Angel of Light (A Zak Bagans Story)

Chapter 48: Stay

Chapter 48: Stay

Roughly an hour later...

After I had had another good crying session over Emily, I was physically and emotionally exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to climb into bed and pass out. But I had wanted to get the rest of the story out, so that Zak knew everything.

The police had been able to find Emily's body, and so we were able to have a funeral and proper burial for her.

My only regret looking back, is that I was there when they pulled Emily's body from the river. Friends and neighbours had quietly suggested to Seth that I shouldn't be there, but he either was in too much shock to realize, or simply didn't care.

After everything was over, Seth had stayed with me for a few months, but when unexplained things started happening – noises, doors opening and closing, things being moved – and I started having nightmares every night, he had had enough.

I had come home from school one day, just a few days after it had started up again in the fall, to find a woman from Child Protective Services, coming to take me to a foster home.

I was devastated, and angry. I didn't want to leave the house I had grown up in. The house where all my memories of my parents and Emily were. And I didn't want to leave my school and lose all my friends. But because I was still only 14, I had no choice.

I didn't seem to have trouble getting into foster homes, like some older children did, but they never lasted. I think the longest I was with one family was about four months.

The paranormal activity had followed me wherever I went, and at the time, I hadn't known it was Emily because she had never shown herself to me.

I figured I had lost my mind.

When I was around 16, and had been in a few foster homes up to this point, I had had enough.

The foster family I had been with at the time were awful people, how they even ended up becoming foster parents, I never knew. They thought they were better than everyone else just because they both had good jobs, and made a fair bit of money. They held parties constantly, where even more snobby rich people would come over, each trying to outshine everyone else.

One night, when I had decided enough was enough, I had snuck into my foster parents bedroom and stolen money from both their wallets. Not a moment to be proud of, and even to this day, it still upsets me at times. But I try to tell myself it worked out for the better.

I had taken enough money to get a plane ticket to Ottawa, Ontario - somewhere I had always wanted to visit - online. I packed up what little I owned, then snuck out of the house and took a bus to the airport.

Upon arriving in Ottawa, I found a shelter for women who were abused and needed a place to stay until they got back on their feet. I didn't want to lie about such a terrible thing, so I told the truth. I had no family, no home, and very little money.

Emily must have been looking over me that day, because the caretaker at the shelter, Caroline, had a heart of gold.

She said she'd let me stay in a room, for as long as I needed, as long as I enrolled in school. She also wouldn't call Child Protective Services on me.

So I enrolled in the nearby High School.

I felt I owed her some sort of compensation for her kindness, so I offered my services to help clean and care for the shelter. I also offered babysitting services to the single mothers during the evenings and on weekends, to give them breaks and allow them to run errands, etc. A few of them even paid me what little they could, though I insisted they didn't have to.