Chapter 5: A Vision of Violence

The drive home from his father's house felt endless. Frank's warnings echoed in Liam's mind, competing with a darker voice that whispered of incomplete knowledge and abandoned purpose. His father was weak—that much was clear from the squalor of his living conditions and the hollow look in his eyes. But weakness didn't invalidate truth, and the truth was that Frank had seen his son's death in the casket weeks ago.

Clara's car wasn't in the driveway when he arrived home. A note on the kitchen counter explained she'd gone grocery shopping and would be back by evening. Perfect timing. He needed to know if his father's vision had been accurate, needed to see if his own face would appear in that stained satin lining.

The basement felt different as he descended—charged with an energy that made his skin crawl. The casket waited in its corner, patient and eternal, ready to reveal whatever truth lay hidden in its depths. His hands trembled slightly as he approached, not from fear but from anticipation. After two months of strangers' faces, he was about to see something personal.

The lid opened with its familiar creak.

Liam's breath caught in his throat. The casket wasn't empty, and it wasn't showing him his own peaceful death. Instead, an elderly man lay inside, but this vision was unlike any he'd seen before.

The man's face was contorted in absolute terror, his mouth open in a silent scream. His eyes bulged with panic, and his hands weren't folded peacefully over his chest—they were clawed, as if he'd been grasping desperately at something in his final moments. His clothes were torn and wet, and there were dark stains across his shirt that looked suspiciously like...

"Grandpa," Liam whispered.

Even through the mask of terror, he recognized the features. This was his grandfather, Walter Carter, who had died three years ago in what the family had been told was a peaceful passing in his sleep. But the vision in the casket told a different story entirely. This man had died afraid, struggling, suffering in ways that contradicted everything Liam had been told about his death.

The old man's eyes seemed to stare directly at him, filled with a mixture of accusation and desperate warning. His mouth was open as if trying to speak, to convey some vital message that death had cut short. Water dripped from his gray hair, pooling in the casket's satin lining.

Liam staggered backward, his vision swimming. This was wrong. All wrong. The casket showed peaceful deaths, serene transitions from life to whatever came after. It didn't show violence or terror or the kind of desperate struggle he was witnessing now.

He forced himself to look again, hoping the vision would resolve into something more familiar, more in line with the pattern he'd come to expect. But his grandfather's terrorized face remained unchanged, a stark contradiction to everything he thought he understood about the casket's revelations.

The sound of a car door slamming upstairs made him jump. Clara was home early. Quickly, he closed the casket and hurried upstairs, his mind reeling with implications he didn't want to face.

"Hey," Clara called from the kitchen, surrounded by grocery bags. "You look pale. Are you feeling okay?"

"Fine," he managed, though his voice sounded strained even to his own ears. "Just tired."

She studied his face with the keen attention that came from four years of marriage. "Did you talk to your father today? You mentioned wanting to visit him."

The question was casual, but Liam sensed deeper concern behind it. Clara had been watching him carefully lately, noting his distraction and the increasing amount of time he spent in the basement. His growing obsession with the casket was beginning to affect their relationship in ways he was only starting to recognize.

"Yeah, I saw Dad," he said, helping her unpack groceries with mechanical efficiency. "He's... not doing well."

"What do you mean?"

"Drinking too much. The house is a mess. He looks like he's aged ten years since Mom died." The lies mixed with truth came easily now. "I think he's been struggling more than he let on."

Clara's expression softened with sympathy. "Maybe we should invite him over for dinner. Try to get him back into social situations."

"Maybe," Liam agreed, though the thought of his father and the casket under the same roof made his stomach clench. Frank's terror had been genuine, and now Liam was beginning to understand why.

They spent the evening cooking together, but Liam's mind remained fixed on the vision of his grandfather. The terror in those bulging eyes, the water dripping from his hair, the desperate clawing of his hands—it painted a picture of death that was anything but peaceful.

But Walter Carter had died in his sleep, hadn't he? The family had been told it was his heart, a quiet stopping in the night with no pain or struggle. Liam had even attended the funeral, had seen his grandfather's body in the funeral home looking serene and dignified.

Unless the funeral home had done their work too well. Unless what the family had been told was a comforting lie to spare them the truth of how the old man had actually died.

After Clara went to bed, Liam sat in their living room with his laptop, searching through old newspaper archives for any mention of his grandfather's death. The obituary was brief and unremarkable—Walter Carter, 71, survived by his son Frank and grandson Liam, preceded in death by his wife Margaret. Services would be held at Morrison Funeral Home.

Morrison. The same funeral home that had handled Robert Morrison, the first vision Liam had seen in the casket. A coincidence, surely, but the connection made him uneasy.

He searched deeper, looking for police reports or news articles that might shed light on the circumstances of his grandfather's death. Most death records were private, but sometimes unusual circumstances warranted public attention.

What he found made his blood run cold.

Buried in the archives of the Riverside Herald was a small article dated three years ago: "Elderly Man Found Dead in Bathtub." The piece was brief, just a few paragraphs noting that Walter Carter had been discovered deceased in his bathtub by his son Frank. The death was being investigated as a possible accident, though foul play was not suspected.

Drowning. His grandfather had drowned in his own bathtub, which explained the water in his hair and the terror in his eyes. But the family had been told it was his heart, a peaceful passing in sleep. Someone had lied to them about the circumstances, had spared them the knowledge that the old man had died afraid and alone, struggling against rising water until his strength gave out.

The casket hadn't shown him a peaceful death because his grandfather's death hadn't been peaceful. For the first time, it was revealing the truth behind a comfortable fiction, showing him what had actually happened rather than what he'd been told to believe.

But that raised new questions. Why was this vision different? Why was it showing him his grandfather now, three years after the man's death? And why did the old man's terrified eyes seem to be looking directly at him, as if trying to convey some desperate warning?

Liam closed the laptop and sat in the darkness, listening to the house settle around him. Clara's breathing was deep and regular from the bedroom, the sound of someone sleeping peacefully without the weight of impossible knowledge.

He should follow his father's advice. Should stop opening the casket, should let it sit in the basement untouched until time removed the temptation entirely. The visions were becoming personal now, showing him family members instead of strangers, revealing truths that were meant to stay buried.

But even as he considered abandoning his ritual, Liam knew he wouldn't. The casket had chosen to show him his grandfather for a reason. There was a message in that terrified face, a warning he needed to understand. The pattern was changing, evolving, and he was the only one positioned to decode its meaning.

Tomorrow he would return to the basement. He would look into the casket again and study his grandfather's face until he understood what the old man was trying to tell him. The peaceful strangers had been preparation for this moment—training him to handle visions of greater significance.

This was why he'd been chosen. This was why the casket had revealed its power to him specifically. He was meant to uncover the truth behind his family's curse, to understand the real history that had been hidden from him.

As he finally made his way to bed, Liam found himself thinking about his father's deteriorated state, his mother's painful death, and his grandfather's terror-filled drowning. The casket didn't bring death—he was certain of that now. But it revealed truth, and sometimes truth was more terrible than any peaceful lie.

The question was whether he was strong enough to handle whatever revelations awaited him in the basement below.