SAPPHIRE AND STEEL: Traitor's Gate

Traitor's Gate: Part 1

Tess walked down Traitors Lane just as she did every day on her way to and from work. She'd often wondered how the place had got its name. Who had been the traitor and what great betrayal had been committed here once upon a time? Some said the field at the top of Traitors Lane was haunted. In its history, the place had certainly seen plenty of life and, who knows, perhaps plenty of death. Over the years it had been a farm, a café, even a petrol station... all gone now. Abandoned and neglected, the field was nothing but a collection of crumbling, weed-infested old buildings. The wind was getting up; Tess could hear it whispering in the trees. It almost sounded like words. She stopped for a moment and listened. 'Ssssssssssssss...' was all that she could make out. 'Sssssss...'

Concrete crumbled under her feet as she went. There were all kinds of rubbish lying around, most of it not more than thirty or forty years old. Old pumps remained from when a petrol station had stood here. 'Castrol GTX' was emblazoned across metal fitments in large, faded letters. 'India Rubber. Because you drive every day'. Much of the relics were rusted but some had survived by huddling near what was left of the main station building, Most of the windows had long since lost their glass and a door hung forlornly on the last of its hinges. Foliage grew from every gap, every crack in the rubble. Large trees loomed above, undulating in the growing wind. 'Ssssssssss,' they hissed. For a second, Tess thought she heard a word. 'Pleassssssssssse...'

Please what? She thought the words in her head rather than speaking them aloud. What is it you're asking for?

'Ssssssssssss...' was the only reply.

Walking on, she crossed a part of the field where the oddments scattered around seemed older; fragments of pottery, rusted knives and forks, shattered bottles and disembodied chair legs or table tops. Further down there were the remains of what might once have been hen coops and chicken runs, tangled masses of rusty wire.

When she first saw the man, she thought he was just another bit twisted shrubbery. As she approached, she made out his shape. Tall and slim, he wore a brimmed hat over thick, wavy hair. His shirt and tie were smart and yet he looked more rumpled than smart. 'Afternoon', he called with a big, sad smile. 'Quite a place, uh? I guess you're too young to remember anything ever being built here.'

'My mum remembers a petrol station.'

'Petrol?' The man looked off into the distance. 'Ah yes. A service station. Some kind of halfway point'.

Tess started to move away.

'Wonder why they've not used it for anything for so long,' the man went on. He was well-spoken, didn't sound like he was a local.

'Don't know. People reckon it's haunted.'

'Really? What about you? You seen any ghosts?'

In fact, Tess had seen figures on the field but she didn't want to admit to a total stranger that she thought they may have been ghosts. She'd seen a man and a woman over near the old petrol pumps, only ever for a fraction of a second. One instant there would be someone there but by the time she had turned to look properly... gone. And she'd heard voices. She'd heard words spoken amongst the old tyres and broken plastic canisters. Words like 'pleasssssse' and 'lisssssssten'. But then maybe it had just been shadows on walls or breezes in trees.

To change the subject, she asked the man what brought him to the area.

'I'm trying to find a couple of friends of mine, actually. We lost touch a few years ago. In all honesty we didn't part on such good terms... you know how these things can happen.'

Tess advised him to check the internet as almost everything and everyone was on the internet in some form these days. 'My mum always says, if you lose something, think back to the last place you remember seeing it and you'll probably find that's where it is.'