Toby screamed, too, and dropped his pungi. He might have also peed himself a little.
He spun around in the doorway and looked over at Sally. She hadn’t screamed, although he could have sworn he’d heard her. She was standing in the middle of the warehouse, motionless, like she had been for the last twenty minutes or so.
But something was different.
He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it. It was a new experience for him, much like the way he’d been able to see Sally’s astral form doing a Peter Pan impression around the ceiling. He figured she must still be on the astral plane; only if she was, he couldn’t see her.
Focusing with his mind instead of his eyes, he was able to make out something he at first thought was the beam from Sally’s flashlight. But her flashlight was off, hanging by her side in one limp hand.
This light was thinner and brighter, a focused beam of the purist white emanating from the middle of her forehead, in the spot where one’s mystical third eye was supposed to be.
The beam extended across the length of the warehouse on a downward sloping angle, terminating in the water of the middle channel.
As Toby watched, the narrow cord of light trembled like a plucked spiderweb. The luminescence stuttered as if a switch was being rapidly turned off and on.
Even though he was not a sensitive, Toby was a psychic in his own right, and thus receptive to such forces. The vibe he was picking up from Sally was one of intense fear and panic. The beam of light, which must’ve been some sort of tether to her astral body, was stretching and straining so much he worried it might snap. He didn’t know what effect it would have on Sally if that happened. Would her body simply drop dead like a puppet with its strings cut? Would her spirit be left to wander the astral plane forever?
Toby looked over at Charles, who was leaning against the far wall checking messages on his phone.
“Chuck … Charles, I think something’s wrong with Sally.”
Charles looked up from his phone, then pocketed it and came trotting over. He waved a hand in front of Sally’s face, but her eyes remained glazed and unfocused. He reached out to shake her shoulder and Toby said, “Don’t!”
“What’s wrong?” Charles said. “What’s happening to her?”
Toby looked from Charles to Sally … and then to the dark water of the channel.
“I think she’s in the lake.”
“What?”
“I think she’s in trouble.”
Charles took out his phone, then seemed to realize anyone he might call for help wouldn’t arrive in time. He jammed it back into his pocket and said: “Can you do anything?”
Toby shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Charles gripped his shoulder firmly. “Try.”
He nodded and turned back to Sally.
Toby was a telekinetic; he could move and manipulate objects with his mind. Physical objects. He’d never used his powers on something—or someone—incorporeal. He didn’t even know if it could be done. But like Charles said, he had to try.
He took a deep breath and tried to focus his thoughts. Then, when he was ready—or as ready as he was going to be—he reached out with his mind and grasped Sally’s astral tether.
It was like touching a live wire with about fifty thousand volts running through it. It galvanized him, and should’ve killed him, but his mental defences were as strong as they were instinctive, and he was able to raise a psychic shield that blocked the majority of the surge. Still, it was powerful enough to light up every neuron in his brain.
Had it been an actual attack against him, he doubted there was anything he could have done to protect himself. But this wasn’t an attack. It was a cry for help. A psychic SOS transmitted along the astral tether and delivered directly into his mind.
In that moment, he experienced a vertiginous moment of bilocation. Not only could he see Sally at the far end of the tether—her distant form looking small and helpless as it struggled like a worm on a hook—he could also feel himself inside Sally, experiencing her fear and panic firsthand. It was so overwhelming, this hurricane of emotions that weren’t his own, that he almost lost his mental hold on the tether.
Pulling back from Sally and the darkness in which she dwelt—The abyss! I’m trapped in the abyss!—Toby was able to reassert both his will and his grip on the psychic cord. Then, after performing the mental equivalent of spitting in his hands, he began to reel her in.