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One clap. One smile. One town turned into a mouth.
Laurel Harbor is the kind of coastal place where the municipal clock minds its manners and people leave soup on each other's porches. Then a "belonging" app called Neighbor arrives with friendly red arcs and gentle drills. Sirens practice a laugh that isn't funny. Mirrors sweat under burlap. And doors begin to feel like something you're supposed to perform.
Riley tends bar at 312 and keeps her hand on a door she won't open-because grief is in the room with her, and because something under the pier has started talking like a neighbor. It promises help. It promises closure. It only needs the town to line up House Left and House Right and let itself be counted.
When "Smile Audits," "Gesture Day," and a single communal Release clap escalate into a blackout and a final parade, Laurel Harbor learns the rules of this new horror: masks that won't come off, routes that want to become a face, and a laugh that tries to open the boards like a mouth. Riley, a stubborn librarian, a nurse with a cart, a pair of carpenters, and a class of kids who count primes instead of cues fight back with the only tools that work-onions, static, elbows, and the word no said like a prayer.
Unsettling, intimate, and fiercely human, this is small-town horror about consent, community, and the quiet defiance of choosing house over spectacle. After Laughing Painted Faces, you'll never trust a "gentle" announcement-or a friendly little red smile-again.
