Chapter 6: The First Loss

Liam spent a sleepless night wrestling with the implications of his grandfather's terrified face in the casket. The vision haunted him—those bulging eyes, the water-soaked hair, the desperate clawing hands that spoke of a death far from peaceful. By morning, he had convinced himself that he needed to understand what his grandfather was trying to tell him, what warning lay hidden in that mask of terror.

Clara left for work as usual, kissing him goodbye with a lingering concern in her eyes. "You look exhausted," she said. "Maybe you should take a sick day."

"I'm fine," he lied, already planning his return to the basement. "Just couldn't sleep. You know how my mind races when I'm working on something."

After her car disappeared down the street, Liam practically ran to the basement. The casket waited in its corner, patient as always, ready to reveal whatever truth it had chosen for him. His hands shook as he approached, not from fear but from desperate need to understand.

The lid opened with its familiar creak.

His grandfather was still there, unchanged from the night before. The same terrorized expression, the same water dripping from his gray hair, the same clawed hands frozen in their final, futile struggle. But now Liam forced himself to study the details more carefully, looking for clues he might have missed.

The water wasn't just in his hair—it soaked his clothes, pooled beneath his body in the casket's satin lining. His grandfather's mouth was open wide, not in a scream but as if gasping for air that wouldn't come. The dark stains on his shirt weren't blood as Liam had first thought, but more water, evidence of a struggle against drowning.

But there was something else, something that made Liam's blood run cold. Around his grandfather's throat, barely visible beneath the wet collar of his shirt, were what looked like finger marks. Dark bruises that suggested hands had pressed against the old man's neck.

This hadn't been an accident. Someone had held Walter Carter down in that bathtub, had watched him struggle and gasp and drown while they maintained their grip. The terror in his eyes wasn't just fear of death—it was the horror of betrayal, of being murdered by someone he trusted.

Liam staggered backward from the casket, his mind reeling. His grandfather had been murdered, and somehow the family had been convinced it was an accident or natural causes. But who would want to kill a harmless old man? And why would they cover it up so effectively that even the police had been fooled?

The sound of his phone ringing upstairs cut through his racing thoughts. Liam closed the casket and hurried to answer, still shaken by what he'd seen.

"Liam?" His father's voice was tight with panic. "Something's wrong. Something's happening."

"Dad, slow down. What's happening?"

"I can't breathe properly. My chest feels tight, and there's this burning..." Frank's words were interrupted by a harsh coughing fit. "I think I need to go to the hospital."

Fear shot through Liam like ice water. "I'll meet you there. Are you driving yourself?"

"Called an ambulance. They're here now." The line went dead.

Liam grabbed his keys and ran for the car, his grandfather's terrified face burned into his mind. The timing couldn't be coincidental—first the vision of Walter's murder, now his father's sudden illness. The casket was revealing family truths in sequence, and each revelation brought fresh tragedy.

At Riverside General Hospital, Liam found his father in the emergency room, connected to monitors and breathing oxygen through a mask. Frank looked even worse than he had the day before—his skin was gray, his eyes sunken, and his breathing was labored despite the supplemental oxygen.

"What do the doctors say?" Liam asked the nurse.

"Smoke inhalation," she replied. "Pretty severe. We're running tests to determine the extent of lung damage."

"Smoke inhalation? From what?"

"House fire. The fire department is still on scene, but they think it started in the basement. Your father was lucky to get out alive."

The basement. Where Frank had kept the casket for decades before passing it to Liam. The same basement where he'd tried repeatedly to destroy the cursed object, where he'd beaten it with hammers and axes until his hands bled.

Through the oxygen mask, Frank's eyes met his son's. Even weak and struggling to breathe, the old man's expression was clear: I told you so.

"The house is gone," Frank whispered when the nurse moved away. "Everything. Burned to the ground."

"What happened, Dad?"

"Woke up to smoke. Fire was already everywhere—walls, ceiling, floors. Started in the basement and spread fast." Frank's voice was barely audible. "Tried to get to the stairs, but the smoke was too thick. Had to break a window."

"How did it start?"

Frank's eyes closed, and for a moment Liam thought he'd fallen asleep. Then his father's hand gripped his arm with surprising strength.

"It wanted me dead," Frank whispered. "The casket. It's not finished with our family."

Before Liam could respond, Frank's grip loosened and his breathing became more labored. Monitors began beeping frantically, and medical staff rushed into the room. Liam was pushed aside as they worked over his father, their voices urgent and professional.

"We're losing him," someone said. "Get me the crash cart."

The next few minutes passed in a blur of medical terminology and desperate activity. Frank Carter fought for each breath while machines pumped life-sustaining drugs into his system. But Liam could see the truth in his father's fading eyes—the old man was giving up, surrendering to whatever force had been hunting their family for generations.

At 3:47 PM, Frank Carter was pronounced dead.

Liam sat in the hospital waiting room, staring at the floor while a social worker explained procedures for claiming his father's body. The words washed over him without meaning. All he could think about was the sequence of events—the vision of his grandfather's murder, his father's sudden illness, and now this death that felt far too convenient to be natural.

"I'm sorry for your loss," the social worker was saying. "Is there anyone we can call? Family members who should be notified?"

"No," Liam said quietly. "There's no one else."

That was a lie. There was Clara, who would want to comfort him and help with funeral arrangements. But how could he explain that his father's death was connected to a cursed casket that showed visions of the dead? How could he tell her that the basement fire had been supernatural revenge for decades of abuse?

Instead, he drove home in silence, his mind churning with possibilities he didn't want to face. The casket was escalating its game, moving from strangers to family members, from peaceful deaths to violent ones. First his grandfather's murder, now his father's death by fire. The pattern was clear—it was hunting the Carter bloodline systematically.

Clara's car was in the driveway when he arrived home. She met him at the door, her face immediately showing concern at his expression.

"What's wrong? You look terrible."

"My father died," he said simply.

The words hit her like a physical blow. Clara's hands flew to her mouth, her eyes filling with tears. "Oh God, Liam. What happened?"

"House fire. Smoke inhalation. He died at the hospital a few hours ago."

She wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight while he stood rigid and unresponsive. He should be grieving, should be crying or raging at the unfairness of losing his father so suddenly. But all he felt was a cold certainty that this was just the beginning.

"I'm so sorry," Clara whispered against his shoulder. "I know you two weren't close lately, but he was still your father."

"Yeah," Liam agreed, though his thoughts were already turning to the basement. To the casket that waited below, patient and malevolent, ready to show him the next phase of its plan.

That night, after Clara fell asleep, he made his way downstairs. The familiar ritual felt different now—charged with personal stakes rather than abstract curiosity. He was no longer observing the deaths of strangers. He was watching his own family be systematically destroyed.

The casket opened to reveal exactly what he'd expected and dreaded.

His father lay inside, but not as Liam had last seen him in the hospital. Instead, Frank appeared as he must have looked in his final moments at home—his skin blackened by smoke, his clothes charred and smoking, his face a mask of agony as flames consumed him from within. His mouth was open in a silent scream, his hands clawed as if trying to tear away invisible bonds.

But it was his father's eyes that made Liam's knees buckle. They stared directly at him with an expression of absolute accusation, as if Frank knew exactly who was responsible for his death. The message was clear: This is your fault. You opened the casket. You awakened something that should have stayed sleeping.

Liam slammed the lid shut and backed away, his breathing ragged. The casket wasn't just showing him deaths anymore—it was orchestrating them. First his grandfather's drowning, now his father's burning. Each death more violent than the last, each one a punishment for the sin of curiosity.

And if the pattern continued, if the casket was working its way through the Carter bloodline...

He thought of Clara sleeping peacefully upstairs, unaware of the supernatural forces gathering around their home. Beautiful, innocent Clara who trusted him completely, who had no idea that her husband had inherited a curse that would ultimately consume everyone he loved.

The casket had shown him his own death weeks ago, according to his father. But maybe that vision had been wrong, or maybe the timeline had changed. Perhaps it wasn't planning to kill him next.

Perhaps it was planning something much worse.

Liam climbed the stairs on unsteady legs, already knowing he would return to the basement tomorrow. He had to see who was next, had to know which face would appear in that stained satin lining. The knowledge would be terrible, but ignorance would be worse.

The casket had made its move. Now it was his turn to respond.

Even if it meant descending further into the darkness that had already claimed two generations of Carter men.