And then I felt myself drop just slightly to the right; the feeling was unnerving, like when you sit on a chair and one leg is a fraction shorter than the others, and the world feels completely off-kilter for a moment. But I was standing in the box, and there were no legs to be shorter than the others. Then it happened again; this time the left side felt like it jerked slightly downward. I realized the box must be on a weak part of the attic floor and I was about to fall through. I froze, I held my breath, I closed my eyes, but none of these things could make me lighter or levitate. And then, as Eddie had predicted, it felt as though the bottom fell out of the box completely.
I dropped fast, and I dropped vertically. My breath was whipped away from me so quickly there was no chance to scream. I shot straight down like a silk scarf being whisked from a hook on a wall. And it was pitch-black.
I knew I hadn’t fallen through the ceiling—if I had, I would have hit the upper hall floor already. My legs scrambled in the air, instinctively seeking something to connect with. Sheer velocity yanked my arms from my sides straight above my head, and the rush of air pulled my sweater up and over my chest. It caught on my chin; then the wind ripped it over my head and away.
The air streaming upward flooded my nose and mouth; it was like trying to breathe in through your nose with your head hanging out of the car window (which I don’t recommend, by the way). The roar in my ears reminded me of a time I stood behind a waterfall, intense, powerful. I know it’s hard to believe, but the fact is that one moment I was standing in a box in my loft, and the next I was falling at high speed, in the dark, and showing no signs of reaching the ground.
I sensed a slowing; the air felt thicker and I was able to take a breath through my mouth. As the slowing increased, my legs took on a more graceful swimmer’s kick. I was doing a front crawl, but vertically. A glimmer of light appeared below me.
Remember in the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland, when Alice falls through the rabbit hole at such a casual pace she has time to look at all the other things in the hole? I think there were lamps and clocks and playing cards. I was falling that slowly now, but there was nothing to see. Like a cave animal, I felt my eyes getting bigger in order to eke out any morsel of light available. Below me—a long way off—a multitude of colored lights spun like a lethargic kaleidoscope. I watched as those colors gathered, seeming nearer and more focused, and my feet continued to kick. For a moment I decided I must have fallen through the attic, hit my head, and passed out. Eddie would find me and revive me.
But just as I started to feel confident with the idea that I must be unconscious in the real world—surely the only explanation possible?—I found myself fighting for breath as though I had a corset on and it was getting tighter and tighter. I scrabbled at myself, trying to get my fingers between my skin and whatever was suffocating me. But there was nothing there. I couldn’t breathe in or out. Eddie, find me soon, otherwise I’m going to die. The rushing sound of water vanished, and the silence was broken by another sound, soft and menacing: a rhythmic thud like wild horses running on a beach. Or the heartbeat of a giant when he’s just swallowed you whole.
In my suffocating descent, I curled into a fetal position, my lungs ready to burst. I sped up again—free-falling—hair flying upward. The fear of not breathing superseded my fear of anything else. If I didn’t breathe soon, I would die. I watched the colorful lights below as I spun: they charged toward me, and I squeezed my eyes shut again, expecting impact.
I hit the ground so hard I felt like part of me had gone through it. The force of the landing split my invisible corset and I took a noisy, desperate breath. I was in the fetal position; the muscles and bones on my right side shrieked, and I gulped in oxygen.
I managed to turn my head and look up from the floor. It was night. I had landed on a Space Hopper box—although this one looked newer—and practically crushed it, and above my head, twinkling festively, were the fairy lights of a Christmas tree.
I didn’t move for a few minutes. Breathing in and out hurt. I thought maybe if I just lay there, some explanation would make itself known. I’ve watched plenty of movies where the seemingly inexplicable was ultimately explained. I was hoping that would happen, right about… now. But it didn’t.
I looked up into the tree, and the face of Father Christmas—glass bauble version—moved gently, close to me. His beard looked like shiny whipped meringue, his tiny pursed red mouth glinted through his mustache, and his scarlet hat glimmered in the tree lights. The holly around the rim of his hat gave me pause. I knew this face—correction, I knew this bauble, I had hung it myself on this tree, about thirty years ago.
I looked at the carpet, flat and gray, and as familiar as the bauble, more so. This was the carpet I had felt under my feet every day, a long time ago. I lay there, certain that I was about to discover that I had died and gone to heaven.
Or something even more unbelievable to me than that.
* * *
A FEW MINUTES passed, I guess, and then I carefully eased myself out of the box. When I stood, pain shot through my hip like a bullet and it felt like my wrist was broken, though it wasn’t. I looked around the room, turning on the spot like a damaged ballerina in a musical jewelry box that starts up when you lift the lid.
I knew this room. When I looked at the tree, I saw what was in my photograph, but it was the things that lay outside the border of the photograph that shocked me. Too familiar. Like my own bed, or my coat, or the smell of my children’s hair; this room was practically a part of me. When people say that something is like coming home, it’s that powerful sense of belonging, intensely normal. And here I was. Home.
People talk about what heaven is like. Some think it’s clouds and angels playing harps; some think it’s a golden city bathed in afternoon sunlight. I’ve heard some people say it would be the place they loved most on earth: a beach; a field; throwing a Frisbee to their dog and playing till they’re muddy and running back to a warm kitchen where their mother and father are calling them in for dinner: hot, buttered rolls and chicken soup.
When my mother died, heaven was a blur to me, soft-focus, but I believed she was there, and if I’d had to describe it as a child I would have said it was most like the clouds-and-angels version. When I got older, I stopped believing in God and heaven, but when people died it still brought me comfort to imagine them somewhere else. So I visualized them sitting at a long bar, drink in hand, and then when someone else I knew died, I pictured that person joining the others at the bar, laughing, smiling, welcoming each other with a pat on the back. I even imagined a small TV on the wall of that bar with images of what was going on back on earth. I guess if there is a heaven, we don’t get to choose what it is. But surely I was dead? In which case my heaven was my old living room.
I hadn’t imagined that dying would be so difficult. I had imagined maybe a flash of discomfort, then a bright light, walking toward it, etc., then… nothing. But my passage into heaven, if that’s what it was, had been a lot more strenuous than that.
As I rotated in the living room of my childhood, I had to be honest with myself. I was quickly beginning to think that I might not be dead, but rather that I’d gone back in time. I know it’s not possible, and usually when people travel back in time (I’m talking books, films), they don’t get hurt. Don’t they just walk into a cupboard and step out the other side? But the big difference was that this was real. Of course it wasn’t going to be the same as storybooks and films, which after all are not autobiographical. The point is that at the time, in the living room, I was starting to think I wasn’t dead. I didn’t feel dead. Maybe you would expect me to wonder if I was dreaming, but I’ve had hundreds of dreams, and this was no dream. I tested it in all the clichéd ways—I even pinched myself.