Signal Lost
Format: Radio play scene
Approx. length: 1-3 minutes
Original audition scene

RADIO PLAY FORMAT

SFX: Wind over open moorland. A radio crackles.

TESS
Control, this is Unit Four. Visibility is down to nothing. I’m at the north marker.

RADIO - CONTROL
Copy, Unit Four. Return to vehicle.

TESS
I can’t.

CONTROL
Repeat?

TESS
There’s a light ahead.

CONTROL
There are no structures north of your position.

SFX: A distant bell. Slow, irregular.

TESS
Then someone forgot to tell the bell.

CONTROL
Unit Four, do not proceed.

TESS
It’s not proceeding if it’s coming closer.

SFX: Footsteps in wet grass. Tess breathes harder.

CONTROL
Describe the light.

TESS
Lantern. Old-fashioned. Like a railway lamp.

CONTROL
There has never been a railway on that moor.

TESS
Control, I can hear a train.

SFX: Far-off steam whistle, impossibly close.

CONTROL
Unit Four, listen carefully. Put your radio on the ground and step away from the track.

TESS
What track?

SFX: Metal rails humming beneath wind.

TESS
Control.

CONTROL
Step away now.

TESS
There’s a child on the line.

SFX: Radio static surges.

CONTROL
Tess, there is no child. That’s how it stops you.

SFX: Train roar. Cut to silence.
