantly recognizable, but it sounded significantly closer, clearer, less distorted by distance and echo, as if the source had physically moved much nearer to the surface grate just beneath his feet. And beneath the wordless tune, Leo heard something new, something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end – faint whispering. Indistinct words at first, seeming to swirl around the melody like eddies in dark water, unintelligible susurrations. Then, chillingly, the whispers seemed to coalesce, focusing, becoming clearer, seeming to call his name, weaving themselves into his consciousness. "Leo… Leee-ooo… listen… come down… come down here… so lonely… so cold…"
The pull was immediate, powerful, undeniable, bypassing rational thought and hitting him on a primal, emotional level. An irrational, overwhelming desire surged through him – a profound need to get closer, to lift the heavy iron grate, to descend into the darkness below, to see the source of the voice, to understand its profound sorrow, to offer comfort. He felt a strange, overwhelming empathy for the singing voice, a deep, illogical longing to connect with it, to join it, to alleviate its perceived loneliness. He found himself kneeling by the drain before he consciously decided to, the cold, patterned iron pressing painfully against his knees through his work pants, peering intently into the absolute blackness below the grate. The air rising from the opening was colder than the surrounding night, carrying a thick, complex, foul smell of damp earth, decaying organic matter, stagnant water, raw sewage, and the unmistakable sharp, metallic tang of the polluted river.
He knew, on a detached, rational level somewhere in the back of his mind, that entering the storm drain system was utterly insane. The dangers were numerous, varied, and potentially lethal: toxic or explosive gases like methane or hydrogen sulfide accumulating in the confined spaces; the ever-present risk of sudden, violent flash floods after a heavy rain miles away; the high probability of getting hopelessly lost in the disorienting, unmapped maze-like tunnels beneath the city – not to mention the completely unknown nature of whatever, or whoever, was making the sounds that were currently calling his name. But the obsession, now amplified exponentially by the direct, personal whispers and the haunting, seductive allure of the melody, gnawed at him, silencing his fear, overriding his common sense, pushing him towards the abyss.
He began to prepare, methodically, almost automatically, as if acting under suggestion. Over the next few days, during his off hours, he acquired the necessary equipment: a powerful, waterproof, industrial-grade flashlight with multiple extra batteries; a heavy-duty steel crowbar, long enough to provide sufficient leverage for the massive drain grate; and a sturdy, fifty-foot length of braided climbing rope, rated for several hundred pounds. He waited impatiently for a dry spell, checking the weather forecast obsessively, ensuring the drains would be relatively empty of flowing water. Telling himself repeatedly, mantra-like, that he was just going to look, just lower the flashlight for a better view from the safety of the street, just satisfy his consuming curiosity once and for all, he returned to the Elm Street drain late one moonless night after his sanitation shift was over, parking the truck further down the block this time, approaching the grate on foot.
The singing started almost as soon as he knelt beside the drain, louder this time than ever before, more insistent, almost demanding, the melody seeming to vibrate in the very air around him. The whispers were clearer too, seeming to swirl around his head, insidious and persuasive. Closer, Leo… come closer now… lift the gate… find the source… understand the sorrow… you can help… join the song… With trembling hands, adrenaline singing in his veins, a strange mix of terror and exhilaration flooding his system, he wedged the hardened tip of the crowbar into the narrow gap between the iron grate and its concrete housing. He strained, putting his full weight into it, leveraging the heavy bar. With a grating, protesting screech of metal on concrete that echoed loudly in the pre-dawn stillness, the massive iron cover lifted slightly, then tilted precariously, allowing him to slide it partially open, revealing the dark, gaping maw of the drain shaft – a vertical tunnel lined with old, slime-coated bricks, dropping into utter, impenetrable blackness.
He shone the powerful flashlight beam down into the shaft. The intense white light cut through the darkness like a knife, revealing a narrow, brick-lined channel at the bottom, perhaps ten or twelve feet below street level. A small trickle of dark, foul-smelling water flowed sluggishly through the channel towards the river. The brick walls of the shaft were slick with grime, patches of dark algae, and unsettlingly pale, stringy fungi clinging like morbid decorations. The singing seemed to come from further down the horizontal tunnel extending from the bottom of the shaft, its source still hidden from view, echoing strangely, amplified by the confined space.
He shouldn"t do this. He absolutely should not do this. Every rational thought remaining in his mind, every instinct for self-preservation honed by years of navigating a dangerous world, screamed at him to stop, to close the heavy grate, to walk away, run away, drive away and never come back. But the whispers were relentless, insidious, weaving themselves through the haunting melody, overriding his fear, promising understanding, connection, release. Closer, Leo… just a little closer now… find the source… understand… you can help… you belong down here…
He secured one end of the rope firmly around the thickest part of the truck"s heavy rear bumper parked nearby, tested the knot obsessively, compulsively, then carefully lowered the coiled rope down into the dark opening. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, steeling himself against the rising tide of fear and the foul stench rising from below, he swung his legs over the edge and began the descent, gripping the rough, reassuring texture of the rope, his heavy work boots finding precarious purchase on the uneven, slime-coated brickwork of the shaft wall. The air grew immediately colder, fouler, thick with the cloying smell of decay, chemicals, and something else, something indescribably organic and wrong. The singing surrounded him now, seeming to emanate from the very walls of the shaft, vibrating through the bricks, through the rope clutched in his hands, resonating deep within his bones. He reached the bottom, his boots splashing into the shallow, ankle-deep layer of foul-smelling water covering the channel floor.
He stood there for a moment, disoriented, letting his eyes adjust to the oppressive darkness beyond the flashlight"s beam, sweeping the light around. He was in a cylindrical brick tunnel, perhaps five feet high, forcing him to stoop slightly. Water trickled slowly past his feet, flowing in the direction of the river. He shone the light down the tunnel in the direction the singing seemed strongest. The brickwork here was clearly very old, crumbling in places, patched here and there with newer, rough concrete. Strange, pale, stringy fungi, some resembling deformed hands, clung to the damp walls like grotesque, subterranean decorations. He took a few hesitant steps forward, the mournful melody acting like an invisible, irresistible tether, pulling him deeper into the city"s dark, hidden, forgotten bowels.
As he moved further into the tunnel, perhaps twenty or thirty yards from the bottom of the access shaft, the character of the singing began to change subtly, insidiously. The mournful, sorrowful quality lessened, replaced by something discordant, unsettling, almost mocking in its tone. The whispers grew louder, more chaotic, overlapping, speaking fragments of nonsense words and chilling, disjointed phrases that seemed to scrape directly against his sanity: "River takes… always takes… cold embrace… dark water waits… join the song… down below… forever below… become the voice…"
He rounded a slight bend in the tunnel, and the flashlight beam fell directly, starkly, on something that made him freeze in mid-step, his breath catching in his throat, his blood running cold with utter, paralyzing horror. It wasn"t a person. It wasn"t an animal. Clinging to the curved brick wall, concentrated like a monstrous tumor around the opening where a smaller, subsidiary pipe fed into the main drainage channel, was a grotesque, pulsating mass of pale, grayish, fungal-like growth. It was vaguely, disturbingly shaped like a distorted human torso and head, though featureless, eyeless, monstrously organic. Within the bulbous "head" portion, a dark, vertical, slit-like opening pulsed rhythmically, obscenely, in time with the horrible, distorted singing that emanated directly from it. Thick, slimy, rope-like tendrils of the growth spread out from the central mass like cancerous roots, extending into the connecting pipe (which likely led towards the river, its ultimate source?), and also creeping visibly along the walls of the main tunnel towards him, inching closer even as he watched.
It wasn"t a spirit. It wasn"t Clara Nowak"s ghost trapped in the drains. It was something living down here, something monstrous, fungal, perhaps alien or profoundly mutated, mimicking human sounds, specifically sounds of sorrow and loneliness, perhaps feeding on the decay, the pollution, and the lingering psychic residue of tragedy and death associated with the river and the city above. A lure. A predator perfectly adapted to the darkness beneath the city streets.
The singing stopped abruptly, cutting off mid-note. The whispers ceased instantly, leaving a ringing silence in his ears. The mass on the wall seemed to quiver, to contract upon itself. A low, rapid, sharp clicking sound started, chitinous and dry, echoing unnervingly, amplified in the confined space of the tunnel. Leo felt a primal, paralyzing terror grip him, rooting him to the spot. He had found the source, and it was aware of him. It had lured him in, and now it knew he was there.
He broke free from the paralysis, instinct taking over. He turned to run, stumbling blindly back the way he came through the shallow, filthy water, slipping on the slime-coated bricks. The clicking grew louder, closer, seeming to come from multiple directions now – not just from the main mass behind him, but also echoing from within the connecting pipes along the tunnel walls. He risked a single, horrified glance back over his shoulder. The central mass on the wall was detaching itself, unfolding, revealing something vaguely humanoid in shape but hideously wrong, with too many long, thin, multi-jointed limbs ending in sharp claws scrabbling for purchase on the slick bricks. And from the openings of other, smaller connecting pipes along the tunnel walls, smaller, similar pale shapes were emerging, skittering rapidly into the main channel, converging on his position.
He reached the bottom of the access shaft, fumbling frantically in the darkness for the dangling rope, his lungs burning, panic clouding his vision. The clicking was right below him now, echoing deafeningly up the shaft. He grabbed the rope, hauling himself up hand over hand, his muscles screaming with exertion and pure terror. He felt something cold, wet, and indescribably slimy brush against his dangling leg, trying to gain purchase. He kicked out frantically, blindly, pulling himself desperately over the edge, collapsing onto the cold, blessedly solid pavement of the street above.
With the last dregs of his strength, fueled by adrenaline, he lunged for the heavy iron grate, dragging it, straining, slamming it back into place over the opening with a deafening clang just as a pale, multi-jointed, wickedly claw-tipped limb reached the opening from below, scrabbling futilely against the iron bars for a brief moment before retreating back into the darkness.
Leo scrambled back to his truck, not daring to look back at the drain, fumbling with the keys, starting the engine with violently shaking hands. He drove away as fast as the lumbering vehicle could possibly go, running red lights, not stopping until he was miles away, parked under the bright, sterile lights of a 24-hour gas station, shaking uncontrollably, the horrifying image of the fungal entity and the sound of the clicking burned indelibly into his brain.
He never went near the Elm Street drain again. He quit his sanitation job the very next day, offering no explanation beyond vague "personal reasons." He moved out of his apartment near the river shortly after.
But he couldn"t escape the sounds. He started hearing the faint, mournful singing echoing in the plumbing of his new apartment building late at night, seemingly coming from the drains in the sink and shower. He heard indistinct whispers in the hiss of the shower spray, in the static between radio stations, in the sighing of the wind outside his window. The city"s undersong, the voice of the thing in the drain, had followed him, latched onto his psyche, a permanent echo in his mind.
Leo knows what lurks beneath Youngstown"s streets, an alien intelligence or a monstrous mutation, spawned from pollution and neglect, fed by the river"s toxic legacy, using the dark, hidden network of drains as its veins, singing its sorrowful, deadly song to lure the lonely, the curious, the lost. He knows that sometimes, when you listen too closely to the city"s hidden voice, when you try too hard to understand its deepest sorrows, you might hear something truly monstrous calling your name, calling you down into the dark, waiting patiently to make you part of its eternal, hungry song.