Someone Had a Key to My Room and It Was Not Me

I had booked the Rosa Vieja in Cantelmo because it was cheap, central, and had a private room, which after a week of dorms felt like luxury. The man who checked me in was friendly in a way I did not think about at the time, chatty, complimentary, asking where I was going next and whether I was travelling alone. I said I was meeting people. I was not. That small lie, I think now, is one of the things that kept me safe.

The room was fine. A bed, a window onto an airshaft, a door with a knob lock and a flimsy chain. I noticed the chain because the little screws holding it were barely gripping the frame, but I told myself it was fine, I latched it anyway, and I slept.

I woke because of the sound. It is a specific sound, a key going into a lock in the dark, and your body knows it before your mind does. I lay frozen and heard the knob turn, heard the mechanism give, and watched the door swing inward until the chain snapped taut with a small tap. Through the gap, in the light from the corridor, a shape. A person, standing very still, not knocking, not announcing anything, just looking into the dark of my room through a four inch gap held by three loose screws.

I have never been so awake. I did the only thing I could think of. I made my voice as low and calm and loud as I could and I said, to the empty room, is someone at the door, as if speaking to a companion in the bed beside me. Then I said a name, a man name, loudly, get up, someone is at the door. And I moved fast and heavy, thumping my feet on the floor so it sounded like two people.