HARROW

I am a township. I have cobblestone streets and Victorian porches painted in colors that don't quite match any official palette. I have a boardwalk, a cemetery older than the country I'm in, and live oaks so thick with Spanish moss you forget which way is up. I am walkable. I am charming. I am not what you think I am.

Seventy percent of my residents file their taxes, attend PTA meetings, and believe — or choose to believe — that the strange hum from Oscura Cemetery is just old pipes. The other thirty percent are something else entirely. Some of them run the grocery. One tends the bar. A few of them sit on the town council. They can usually recognize each other on sight, that prickle at the back of the skull, but they don't always know what the other one is. That's part of the fun.

I keep my secrets the way the marsh keeps the tide — patient, inevitable, and not especially interested in your comfort. But I'm not cruel. I'm a small town. I love gossip. I love curiosity. I will absolutely let you wander into the wildlife refuge at dusk if that's what you've decided to do with your evening. Some of my best residents started that way.

If you're here to investigate the odd happenings around town, deduce whether your neighbor is something other than human, romance someone with too-sharp teeth, hunt the things that go bump, or just try to renew your car registration on a GeoCities page that won't stop blinking — you're in the right place. Answer the census. Walk the boardwalk. Mind the moss. And whatever you do, don't ignore the letters.