Cold House

Introduction by Jack Ketchum.

In a dark, strange city which may exist, in a time which may have been, in a cold, cold house as big as Cleveland, on streets the color of blood, among a thousand ghosts, and people who watch but barely speak, a man and a woman, separated by nightmare, search for each other and find an eternal winter, faces they do not recognize, love, torment, sacrifice.

The people in this city are everywhere this morning. Thousands of them moving through the streets like a river, flowing here and flowing there, in pink and brown and gray, in and out of the townhouses, in and out of the row-houses.

And so quiet. I open the window and I can’t hear a thing. Such a great moving mass should at least produce a breeze. They’re like blood flowing.

"I loved Michael and he loved me, and the question is, do we still love each other even though one of us is dead?"