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.

The shape in the gap hesitated. Then the door eased shut, softly, the way you close a door when you do not want to be heard, and the key turned again, locking it, and footsteps went away down the corridor. Not running. Walking. Casual. Which was worse.

I did not turn on the light. I got up in the dark, dragged the one wooden chair over, and wedged its back under the knob, then piled my pack on the seat for weight, and I sat against the far wall with my shoes on and my passport in my hand and I watched that door until the window went grey. Whoever had the key had a key. Reception had a key. I did not know who I had said a stranger name to earlier, only that someone had used a working key on my door at four in the morning and stood there deciding.

The moment there was light I left. I did not check out at the desk, I did not want to see that friendly man face, I just walked out the side entrance into the empty street with everything on my back. There were no buses that early and no taxis and I did not want to stand still, so when a delivery van slowed at the corner and the woman driving it saw my face and asked if I was alright, I asked which way she was going and got in. She drove me two towns over to the rail junction and did not ask why, and I have thought about her kindness a hundred times since.

I never reported it, because what would I say. The door opened, then it closed. But I know what I saw, and I know why I said a name that was not real, and I will do it again every single time.