Distant Echoes
A Lovecraftian tale of disappearance and dissonance.
It was a council initiative back during the pandemic’s most serious year that decided to mount the speakers along the remote windswept coastal path.
Initially it was about social distancing, keeping your 2 metres away and suchlike, but soon moved on to advising dog walkers to clean up after their pets as the initial fear of dangerous social interaction on a remote footpath gradually subsided.
Conventional signs, naturally, would not suffice when a suitably technological (and eye-wateringly expensive) solution was found and was thusly actioned and quickly delivered.
That it also irritated walkers into abject fright by jump scaring them during their leisurely walks with barked orders when they got within range of the infrared sensors was a bonus for the council whose employees never walked the path themselves, of course.
As usual with any kind of social irritant such as billboards, illuminated signs, web site ads, or tired decades old audio messages on buses and trains the speakers themselves were first tolerated and then eventually ignored by the locals to the point where they effectively became just background noise.
Visitors though, were always taken aback at the affront to their holiday walks and seldom returned after the first time or…
