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I arrived at the Paranormal Hunters Society office early in the morning, right after dawn. I arrived so early, in fact, that I was the first to show up, and spent some time making sure our tiny headquarters looked spotless. I scrubbed the conference table clean of crumbs and coffee stains. I wiped off dust. I took the time to go across the street to refill our snack bowl with candy. I even bothered sweeping the floor, finishing up just as a certain Mexican wolf strolled in with a latte in one paw. "Surprised you came early," Dean yawned. "I wanted to make the place look good for our client," I said, still kneeling to fill up the dustpan. "Plus, the janitor doesn't do a good enough job." Dean raised a confused eyebrow. "Huh." I glanced at him with the same confusion. "What?" I asked, watching him sit down at his spot on the circular table. "What's got you looking at me weird, Dean?" "I'm also surprised you didn't go-" He imitated an obnoxious, bucked-toothed laugh before blurting out seductively, "'That's what she said!'" His stern frown and voice returned to normal. "-the instant I said you came early." I dumped the refuse into the trash bin beside the door, then set the broom in the corner. "Don't you find the sight of me sweeping the floor a little weirder than me not making a sex joke?" I pointed it out. "Somehow, that's less weird than you not riling me up with sex jokes." Dean shrugged, still staring down at his phone. "Seriously, Bram. What's gotten into you today?" I eagerly sat down in my seat with a certain giddiness that I couldn't bother hiding. It left my rabbit tail wiggling against the back of my seat and my right heel kicking on the floor. Though I did wince when the excitement caused my knee to strike under the table with a loud thump. "This case," I confessed, finally. "I'm just so excited!" "For the client?" Dean asked. I smirked at our group's resident skeptic. "No, for Mothman," I joked. "Of course, it's for the client! We're actually gonna interview somebody who's had a near-death experience and can have out-of-body experiences!" "Who claims to have those, [i]conejo[/i]," Dean tried correcting me. "You read the forum post and the emails, Dean!" I reminded the group's resident doubter. "He bothered telling us his name, his occupation, and think about it! He's a neuroscientist! An actual, factual neuroscientist with a degree! Mr. Emery's not some crackpot off the street or a crystal-wielding lady trying to sell essential oils to us." "Your point being?" Dean tried amusing me. I scoffed. "My point being that this guy knows what he's been researching! He can provide a scientific perspective on what he goes through, back it up with evidence, and perhaps show us how the paranormal interacts with-" "We still need to go at this with some level of suspicion," Dean warned. He then let out a frustrated sigh. "Not to keep being Mr. Dickhead around here, but I'll see it when I believe it." I let out a snort, then started checking my own phone. Seven-thirty a.m. fast approached and one by one, everyone else arrived on time. Sam stumbled inside carrying the equipment she'd promised to bring with her to today's meeting, and then came Laurie, who wore sunglasses despite the cloud cover outdoors and gripped a coffee cup like it anchored her to the Earth. While shuffling past Samantha along the wall, reaching for her own seat, Laurie didn't see where her own steps went under the table. "Ow!" Sam yelped. "Sorry, Sam!" she apologized. "I didn't mean to kick your leg." "My shin, actually. You ever um, consider drinking your coffee?" Sam inquired then awkwardly added, "Before coming to work?" "I slept through my alarm for ten or so minutes," the cougar sheepishly explained. "Bram, your folks are rich. Can't you get us a better office that's got leg room?" "It's gonna take time," I acknowledged. "But between our day jobs, clients, squeezing in our work for the Goodbye Files, and our private lives, I've been...busy." "Busy fucking older dudes, ya mean?" Dean asked. I snapped my fingers. "That too. Though I argue it falls under 'our private lives'." "You have no idea how much free time you're given just by not having constant sex, [i]conejo[/i]," Dean chuckled dryly. "You should try it. And stick to it. Then you'll have the extra time to get us a better place, boss." "Are you telling me to go abstinent, buddy?" I guffawed slightly. "Oh God, that'd be something," Laurie interrupted with a loud snickering noise, turning into an amused chuff. "Dean, he could never do that. I've known this guy since high school. He could never survive more than a month without hooking up at least once." Everyone laughed except for me and Samantha, visibly trying to hide her apologetic sniggering and staring hyper-focused at whatever was or wasn't on her smart phone. "Wanna bet?" Dean pointed his muzzle towards me. "Think ya got the guts, Bram?" I rolled my eyes at the two. Before I was able to return fire with my own snide retort, however, all four of us went completely silent when we heard three knocks on the door. Everyone straightened up in their seats, clearing their throats or relaxing their shoulders, and I waited for a few seconds, wondering if I'd heard the noise correctly. "Come in!" I called out. "The door's unlocked." The door opened a crack. Long thin whiskers appeared followed by the brown-and-white-furred nose of a rather timid stoat. He wore a pair of bright blue jeans and a sandy-colored college T-shirt that looked like it was worn casually, and very often. The stoat's black eyes appeared uncertain, a bit nervous, but nevertheless brightened at seeing us. He entered the door carrying a laptop along his arm and eagerly stepped over to the conference table. "Good morning! You must be Noah Emery." I positively beamed at him. I leaned forward to offer a paw, and everyone did the same. We each politely shook paws with the stout while talking. "Welcome to the Paranormal Hunters Society! I'm Bram, the wolf here's named Dean, and that's Laurie and Sam." "Thank you for seeing me," Noah cleared his throat, fighting back a yawn. "And on such short notice." Laurie sipped from her cup. "Do you need a coffee?" she asked. "We can get you-" "No, no, I'm good. I'm good," he replied quickly. "Doesn't matter too much." "I hope you had a pleasant drive over?" I idly reasoned. "Traffic can be a nightmare." "Walked here, actually," he corrected, then clarified, "I live in Nueva Fe, but can't stand the buses. I, uh, can easily afford them. They just make me nauseous and...yeah." The stoat nervously laughed. "Anyway! I live locally. I've seen your ads, read about some of your encounters, and figured you were legit. So, I figured you guys would be the first people I ought to talk to about my...abilities, as you could call them." "When you were a cub on a field trip, you had an allergic reaction so severe, that it resulting in you being brought to the hospital, only for you to flatline before doctors could treat you in time," Dean recalled while looking over printed paper of our client's forum post. "You then woke up twelve hours later in the hospital morgue," I continued a little too excitedly, earning a sharp glare from Dean. "Your poor parents," Laurie chimed in, chuckling softly. A smile quirked along Noah's muzzle at the levity. "They must've been shocked! I bet they considered it a miracle." "You have no idea," he said. "According to doctors, something like this is referred to as 'autoresuscitation after failed cardiopulmonary resuscitation', but that's too much to say all at once, so most people call it 'Lazarus syndrome'." He chuckled. "And not to brag about it, but I, uh...I'm but one of over three dozen documented cases since the Eighties to be marked as clinically deceased, only to find myself suddenly resurrected. Most range around half an hour at most though. That makes me a bit of an outlier, but not the record-keeper. From what I researched, the single-longest time spent dead was in 2008, when this woman in Virginia suffered from cardiac arrest, only to walk up seventeen hours later-" "Seventeen hours?!" Laurie, Samantha, and I gawked at once. Noah laughed lightly. "-only to come back to life about...ah! Ten minutes after a nurse took her off the ventilator," he finished the story. The stoat turned to our resident skeptic. "I have the hospital report with me if you don't believe it. For my case, I mean." "Sure," Dean replied, nodding as the stoat handed him a small file. Without looking up from the hospital record copies, he asked, "So, what did you say happen next again? You claim that your soul isn't...properly aligned with your body?" Dean handed me the file, but I idly glanced at it, my focus mainly locked on the nervous stoat sitting across from us. Not even Laurie or Samantha bothered looking at the file when I passed it over to either of them. We continued listening to Noah's explanation. "I, uh, it's strange to talk out loud about, actually," Noah said while running fingers through his hair. Then, he inhaled and exhaled, closing and opening his eyes. "I'll admit that the event left me a bit...traumatized. I'm also prone to moments of disassociation, derealization, and depersonalization-they're not as bad as when I was a kid-but believe me when I say that I can sometimes wake up...outside of my body. And...understand things on an emotional level when I concentrate hard enough...if that makes sense. The paranormal investigative community likes to call it 'astral projection' and...I think 'empathetic focus'." "Empathic focus," Samantha spoke up quietly. "Like," Laurie spoke, "you can manifest your own spirit or soul or whatever? And you can really understand what others are feeling in a sense?" Noah nodded. "Astral projection and empathetic focus," I pondered both terms aloud. "That all sounds so damn cool!" Noah hesitated before giving a slight nod. "Yes...You can say that." The doubt was plain to see all over Dean's face. He didn't even bother trying to hide it. "You don't believe me, do you?" Noah queried the Mexican wolf, only to interrupt him and ramble out, "L-Look, I get it. I get the skepticism. There's days I don't believe it myself, and I try to pretend I'm just a normal stoat living a normal life. I was even hesitant to come here on the off-chance that one of my colleagues saw me visiting your office. The last thing I need is people thinking I've gone off the deep end, or worse, finding myself dissected by government goons at Area 51 or something. B-But this thing...my abilities. It's been gnawing at me for years, and I've never had the chance to have professional case studies or trials performed on it." "I'd hardly call us professionals," Dean said. "But I am," Noah pointed out, leaning forward to look at each of us with earnest enthusiasm. "I'm a neuroscientist. I've been trained in the scientific method, and I've even done idle research into paranormal abilities like astral projection-when it's not junk science, at least. If you'd be willing, I'd like to present myself as a case study for you, maybe even a potential collaborator. I've read about some of your close encounters and experiences, and they're not like the pseudoscience crap people post to YouTube for clicks. If I'm going to actually test out my...latent gifts...in a scientific field, I'd like it to be with paranormal investigators and researchers who know what they're doing. Are you up for it?" Everyone present already knew my answer, so a few exchanged nods and peer pressure staring towards Dean led to everyone agreeing. Noah lit up as if he'd won the lottery. "Oh!" he suddenly realized. "And uh, can we...keep my name off the record, or maybe give me a pseudonym of some kind? Like I said, I don't want colleagues or friends to find out-" "Say no more," Dean said. "But before we get started on that, we ought o figure out what sort of tests we can do. I assume you've got some ideas?" "I was thinking that I could go into another room and detach myself from my body," Noah proposed, "and you can...I dunno, rearrange things in your office? Draw something specific or intricate on your whiteboards? They need to be something too specific for me to perform guesswork off the top of my head." "We don't really have a second room in here." Laurie motioned around us. "What you see is what we got here. Just a tiny open space office with a small kitchen in the corner." Noah's ears slipped down. "This isn't your meeting room?" "It's our headquarters," I confessed with an embarrassed light chuckle. "And before you ask, yes, we know we need to get ourselves some better digs. We've just never had the time or the money to spare to find a place we all like." Before Dean could make an off-handed joke about my parents' wealth, or bring up questions on why I didn't want to grovel to my parents for a small loan, I quickly suggested aloud, "Why don't you go all the way downstairs and wait outside? We'll write some specific shit on the whiteboard here, then send someone to ask you what they are." "Maybe Laurie and Bram can join him," Samantha added. "To...watch over him. While he's outside his body?" Noah snapped his fingers at her. "Double-blind study," he said. "Or in this case, why not make it triple-blind too? Dean, you can stay out in the hallway while Samantha here writes on the whiteboard, and then she'll send you to tell you she's finished." "Why not have me stay in the room with her?" Dean asked. "Additional measures so you don't accidentally influence the experiment," he informed the wolf. "Oh, and I think it'll help to have Sam looking over her equipment while I'm showing you what I can do." A smile formed across Samantha's cheeks. "Great idea!" she said. "I can set up heat detection and EMF readers to see if it detects you-or your soul I mean." Everyone ignored Dean's eyerolling as we nodded together and stood up to get to work. "Dean, help out a bit?" "Sure," he replied, but not before muttering to me, "See when I believe..." The urge to flip off the Mexican wolf was strong, but not as much as stepping around the table to join Laurie and our client out the door. "I think that can be a good start next, if you're up for that?" I asked the stoat. "Sure thing," Noah reached into his pocket to pull out an item, "I need to vape a bit too, and that'll help me relax a bit." The three of us ventured outside the office building and we sat on a bench near the front doors, the stoat not waiting for long to start huffing away. Laurie and I sat on the bench across from him, taking in the mid-morning light. I waited until a middle-aged wolf in a suit, likely a paralegal or office assistant for one of the small-time lawyers on our floor, passed by us and entered the front door before speaking up. "How long does it take for you to...y'know," I danced around for the perfect word, then settle down with saying, "detach?" "It depends on my mood and the time of day," he admitted between slow breaths. "I think I've been starting to get more and more control over it though. My biggest problem is just making it happen at the drop of a hat." "You can't just make it happen?" Laurie wondered. "Not really," he said. "It's all situational." Laurie started checking her phone. Noah continued vaping-I caught a faint whiff of strawberry drafting downwind-while I decided to ask something that had been bugging me since I first read through his forum post. "So...Do you really find us attractive?" "Huh??" Laurie guffawed, immediately pocketing her phone while Noah sputtered out some white smoke from his short muzzle. "W-What?" he stammered, appearing a little flustered. "W-What do you m-mean, B-Bram?" My ears perked at hearing him bashfully call me by my first name. "In the forum post, you called everyone in the P.H.S. attractive, especially me," I snickered. "I think the exact thing you wrote was 'Especially the rabbit. Whoa, Black Betty, Bram-a-lam.'" Laurie couldn't help but let out chuffs of deep laughter, the mountain lioness burying her whiskers into her knees. "I-I-I didn't think you were actually gonna read through that!" Noah blushed heavily. "Don't worry about it," I assured him. "I thought it was funny. Cute too." "What did he say about me?" Laurie interrogated me. When I gave her a quick shrug, she let out a faux-offended gasp. "Really? You went drooling over Mr. Paranormal Jackrabbit here like an old-timey cartoon character while not saying a single thing about me? Really, Noah!" "I, um...I...I still called you attractive, d-didn't I?" Noah meekly argued. "You did, but I expect more about me and the others in whatever forum post you make next," Laurie teased him, making the stoat further blush. "I'm joking, really. It's like Bram here said, it's cute. Happy to know I've still got it." "And I thought you and Dean were telling me not to flirt with attractive clients," I muttered loud enough for her to hear. "Well, he might not be just a client in the near-future, Bram," she snorted. "Will he?" "Dean also made it clear I can't flirt with coworkers either," I pointed out. "Even if they're old flames." Eyes slightly widening, Noah glanced quizzically between us. "You two used to...?" "A long time ago," Laurie confirmed with an inane shrug. "Bram and I knew each other back in high school. We were even on-again, off-again before finally deciding-" The office building's entrance doors opened to reveal a Mexican desert wolf. "Samantha's ready for Noah here to perform his magic...trick?" He noticed Noah's receding blush, then sighed. "What's happening here?" A not-so-innocent smile formed behind the whiskers of my feline friend and fellow paranormal investigator sitting beside me. "We were flirting a bit," Laurie nonchalantly answered. Noah's jaw fell slightly. I shared the same smile. "Did you know that Noah here thinks all four of us are attractive?" I asked Mr. Skeptic. Noah's jaw fell even further at what I'd said. "Not sure what he thinks of you, Dean, but he had plenty to say about me." "Of course, I know," Dean said as he approached us. I scooted down to give him room on the bench. "I read the same forum post you did." "Augh!" Noah buried his muzzle into one paw, the other shaking as he grasped onto his vaping pen. The stoat struggled not laughing with us that intense blushing returned. "C-Can you guys q-quit it? Please...?" "Sorry," Laurie and I replied. Dean mumbled under his breath, "[i]Estúpido, lujurioso, maldito liebre...[/i]" "I'm a jackrabbit, not a fucking hare," I spat quietly. Laurie elbowed my ribs and snapped her fingers at Dean. We collectively lowered our ears. "Sorry," we replied. "Don't fight, boys." Laurie cleared her throat, returning her gaze to the client. "Ready to perform the experiment, Noah? If you're feeling overwhelmed-" "No, no, you're okay." Noah took one more swig of his vaping pen, inhaling and exhaling out the smoke. He inhaled and exhaled pure oxygen next. "I can do this. I...I can do this." "We believe in you, Noah," Laurie told him. "If this works, don't overexert yourself." Noah inhaled and exhaled, calmed himself down, then pocketed the pen. "I'll try not to," he said. We waited. And waited. And waited. According to my phone, it wasn't until around ten or so minutes until we started seeing something affect Noah. Everyone intensely observed the stoat. Both his paws rested on his knees. He sat up a little bit straighter, looking forward. The stoat's tail went still on top of his lap. He stared out into space, not directly at us nor anything behind us. At first, nothing seemed to happen. It seemed like the stoat was merely daydreaming. Very intensely daydreaming, more like it. However, around the minute mark on my phone, I noticed Noah's dark pupils doing something strange. I tapped Dean and Laurie's shoulders. Dean nearly spoke up, but Laurie was quick to lift a clawed paw up. I quickly motioned my eyes with an index and middle finger, then pointed them at Noah. We traded quiet nods. All three of us leaned forward without daring to stand up from the bench. They saw it too, witnessing the way that Noah's eyes seemed to get even darker somehow. I made a mental note to later bring up the stoat's almost undetectable breathing too. The eyes kept fluctuating and his breathing grew still. A passerby would've figured that some strange person had taken a realistically crafted mannequin and positioned it on a bench directly outside the lobby entrance of a random New Mexico office building. Also, they would've come across three weirdos examining said mannequin like they expected the Blue Fairy to appear and wave her wand, bringing it to life. "Depersonalization confirmed," Dean uttered in the softest of tones. Laurie and I glared at the canine, only to exhale when it appeared the stoat hadn't broken his trance. "He wasn't exaggerating..." I conceded in the same church-quiet tone. "I think this is more like disassociation," Laurie mentioned. "Depersonalization and derealization are what he'd be experiencing, and we wouldn't be able to see that..." "What're the differences?" I pondered aloud. "First one's about being disconnected," Dean chimed in. "The second one's about detachment from yourself, and the third one's like the second one, but it's about your surroundings." I raised an astonished eyebrow. "What? It's my job to research ahead of this stuff, [i]conejo[/i]. It's what you pay me to do." "Speaking of detachment," I suggested, "do you think he's doing his thing right now?" "We can't be sure," Laurie said. "We also can't prove it's really happening," Dean interjected. "I'll admit that this is some really freaky stuff, but it's not supernatural. I'll believe it when Samantha comes running down to the lobby and-" Samantha suddenly came dashing past the front doors, skidding to a halt. She started stammering a hundred words a dozen times per minute, barely comprehensible. "Sam! Sam, calm down," he told her. "Samantha, please slow down! What's happening?" "You are not going to believe what I'm seeing on the screen!" she finally bellowed out. "What, Sam? What is it?" I asked her. "Is everything okay?" Laurie trilled concernedly. "I'm getting a reading that makes it look like...like there's something in the room with me!" she explained. "I-It's this ball or form or...or something that's like, right next to-" "You think it's Noah?" I interrupted, ears perked high and smile widening. "You think it's his actual, factual-" "I don't know what it is, but it's definitely not natural phenomena I can explain," Samantha spoke with a confidence we rarely saw from her. She began pulling Dean by the arms. "You need to see for yourselves! Noah needs to see this!" "Um, should we even try to wake him up in this state?" Laurie questioned aloud. "We don't want him to suddenly be pulled back and get his soul even more misaligned." I took no more than two steps forward to Noah Emery when the vegetative stoat let out a loud, haggard gasp of breath. The sudden act, admittedly, made me jump a foot in the air. However, I didn't wait to rush over to him and began rubbing his back. He was either having a panic attack or acclimating to returning to his body, possibly both. Cold sweat trickled down his trembling forehead, and his dark eyes looked like they were widened to their limit. "You're okay, Noah, you're okay," I murmured repeatedly. I timed my inhaling and exhaling nostrils with his own. "Breathe for me, buddy. You got it, buddy. Breathe slowly. Yeah, just like that. In and out...Slow breath in...Slow breath out..." "A flower," he described to me at the same molasses pace. "N-No, a rose. Tic-tac-toe, losing one out of three times. Subtracting two from two-thousand and twelve. And Samantha's signature..." Noah stared directly through me. "That's what she wrote...on the whiteboard." *** All five of us had returned to our office upstairs. Noah sat at the conference table, cradling a cup of tea in his palms while silently watching the heat-tracking footage with us. I didn't bother requesting if he needed anything else. Not after the fourth or fifth time he told me no. He didn't want to wait any longer at reviewing and rereviewing what we'd caught. We witnessed Samantha do just as Noah predicted: drawing a cartoon rose, playing tic-tac-toe three times, doing random subtraction, and writing her name in cursive. This all happened right before a strange, amorphous blob floating/walked inside the office. It was partially blue, indicating a cold signature. It stood watching just as she finished and told Dean to go downstairs, then stayed to fully form into an anthropomorphic shape even as our tech squirrel reviewed the footage. By the time Samantha rushed out the office door, the entity lingered onscreen for a minute, walking around and staring out the window before vanishing into thin air. "Wanna explain that one, Mr. Skeptic?" I asked Dean. The canine clicked his tongue after a thoughtful moment. He didn't look up at me. "Not just yet," he retorted. "There's always an explanation for everything, even the unexplainable. And I think it'd be a great idea for Noah to return again for further tests." "At least, we can both agree on that," I acknowledged. "I'd be more than happy to come back for further experiments, and test out how far I can take my abilities," Noah explained rather happily. "With my help, we can make future experiments more clinical and based on the scientific method. We can take notes, measurements, perform clinical trials, and map brain patterns of I can gather the funds for the equipment." "That would be a fantastic idea!" Samantha beamed. "Absolutely, and I can think of a few ideas on where your abilities might come in handy with our own paranormal investigations, now that I think about..." I held a paw out. "Noah, how would you like to become an unofficial member of P.H.S.?" The stoat stared at my fingers. "Y-You want me to b-become a...?" He cleared his throat and took another sip of the tea, sighing. "I honestly wouldn't mind. But only if-" "You're off the record, yes," I agreed. "Your name won't be mentioned in reports, to clients, or even on the podcast or merchandise. And we'll test your misaligned soul as much as you want in exchange for your help on an occasional case. What do you say then?" Dr. Noah Emery thought over the offer for a few seconds, then nodded to himself and each of us. "It's a deal!" Noah firmly shook my paw, then those of the others. Everyone's tail thumped eagerly against our chairs. Our little group had gained a new member. Laurie chuckled after a moment. "Better delete your apps, Bram." I perked an ear up, slightly confused. "What? Why?" Dean smugly chortled. "You lost the bet, [i]conejo[/i]. You're being abstinent for a month." "Sorry to hear that, Bram," Samantha mentioned. "What? Hey now!" I objected strongly. "I never took the bet. You three were rambling about how I wouldn't last a whole month, then insinuated the bet to me, and before I could say a word, Noah came bursting through the door. That's not accepting a bet, you guys!" Meanwhile, Dean leaned forward towards Noah. "Welcome to the Paranormal Hunters Society..." he informed him in the driest of tones. "Hope you know what you're getting into."