HauntedHotel Entry 27: Death Will Find Me Asleep

This is not a story about a hotel room; there would be no point telling you about the room. If you are reading this then you’re already in it, and if you’re already in it, you’re already dead. So this letter, this note, is how I ended up in the place where you now stand. It’s a story about hindsight and regret, and I’m certain you can relate.

You might have heard about room 101C before tonight, if you hadn’t then maybe you don’t feel as foolish as I do right now. You see I heard about this room the same night I heard about Madam Koi Koi - who must have taken that “iwe kiko” song to heart in her younger years. I digress. It was an old wives’ tale, or a young school boy’s. It was Femi who told it to me, Femi who my father had told me was a bad influence and would never amount to anything. Femi who Miss Esang, our class teacher insisted was a ‘lemon’. I liked lemons at the time, and I liked Femi, but something in her tone told me it wasn’t a compliment.

That night, there was a group of us gathered swapping ghost stories, half covered by our blankets, all the better to hide our involuntary shivers. It was after lights out and the cracked paint, barely illuminated by the slivers of light filtering through the louvre blades, set the scene for our little night of horrors in Federal Government Boy’s College, Ogbomosho. “See ehn”, Femi began, his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper “never ever sleep in a room with the number 101C”. He paused to look around, almost triumphantly, we were silent. “They said that if you sleep in any room with the number 101C, you will never wake up and that nobody will find you again”, again there was a dramatic pause, like he expected us to be impressed. More silence. “It’s true, see, they said that the room can just appear anywhere and if you sleep inside, fiam, the end.”

“If everybody that sleeps there dies how does anybody know that everyone that sleeps there dies?” Even though my question was innocent, everyone in the room instantly seized on what seemed to be the perfect logic of it and the mob of unimpressed boys turned on Femi. “Oya answer na, who is they and how do they know?” He just stared at me, silent and unblinking, until the jeering died down somewhat and someone else started to tell the story of “shift for me.”

Last night when I arrived here, I didn’t notice the ‘C’ beside the 101 on the plastic key holder the receptionist handed me. I noticed that there was no smile to match her “Welcome Sir, it is our pleasure to have you” and that, even though the sign outside promised free Wifi, the router plugged in behind the desk was turned off, but somehow I did not notice that, although the receipt read Room 101, the key holder had an extra character etched in behind the digits. You probably didn’t notice either. I would like to think that if I had noticed, I would have asked for a different room, but I probably wouldn’t have remembered Femi or his story. You see, I stopped at Room 101 on the way to this one, I tried my key and it didn’t work, I looked down the hall and saw what I thought was a second Room 101, tried my key and it worked. Before I crossed the threshold, I tweeted about Nigerian inefficiency and how nobody in the hotel had realized that the rooms were mis-numbered, or thought to fix it, or both. Those were my last words to the living, 140 characters expressing the Nigerian struggle against bad service, aluta continua.

In the room, the first clue I got that something was wrong was the little cardboard box that I’m sure you found this letter in. When I saw it, the item at the top was a purple neck tie, for you it must have been this letter. Beneath the purple tie, when I looked in my box, was a crumpled bra, beneath that a well-worn leather wrist watch. I don’t have to tell you what else, you have the box with you. I rifled through the box, picking out item after item. I wasn’t halfway through it before I concluded that all these items couldn’t possibly belong to the same person/couple. My letter should save you the trouble of figuring that out for yourself, you’re welcome. It shouldn’t take you too long anyway, many of the items have little pieces of hotel memorabilia attached, and none of them are for the hotel I am in.

I got up to call the reception, to complain about the box of lost and found items forgotten in my room, I would have mentioned the mis-numbered rooms as well if I had found the phone. I remember the black Panasonic desk phone that is ubiquitous in establishments like this one, as familiar to hotel rooms as the Gideon’s New Testament Bible in the drawer next to the bed. I saw the phone when I walked in the room. I tossed the key beside it almost immediately after, now, the only thing on the bedside table was the key. I moved towards the bedside table, even though I knew the desk phone couldn’t possibly have fallen behind it, and this time, when I was close enough to the key holder to reach out and touch it, I noticed the C.

Room 101C.

It was then that the little things came into focus. The mis-numbered rooms, the bellboy who pointed me in the direction of my room instead of escorting me to it, the cardboard box, what it means and Femi. It was like what I imagine it feels like when your life flashes before your eyes. I haven’t had that happen yet, but I don’t think it’d be long for either of us. Hindsight didn’t just reveal that Femi’s myth wasn’t a myth, I realised something else Femi would have told us if he had known; everyone who sleeps in Room 101C leaves something behind. Just one thing, it seems by the contents of the box I plan to leave this letter in. This will be my one thing.

The clarity was so forceful I stepped backwards, I turned to find the door, to run, but it wasn’t there. I looked back at the bedside table, the key was gone too. I was trapped in here, all four walls were the blank white and cream, divided down the middle by an almost carefully moulded plaster-of-paris horizontal line, of a hotel too expensive to be cheap but too cheap to be luxurious. Looking around right now, I don’t remember on which wall the window that had looked out onto the sea of tin roofs Ibadan was famous for, had been when I walked in the room. I don’t even remember which wall had the door. They’re all the same now, blank and empty.

You just looked back, there’s no door is there? And you can’t find the key either. Well, I hate to say I told you so. I think the worst part of this is the silence. There has not been a sound in this room since the keys disappeared. The wardrobe is full of other cardboard boxes, they all hold same potpourri of forgotten items, an eclectic mix of personal items, gadgets, articles of clothing and hotel memorabilia; remainders of the dreams aborted in this room, I wouldn’t check if I were you. It scared me to see how many things have been left behind, to think how many people have slept here.

Don’t scream, I tried that. Phone calls will not connect, neither will the internet. Sorry. I know how you feel, to be alone in this way, suffocating under the crushing weight of the knowledge that no one is coming, that your solitude will not end. It feels almost like I’m suspended, cut off somehow, I don’t know how to explain it but I’m sure you understand.

It’s been more than a few hours, I think it should be morning by now, my watch stopped working at about the same time everything else went terribly wrong so I can’t tell, yes, even the ones on my computer and my phones. You checked those too didn’t you?

It makes you sleepy, the silence, but I’m struggling to not sleep. ‘To not sleep’ or ‘not too sleep’? Which is it? It doesn’t matter does it? Nothing does. I keep thinking that if I don’t fall asleep in room 101C, I’ll get to leave. Hope is a terrible thing. I’m writing this letter partly to make this a bit easier for you, partly to keep myself awake for a little while longer. Even a minute more, or five. I don’t know how I know, but I know that when I close my eyes it will be for the last time.

Now I’m thinking about Femi, I can almost see him staring at me now, silent and unblinking. I wish I had believed him, or remembered his story when I walked into the hotel last night, or hadn’t asked that question when I did. I’m wondering if he ever amounted to anything. If my father was as wrong about him as we were about his story. If nothing else, he’s alive, he must be. No matter what he’s doing and who he is, he isn’t here right now drowning in his regrets and writing a letter no one will ever read on the back of his shirt in blood.

I give up.

Death will find me asleep in Room 101C.

• Written by Oladimeji Ojo