I Believe in Yesterday

Bailey's POV

I lay in bed, my eyes droopy as I thought about the past events of the day. The light yellow paint on my walls looked like grey in the dim light from the hallway. I lay with my face up staring at the sparkling dots on my ceiling, picking at my thumb nail absentmindedly.

The window behind me was slightly ajar, letting me hear the traffic of the rare passing cars out on the road to accompany the echoing of my diminishing fingernail. The house sounded vacant and every movement I made echoed through my room and off the walls in the hallway.

A tiny sliver of golden light seeped through the crack in my door and it had been for almost an hour of me lying there, but unexpectedly the skinny stream started to grow. My bedroom door was pushed up and slowly the area started to light up.

I stretched an eye to see who was coming in my door, but I didn’t see anyone, or anything for the matter. Thinking it was just the wind from a window blowing the door, I shut my eyes again and tried to focus on going to sleep. The wind still howled through the window, blowing in the sound of car horns and brakes, and the door started to creak.

My eyes bolted open. The wind had never blown my door open more than a couple of inches before. The creaking became louder and my body froze. Slowly, a thudding started to increase in volume. It started out faint, but grew exponentially in volume and strength, matching the frantic beat of my heart.

I couldn’t remember showing up back at my house in New Jersey, all I could recall from my memory was lying in the small bed, confined in the small yellow walls of my past. I wasn’t sure how long I had been laying there; I couldn’t remember. It hadn’t sounded like there was anyone home though, so the fast approaching creek was alarming.

Curious, I gradually slid my legs out of the covers, clad with my black sweatpants that I remembered wearing as I feel asleep in Zack’s arms. Crawling atop the covers, I saw a figure on my carpet.

Horror stretched across my face as I took in the scene before me. From the hallway, wet, red blood streaks marked the figure’s path into my room. I couldn’t move as I watched the boy, an ACDC shirt hanging off of his boney body, crawl toward me.

My vision was blurring with tears from my shock but I didn’t need my eyesight to know that there were deep, long cuts on his arms. The smell of old blood and rotting corpse seeped into my nose and I felt my dinner rising up my throat. My gag reflex kicked in and instinctively my hand threw up to my mouth to stop the vomit and silence my scream.

For some reason, my body couldn’t move. I just stayed crouched on my four limbs atop my bed covers watching as Sam’s body inched to me.

He was struggling and I could see the tears rolling down his cheek from his pretty green eyes. On his stomach, he painfully army crawled in my direction, once and in a while thumping his right foot on the ground to help get the slightest bit of momentum. But it wasn’t just his wrists that were cut; almost every part of his body seemed to hold a fresh wound. Blood was draining from his body all over the place, but I couldn’t figure out how all the lesions had happened.

My eyes darted over his body, blinking away the tears. I couldn’t handle the gore in front of me. His flesh stank so much I had to cover my nose to stop my stomach from squirming. But it didn’t help. Chills ran up my arms and I watched in repulsion as Sam insisted on getting closer to me.

When he got within inches of my end bedpost, his head snapped up to me. A scream emitted from my mouth, it was so loud that I was even hurting my own ears. I stared into his sharp green eyes, not able to look away as I screeched.

With the house being vacant, the loud cries bounced off the walls, causing the noise to become even louder and making its own ringing in the background to accompany my own shriek. Sam continued to stare back at me, shooting me with guilt and trying to transfer all of his pain into me with just a look.

Terrified, I stood up jumped back on my bed, pressing my back against the wall, still screaming as loud as I could in fright. Sam struggled with his limp arms, but finally he raised it up, gripping my bedspread with his bloody fingernails.

My curling screech got even louder, if it was possible, when he removed his foul fingers, leaving a big streak of red down the edge of my sheets. My heart was racing. My body was cold. I couldn’t see straight. I struggled with my breath. Petrified to a standstill, all I could do was watch as Sam continued to crawl like a zombie across the white carpet closer to the bed.

Hearing his voice, I immediately stopped screaming, but there was a ringing in the background that continued to sound, piercing my eyes with its loud decibel. I ignored it though, trying to here what my brother was saying.

I hesitated, but stepped towards the edge and peeked over the side of the bed to where Sam was. His chapped lips struggled to form words, but all I could focus on was that because I couldn’t bring myself to look in his sad and distant eyes or filthy face.

“B-Baail,” he moaned, trying to bring his body close to me. My breathing became heavy and my hands shook as I tried to steady myself. His voice was so foreign. I hadn’t heard him in three years. His voice was supposed to be sweet and happy, filled with love and able to make me laugh. His hair was supposed to be a sandy brown, disheveled atop his head. He was supposed to be smiling, with a glimmer of optimism in beautiful green eyes.

But his hair was matted, and moist with his blood just like the rest of him. He wasn’t smiling, in fact he looked dead. He was clearly moving and struggling for life, but his face held no emotion, and worst of all, his eyes were hollow.

He called for me again, his voice so quiet I could barely hear it over the shout somewhere far off in the distance. Gradually, he got the strength to reach his arm up to me again. With every inch his fingertips got closer, the more my jitters increased. By the time he was to my knee caps, my hand was shaking so violently, it wasn’t even able to cup my mouth to stop my screaming. My heart was thudding against my rib cage and my stomach was flipping over itself.

His grimy hand sparkled red when the hallway light hit it and I winced at the sight of it. His voice was weak, and it whispered through his lips in all of his fight. “Help me, Jazz.”

With that, my feet immediately clicked into gear, and I leapt over my bed, over Sam and onto the blood-pooled carpet. My feet thudded against the gory ground at the same pace my heart was beating. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Behind me, I could hear Sam calling for me, but I wouldn’t turn around, I couldn’t even open my eyes.

My voice had come back and I was screaming again and then my eyesight returned and I looked around. I was running through my hallway, trying to get to the bathroom. But it wasn’t coming soon enough. With each step I took, the further the door got.

Looking back, Sam was there, crawling on all fours toward me crazily. Splatters of blood were everywhere. On the carpet, on the walls, on the pictures hanging up, the door handles, everything. It looked like a murder scene and I couldn’t get out of it.

I was still sprinting and I finally saw the bathroom in sight again and as I ran past it I saw the tub flooded with Sam’s blood, overflowing onto the tile. I felt the vomit in the back of my throat and my hands went clammy when I saw the thick, ruby liquid resting so peacefully on the ground.

I didn’t know how fast I was going, but I could barely see my legs moving beneath me as I ran, scared to death of what was behind me. The wind pierced my face and blew my tears back to the corners of my eyes as I ran to Jade’s room.

Ignoring the slaps of blood all over the door, I pushed it open. “Jade! Jade!” I screamed. “Help me! JADE, HELP ME!” I was sobbing, trying to yell through all of my weeping.

When I saw nothing in Jade’s room but white walls and white carpet, I panicked even more. There was nothing in her room. It was just a box that bounced my bawling off the walls.

“JADE! JADE! HELP! WHERE ARE YOU?! PLEASE HELP ME!” I screamed as loud as my lungs could handle, looking back to see if the haunting replication of Sam was behind me.

I could hear him approaching fast. My mind was racing so quick I couldn’t control any thoughts. All I knew was no one was here; it was like she had never existed. Where were all of her things? Why was her room empty?

I looked up at the blinding white ceiling, but it just looked like everything else in her room, if it even was her room. Where were the blue walls? Why weren’t band posters covering the far wall? Where was her CD shelf, or her twisty patterned bedspread? Where was she?

When I saw a single light bulb hanging from a string on the ceiling, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I bent over and let the contents of my stomach empty onto the white floor, disrupting the spotless surface. Crying again, I brushed my hair from my face and when my eyes caught a look at my hands, they were red.

I turned it over and examined the blood that coated every single inch of my hand. My name was being called again. It was getting closer and closer, but it wasn’t Jade’s.

Dropping my hand, I turned and ran out of my sister’s room, just in time to see Sam running towards me. I thundered down the staircase but just like the hallways had done before, the stairs multiplied with every step I took.

Over my shoulder, I could see Sam following me, running on his two legs now, and leaving his blood markings everywhere. I let my screams continue to fill the air as I attempted to get off the never-ending stairs but stopped when I noticed that I wasn’t the only once screaming anymore.

When I stopped, I listened; the high pitched ringing that had started earlier had now developed into a screeching like mine. I didn’t know where it was coming from though; it seemed so far off in the distance.

I was huffing in exhaustion, the screaming was making my head pound, my ears were ringing and my body was shaking so violently that I was appalled I was still able to sprint upright. The glass-shattering screech continued to grow louder. Sam was sprinting just as fast as me now, even faster and was slowly gaining on me, his limp not holding him back.

The mysterious scream was becoming unbearable; I wanted to scream in agony just because of the pain it was causing me. Finally making it to the front door, I thought the scream would stop once I stepped outside, but it just continued to grow. In the midnight sky, my neighborhood was just as empty as my house had been. Not a single thing was moving, the wind had stopped and everything looked vacant.

Tears poured from my eyes, I was bawling from the fright that was carved in my skin. I knew Sam was still behind me, but I was so scarred by everything that everywhere I looked I saw his disabled body running at me, blood pouring from his wounds and leaving a river of blood behind him.

The blood was starting to flood the streets, just like it had in the bathroom. My footsteps seemed so loud in the stillness of the neighborhood. My legs boomed every time I stepped, adding to the atrocious shrieking somewhere from the sky above me.

I stopped at a T in the road, not daring to look back. My feet were planted on the black pavement, but I sill couldn’t stay at rest; my body was trembling, my legs jell-o. The high pitch screech was the only thing I could hear and I couldn’t focus because it was so loud. The volume was so thunderous that it was vibrating my body. I thought I could feel the ground beneath me shaking at the earsplitting noise but everything was blending together and I didn’t know what anything was anymore.

My body was wobbly and shaking, like I was a puppet being thrashed around in the hands of someone else. I looked back to see where Sam was. He was gone. My name was still being called, this time it wasn’t Sam’s voice. “Bailey! Bailey!” The cries were frantic and scared. Each time the unknown voice yelled my name, the more my body shook involuntarily. I thought I was going crazy, my head being tossed around, my arms moving without my consent.

I looked around, the dark neighborhood becoming darker than it already was. I couldn’t see the houses or feel the road beneath my feet anymore. I felt a stinging on my body. My right hand had pins and needles and it crept from my waist all the way to my shoulders. I screamed out in pain, my blood curling shriek even more excruciating to the ears when my own scream was added to the screeching in the distance. My voice echoed through the neighborhood, or what was left of it. Now the houses were deteriorating and it was becoming just a hollow, black space.

I looked back, my body still being shaken and the razor-sharp throbbing in my hands and shoulders became even more painful as I did so. I knew Sam wasn’t there anymore, but now I wanted him to save me from the pain that was being inflicted on me from somewhere. But there were no blood stains, no limp, and no scared look in his green eyes following me. It was empty.

I tried to thrash my body to try and stop whatever it was that was hurting me. I couldn’t handle the extreme pain running through my body. I wasn’t screaming anymore, I had stopped after I had realized I was in a blank canvas. The screaming in the air didn’t stop though, it just became louder. It was torture that I couldn’t escape from. There was no where to run, nothing to hide under, nothing to run from, there was nothing.

I let out another giant sob, my howl echoing in the black emptiness. My name was still being called, each time it was, my body started to convulse more and more, dangerously knocking me off of my feet.

“Oh my god, Bailey,” a cry called to me. I shut my eyes. All of this was too much. My head spinning, I could hear the pulsing of pain in my ears, I couldn’t see anything. My body felt like it was on fire, my heart was racing, and I was drowning in my own tears.

I couldn’t do it. I opened my eyes, but it didn’t make a difference. The blackness was the same whether I kept my eyes open of squeezed shut. After the realization of my disorientation, I started to hyperventilate. Freaking out, I started to open and shut my eyes rapidly, blinking fast to get me away from this horrific place.

The pain in my body was killing me, the ear-piercing scream was still filling the air and it was joined again by my own bawling. “Bailey, come on love.” The pain in my hand shot up through my arm as I felt my fingers being crunched, making me shriek from the stabbing pain again.

“Bailey! Bailey! Bailey!” The more my name was yelled, the faster I blinked my eyes. Squeezing my eyelids hard together on last time, I let one more sob escape my lips and prayed that when I opened them, all of this hell would be gone.

I opened them, and when I did, it wasn’t dark anymore. Instead, the lights were pouring into my face. I felt warm, not just from the comfortable lighting, but the hands around me. The horrible screaming still echoed in the air and a pair of familiar hands were wrapped around my shoulders as Zack held me in his lap.

I looked down at my body. I was clean; no scratches and no blood. The only thing that was different was black sweatpants now twisted on my legs. It took me a moment, but then I realized that I was the one who was screaming at the top of their lungs. The tears were pouring from my eyes. My ears were ringing so loud I couldn’t handle it, so I closed my mouth. Once I did, everything went silent. The horrible shriek that had tortured me for what seemed like hours, stopped just like that. The only thing I could hear was the rapid beating of my heart and the shaky breath of Zack behind me.

I looked up at him and through the tears and my shaking body; I saw Zack’s face of horror and helplessness. He held my shoulder tight; like he thought holding me as tight as he was would stop the shaking. Frantically, he moved his hands from my shoulders to my arms, to my legs, back to my shoulders, to try and stop me from trembling.

Finally I realized that I wasn’t stuck in the horror scene anymore. As I looked around I saw everyone hovering around me. Matt was bent down on the edge of Zack’s bunk looking down at me with a worry burrowing deep in his brown eyes. To his left Alex was crouched down and holding my right hand tightly, looking scared shitless.

I wondered what I looked like at the moment. By everyone’s stares I must have looked crazy. As I glanced around at everyone on the bus, crowded in the hallways of the bunks, I finally stopped sobbing.

“Oh my…god…” Rian whispered out when I met his eyes. “Fucking…” He looked lost and nervous, like he had just seen his pants crawl off of his body and walk away. Beside him, Jack was grabbing his hair tensely, like he was watching the last five seconds of a tied football game in double overtime.

Behind them, Melanie stood wide-eyed, phone to her ear. The bus driver was off to the side with Evan, Vinny, Danny and Greico. Jade stood behind Matt, one of her hands gripping his shirt tightly, frozen in place.

For some reason, when I saw her, relief washed over me. There she was. She wasn’t gone. She hadn’t disappeared. She was on the bus, on tour, with me. The tour. On a bus. Driving. My bearings were coming back to me as I thought about all of it. How had I gotten here when I was just in New Jersey, at my old house? Everything had seemed so real.

“Bailey,” Matt said calmly, trying to get my attention and get me to focus. “Can you hear me,” he said seriously, looking at me like any second I would flail, scream or cry again. He didn’t want to set me off.

I nodded, a sob racking my body. Alex squeezed my hand, sending the familiar sting up my arm, but this time it was comforting, not torturing. He grasped it worriedly with a glaze over his eyes.

“Are you hurt, Bailey? Bailey, look at me.” I tried to connect my eyes to Matt, struggling to sit up on my own but Zack wouldn’t let me. “Bailey, look at me please.”

My eyes continued to dart around, taking in the nice surrounding, better than the bloody bathroom floor or empty, black space. I let my eyes fall back down to my right hand, where Alex was grasping, and then to my shoulders, where Zack was holding. They were the ones causing me the pain. But it wasn’t hurting anymore, it was consoling. How had it happened?

“Focus, love,” Alex’s shaky voice spoke up. I looked into his brown eyes, wondering if my eyes looked as scared as his did. Behind him, Jack was still grabbing anxiously at his hair, running his hands over his face, stressed but his big eyes pierced mine every time he looked at me.

“Bailey, are you hurt?” Matt asked evenly, taking charge. I paused and thought about all of my limbs, even though my body was aching in the dream, I seemed to be fine.

A dream. It was just a dream.

I nodded slowly, watching everyone’s faces, trying to get out of Zack’s arms but he didn’t seem to realize that I wasn’t shaking anymore. I was just trying to escape, regain my orientation and bearings.

“I’m fine.” My voice sounded nasty; cracking and rasping.

“What the fuck just happened, Jazz?” Jack breathed out scared. His brown eyes were huge. It was like he hadn’t blinked in over ten minutes, and they smothered mine as he questioned me. I sat up fully, bumping my head a little because Alex was holding down my hand and Zack was trying to keep my steady.

“I-I…” The images ran through my mind and I felt like crying again, just screaming from the horror of the memory. “A dream.”

“It was a dream?” Matt asked carefully, trying to get all the facts and make sure everyone was safe. “Mel, I think we’re fine,” he said after turning to the unusually quiet girl on the phone. Melanie quickly said ‘never mind’ to whomever she was talking to and slipped the phone away. Behind me, Zack exhaled shakily and leaned his head down to rest on my back, trying to take calming breaths. “Okay everyone, we need space.”

At Matt’s command, everyone backed up. They shot me a look of sympathy before going up to the front lounge, the bathroom or back to their bunks. “I don’t know how we can sleep after that…” someone mumbled worriedly as they walked away.

Was it really that bad? What time was it? I felt like a hospital patient who had just woken up from a coma, lost their bearings and didn’t know what had been going on, where they were and what time it was.

I was still shaking very lightly, simply disoriented and shocked by everything that happened. I sat there silently, thinking blankly and just trying to calm down. Matt stayed along with Alex and Jack, but when Zack gave them all a nod saying we were okay alone. Alex reluctantly let go of my hand and Matt told me if I needed something, let him know, and they left with the others. Behind him, Jade gave me a worried stare, like she was contemplating on what she should do. But like everyone else she left me alone to calm down.

After explaining to Jack that I was okay and after Zack explaining to Jack that I was okay, and after Rian came back to explain to Jack that I was okay, Jack finally got up. That left Zack and me alone in his bunk.

I was sitting idly beside him, still a little out of it, and shaken up at everything that I had experienced. I was still blown away that none of it had been real. My emotions had been so thick, the noises had been so close and the things I had felt had been so strong, it was hard to believe none of that happened.

Beside me, Zack’s hand rested on my leg comfortingly. After a bit, he got up tentatively and shut the curtain of his bunk all of the way and lay down, fingering my waist to pull me down beside him.

I didn’t know how long I had been sitting there, how long we had been awake and how much time had passed since everyone had gone back to bed, but I hadn’t looked at Zack yet. The last time I did, I had just gotten shaken out of my dream and I had never seen him look that scared.

I think I hadn’t met his eyes because I didn’t want to scare him, to see the worried look he would be giving me. Turning on his side, he wrapped his strong arms around my hips and drew my close up to his chest. It was almost as if he was hesitant as he placed a soft kiss on my forehead.

He lay back down and we stared at each other when I finally met his eyes. “You scared the fuck out of me, Bails.” Zack really did look scared and he wouldn’t stop looking at me. I wanted to close my eyes, to get away from his gaze, but I was afraid that if I did, I would be dropped back in the vacant bloody streets. “What happened?” he asked softly after we laid there in silence for a bit.

I shrugged, but he eyed me, saying he needed more than that. “I don’t know,” I squeaked, shivering as all of the tortuous scenes of the dream ran through my mind. “I-I have been having bad dreams lately, but nothing like this. Nothing like this, Zack,” I told him, my voice so shaky that I had to close my eyes and burry my head in his neck.

I felt him run his hands through my hair as he hugged me. His heart was beating against my cheek and I let it calm me as I listened to the irregular fastness of it. “Zack?”

“Hmm,” he said into my hair, his chest rumbling and radiating more heat for us. We had gotten cozier under the covers and it was a little more soothing.

“I’m scared,” I whispered.

“Of what?”

“Sleeping.” I just couldn’t relive that. I was scared shitless of returning to the dark hell that I was put through with that dream.

There was a silence before Zack spoke carefully. “What was the dream about?”

I opened my eyes and looked at Zack’s neck, running the tip of my finger over it, drawing doodles on the tanned skin. I thought about the thudding of my heart. It seemed to stick out the most me when thinking back to it, how it raced when I saw Sam appear, and when I couldn’t find Jade, and when I was hurting but everyone had disappeared. Through everything, the pounding of my heart was easily recognized.

But then there was all the gore and pain. The thought of the pools of blood made me shiver and just thinking of Sam make me want to cry out with sadness.

I thought I had gotten over Sam, my sister, and all the missing pieces. But now as I thought back to all the events in my dream, it scared me to think that I could still be terrified about everything.

“I-It was about…my past. Me running…from…nothing…” Zack pulled away so we could look at each other as we talked. “Sam was in it. Which was…weird…”

Zack looked thoughtful, “Maybe it was about someone you love?”

“But I love a lot of people, and Sam was the only one there. Why weren’t you in it? Or my parents? Or…or Jade?” That was kind of a lie, Jade was kind of in it. I just didn’t want to say anything, because I was confused myself at why I called for her in the dream.

“Maybe…it was about someone you miss?” He looked at me intrigued, and I knew he wanted me to talk more about the dream, but both of our eyes were getting droopy. I nodded and smiled lightly, telling him that I believed him, when really I was thinking back to the missing Jade and running Sam.

None of it made sense. Jade’s room clean? White? That wasn’t her. Sam is dead, Jade is alive, why was it different in the dream? Why was I the one who was running away? Sometimes I could think of the weirdest and most twisted things. I felt bad that I had woken everyone up and scared them because I hated causing trouble and being the topic of everyone’s conversations.

I looked back at Zack and watched as his eyes slowly drifted closed even as he tried to stay awake with me. His arms were still around my waist, holding me close to him.

At least I had solid grip around me now. I may have been lost in the dream, confused in the blinding whiteness of Jade’s room and the blackness of everything else, falling every so slowly. But back in reality, I had support with me. With that, I was able to get to sleep, but I was afraid.

I was afraid to close my eyes for too long. I was afraid to see the things that I couldn’t bare to relive again. I was afraid of what would have happened if I had been stuck in the nightmare forever, surrounded with the equally terrifying empty, white room and the blank, black space.