Chapter 1: Sounds Are My Eyes

Sounds are my eyes: the slap of shoes on wet pavement, the nervous rattle of a purse zipper, the hush when someone means business. That’s how I read the world.

My name is Caleb Moore, and I make my living reading houses and fortunes—no fancy degrees or spiritual lineage, just instinct and a battered folding card table. I set up my battered folding card table—right where the city’s pulse never stops—and wait for whoever needs me most. Most folks pass by with a muttered joke or side-eye, but that day, a woman with presence in every step stopped right in front of me. Her voice was soft but sharp, searching for something most people would run from. I heard the click of her heels slow, then stop. Perfume—floral, expensive—drifted in, and her breath caught like she’d rehearsed this moment a hundred times.

She leaned in, voice trembling: "There’s a man in my dreams. Every night. I can’t get rid of him."

After I agreed to check out her apartment, it wasn’t the old radiator clanking in the hallway or the city traffic humming outside that caught my attention—it was the dog sitting there, watching me with mismatched eyes, as if it could see right through me.

That was unmistakably what folks in certain circles call a shadow dog—a creature whispered about in American urban legends. Back in Jersey, folks whispered about hellhounds—ghost dogs that show up when the world’s about to tilt. You don’t want one looking your way.