A Perfectly Typical Stay at a Rural Maine Hostel
The temperature and humidity continued to climb and you could see the water trying to evaporate off the road, but just hanging there, making for dense, wet air. It felt gross. I was only about sixty miles into the day when I saw a sign for a youth hostel a few miles up the road in the little town of Bethel, ME. I felt like I should cover more miles, but I also felt like sitting in an air-conditioned room. As I pulled up to the front porch and leaned my bike against a railing, a large, young lady got out of a car that was parked in front and asked me if I needed something. It wasn’t apparent if she worked there, but I asked about the nightly rate anyway. Instead of answering, she led me inside the building, not saying anything until we’d arrived in a back room where a makeshift desk was located. I thought this exchange was weird, but for $22, cheaper than the last campground I’d paid for, I decided I could deal with a little bit of weird.
Upon swiping my credit card, she recited a very lengthy set of house rules, which I half listened to but figured they didn’t really apply to me because I had no intention of using the common areas of the house. The young lady showed me my room, which included two sets of bunk beds, and gave me the disclaimer that while I was the only person in this room now, if others arrived, the other beds would be filled before they started putting people in individual rooms. I wasn’t sure I fully understood the logic of this policy, but I also assumed that Bethel wasn’t exactly a backpacking destination and the chances of anybody else showing up were pretty slim.
“Can I bring my bike inside?” I asked.
“It won’t fit in your room,” She replied, glancing around at the small space.
“It doesn’t have to be in my room,” I clarified, “Anywhere indoors, like the community room.”
She was hesitant to agree, but eventually said, “Sure. But be careful not to leave scuff marks on the walls. We will charge you for damages.” I assured her I’d be careful.
The tour continued down another hallway, where I discovered I wasn’t the lone guest. There were two other occupied rooms. I didn’t know if it’s customary to force introductions, but that’s what happened. In the first room I met an elderly couple and a middle-aged man, who they introduced as their son. I was a bit taken aback by their age at first. They definitely didn’t fit the image I had of typical hostel users, but I guess in the middle of rural Maine this wasn’t exactly a typical hostel. They were from Pennsylvania and were on a road trip to Boston. Having spent so much time over the past couple months staring at maps, specifically of the East Coast, I was concerned for their navigation skills. Bethel was nowhere near Boston. I assumed they were either happily lost or happily detoured. Either way, they seemed pleased with their trip. I wished them luck and we moved on to the next room.
A guy in his late thirties stopped playing his acoustic guitar just long enough to look up and acknowledge that we had in fact interrupted. This room was confusing because there were posters on the wall and other decorations that led me to believe this guy wasn’t just passing through. Without saying much, he went right back to his guitar and we slowly backed out. For the rest of the night, there was a constant, faint sound of about six different songs coming from his room. I appreciated his dedication to really getting those nailed down, but it didn’t happen during my stay.
I was deposited back in my room and told that she’d let me get to my things. I took a second to bring my bike inside and get my clothing bags out of the BOB. Nothing sounded better to me than a shower, but I realized I didn’t know where they were. The shower room wasn’t part of the tour. I immediately got a bit concerned—maybe the room was so cheap because they didn’t have a shower—but I decided to find the girl and ask before I started searching the outside of the building for a water hose. I did a lap of all the rooms and hallways and couldn’t locate her. There was a chain across the bottom of the stairs with a sign that read Staff Only. I assumed she was up there, so I milled about a bit waiting for her to reappear. From out of nowhere, a voice came from behind me, “Everything ok?”. Startled, I spun around and discovered a guy who appeared to be about the same age as the girl who checked me in. I was happy to have someone offer me help, but I couldn’t help but focus on his sleeveless, black mesh shirt. It took me longer than it should have to remember that I was just trying to find the shower. When I finally got it out, his response was as equally confusing as his shirt, “I’ll have to inquire with, the Lady of the House,” he said without a bit of sarcasm, but a lot of emphasis on this Victorian era title.
“Um…okay?” I stammered. I was so confused that my brain started running recalculations on whether I still thought the amount of weird I was being exposed to was worth the $22 I paid. As I was about to conclude that, yes, it’s still worth it, he once again reappeared and informed me “the Lady of the House has instructed me to show you the bathroom.” I didn’t have any idea what this guy's relationship to this place was. Did he work here? Was he the boyfriend? A brother? None of it was apparent and his choice of title, Lady of the House, just confused things more. I also couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t just show me the bathroom without first asking permission. He opened a door that was, of course, there the entire time and I now realized that subconsciously this place was playing tricks on me. I got my things, and showered.
Finally, it was late enough to try to go to sleep. It was still well before quiet hours, but when I closed the door to the room, the eerie silence was all I could hear. I knew the guitar guy was still trying to master one of his six songs, but I could no longer hear it. Behind one of the beds, I noticed a window I hadn’t paid much attention to before. When I looked out I discovered a shed-like addition that had been built onto the side of the house and inside were stacks upon stacks of old mattresses leaning against each other in a chaos of vertical patterns.
Clearly a hostel or hotel would occasionally have to replace a mattress, but I’d watched enough horror movies to immediately start connecting some pretty ridiculous dots for why my room was so quiet. If no sound was getting in, could sound escape? Was this an elaborate soundproofing system for the guy in the mesh shirt to murder me in my sleep? What about the guitar guy who hadn’t left his decorated room in a place that was supposed to be temporary housing? Why was an elderly couple on their way to Boston staying here, almost 200 miles north of their destination? My logical brain tried to quiet these thoughts. My primal brain, working on adrenaline and survival instincts, was telling me to pack and get the fuck out of there. The two sides going back and forth.
“Everything’s fine. They just store mattresses because they use mattresses. Relax.”
“Fuck that! Why would you build a storage shed in a place that covers a window? Those mattresses are 100 percent being used as soundproofing. You are going to die.”
“Nobody is going to kill you. Even if one of the people you think might do it, there are too many other people here to deal with. The loose ends of it all would be practically impossible to tie up. That girl introduced you to every guest staying. That’s not a strategy of people who want to murder you.”
“You are going to die. Get out of here.”
“Where would I go?”
“Who cares. Not dying is better than dying.”
Eventually, exhaustion won and I reluctantly drifted off to sleep.
When my alarm went off at 6 a.m., instead of feeling annoyed at the beeps, I was overwhelmed with relief. It meant nobody had murdered me in my sleep and all of my worries from the night before were for nothing. While I was thrilled to be alive, I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth so I packed quickly and quietly to get out of there without anybody realizing I had left. I would deal with coffee down the road.
