A short time after my arrival on Bequia I went snorkelling off the reef at Princess Margaret Beach. I was thrilled by the beautifully colored reef fish and delicate anemones as well as the pristine white sand and clear water. The beach was not far from where I was living with my sister and brother-in-law at Friendship Gap, a trek up the goa t path to the Lower Bay Road would take me home.
I was walking towards Friendship that afternoon when I heard some-one calling my name. Looking up, I saw Mac sitting on the edge of a balcony and he was beckoning to me. I had met Mac when he dropped in to visit Mary and Dave and was impressed by how handsome he was – kind of like a young Harry Belafonte! Having no pressing agenda that afternoon I climbed the steps and joined him on the porch.
Mac opened his fridge and offered me a drink, the choices being red wine, white wine or rose. He had just returned from Martinique and had stocked up on French goodies. He opened a bottle of rose and we sat and chatted as the afternoon sun waned. Mac then rolled a fat joint and lit it, taking for granted that I was comfortable with smoking weed. Well, I had never been stoned before and figured a few little puffs wouldn’t hurt.
Sheesh! That stuff paralyzed me! My mouth turned to cotton, making me gulp the rose greedily. My tongue was so thick in my mouth that I couldn’t seem to speak properly and my brain was churning so slowly I had nothing to say anyway. I knew it was time to leave but my legs felt like lead and my bottom was glued to the chair. A beautiful blonde amazon of a woman had arrived and she was obviously waiting for me to make my departure.
I started to walk home. It was beginning to get dark, and looking up I could see that the trees had joined to form an arch over me. It seemed to take an eternity but I finally got to the house, wishing that Dave and Mary had not gone away for the week-end. I was VERY stoned and it wasn’t wearing off in a hurry!
Once inside I locked the door and went to lie down, figuring that was probably the smartest thing to do. Every sound seemed magnified, a cricket’s chirping had me leaping out of my skin and the noise from the tree frogs was incredibly amplified. I could hear a strange banging too, and it took a while for me to realize that someone was knocking at the door. I had left the outside light on and could see a figure on the porch so I cautiously opened the door. And screamed! I screamed and slammed the door on the hallucination standing on the front porch. It was a mummy wrapped in bandages with pink eyes and oozing sores, obviously a sight conjured up by the marijuana.
I awoke the next morning feeling surprisingly normal and considered what had happened the night before. Obviously the island weed was not something I would be indulging in again anytime soon, such lack of control topped by hallucinations was not for me.
Two weeks later as I was walking to school I saw the mummy again. To my deep (to this day!) embarrassment I realized that what I had taken for a drug-induced hallucination was a human being, a local albino lady. She had come to the house to collect something for her sister, and under the porch light her bandage-wrapped skin and pink eyes had terrified me. I was mortified as the poor woman edged warily to the side of the road as we passed …. I wasn’t the only one who had been frightened that night
