Chapter 7: The Indestructible Evil

The funeral arrangements consumed three days of mechanical routine. Liam went through the motions—selecting a casket, choosing flowers, writing an obituary that painted Frank Carter as a devoted father rather than the broken man he'd become. Clara handled the logistics with quiet efficiency, making calls to distant relatives and coordinating with the funeral home while Liam struggled to focus on anything beyond the basement that waited below.

He hadn't opened the casket since seeing his father's charred remains. The image haunted him—those accusatory eyes, the blackened skin, the silent scream frozen in death. But worse than the vision itself was the growing certainty that he was responsible. His curiosity had awakened something malevolent, and now it was systematically destroying everyone connected to the Carter bloodline.

The funeral service was sparsely attended. A handful of Frank's former coworkers, a few neighbors, and Clara's parents who'd driven up from the city. The minister spoke about Frank's dedication to his family and his years of honest work, crafting a eulogy from the sparse details Liam had provided. It felt like they were burying a stranger.

Clara squeezed his hand as they lowered the casket into the ground. "He's at peace now," she whispered.

Liam nodded but said nothing. Peace seemed like an impossible concept when he'd seen his father's final agony played out in supernatural detail. Frank Carter hadn't died peacefully—he'd burned alive in a fire that had consumed everything he owned, everything he'd tried to protect his son from inheriting.

That evening, after the last mourners had left and Clara had gone to bed exhausted from playing hostess, Liam finally descended to the basement. His hands shook as he approached the casket, not from grief but from a terrible need to know what came next in the supernatural game that had claimed his family.

The lid opened with its familiar creak.

Empty. Just stained satin and the musty smell of age.

Liam stared into the vacant interior, confusion warring with relief. For three days, he'd dreaded this moment, certain he would see Clara's peaceful face or perhaps his own. But the casket showed him nothing—no vision, no prophecy, no glimpse of the next victim in its campaign of vengeance.

Perhaps his father's death had satisfied whatever dark hunger drove the object. Perhaps the curse was finally broken, the bloodline's debt paid in full. The thought filled him with hope that lasted exactly until he closed the lid and turned to leave.

A soft scraping sound made him freeze.

Behind him, wood groaned against wood—the sound of the casket's lid opening on its own. Liam turned slowly, his heart hammering against his ribs. The lid gaped wide, revealing the same empty interior he'd just observed.

But as he watched, the satin lining began to shimmer and shift. Not empty after all—just waiting for him to witness its revelation.

The vision that materialized made his knees buckle.

Clara lay in the casket, but not the Clara he'd kissed goodnight an hour earlier. This version was brutalized beyond recognition—her face a mass of purple bruises, her throat bearing the dark impressions of fingers pressed deep into flesh. Her beautiful dark hair was matted with blood, and her clothes were torn as if she'd fought desperately against her attacker.

But it was her eyes that broke something fundamental inside Liam's mind. They stared at him with the same accusatory terror he'd seen in his grandfather and father—the look of someone who'd been betrayed by the person they trusted most. Someone who'd died knowing their killer intimately.

"No," Liam whispered, backing away from the casket. "No, not her. Anyone but her."

The vision didn't respond to his pleas. Clara's battered corpse lay motionless in the stained satin, a prophecy of violence that would come to pass within days if the pattern held true. The casket had escalated from peaceful deaths to brutal ones, from strangers to family members, and now it was targeting the only person Liam loved more than life itself.

He slammed the lid shut and ran for the basement stairs, taking them two at a time. His chest burned as he gasped for air, his vision swimming with the afterimage of Clara's brutalized face. This couldn't be happening. The casket was supposed to show inevitable deaths, but perhaps this time was different. Perhaps he could change what he'd seen, could prevent the prophecy from fulfilling itself.

But even as he entertained the hope, a darker voice whispered the truth he didn't want to face. The casket had never been wrong. Every vision had come to pass exactly as shown, down to the smallest details. His grandfather's drowning, his father's burning death—both had matched their supernatural previews perfectly.

Clara was going to die, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Unless...

The thought that crept into his mind was so monstrous he tried to push it away immediately. But it lingered like a poison, growing stronger with each passing second. The casket showed him deaths that would happen, but what if the mechanism wasn't supernatural inevitability? What if it was supernatural influence, directing events toward their prophesied conclusions?

What if the casket wasn't predicting Clara's murder—what if it was commanding him to commit it?

"No," he said aloud, his voice echoing in the empty basement. "I would never hurt her. I love her."

But the vision had been so specific, so detailed in its violence. Clara's throat bore finger marks that matched the span of his own hands. Her defensive wounds suggested a struggle against someone she knew, someone who'd gotten close enough to overpower her despite her attempts to fight back.

The realization hit him like a physical blow. He wasn't seeing Clara's death—he was seeing himself killing her.

Liam stumbled back to the casket and threw open the lid, desperate to prove himself wrong. But Clara's brutalized corpse remained unchanged, her accusing eyes staring directly at him as if she already knew what he would become.

"I won't do it," he told the vision. "I don't care what you show me, I'll never hurt her."

For the first time since he'd inherited the cursed object, Liam felt genuine rage toward the casket itself. It had taken his grandfather, his father, and now it wanted to force him to destroy the only good thing left in his life. The malevolent intelligence behind the visions had played him perfectly—first seducing him with the illusion of power, then revealing its true purpose was the complete annihilation of everything he cared about.

Well, if it wanted a fight, he would give it one.

Liam stormed across the basement to his workbench and grabbed the largest hammer he owned. The weight felt good in his hands—solid, real, capable of destruction. If the casket was indestructible as his father claimed, he'd test that theory with everything he had.

The first blow shattered the lid into splinters, sending fragments of ancient wood flying across the basement. The second caved in the sides, reducing the ornate casket to a pile of broken lumber. Liam swung again and again, pouring all his grief and rage and terror into each devastating impact.

"Fuck you!" he screamed at the wreckage. "You want my family? You want my wife? Come and take them!"

He switched to an axe when the hammer's handle cracked, chopping at the remaining pieces until they were nothing but kindling scattered across the concrete floor. Then he found a can of gasoline in the corner—left over from his lawn mower—and doused the fragments before setting them ablaze.

The wood burned with an oily, unnatural flame that filled the basement with acrid smoke. Liam watched it burn with savage satisfaction, finally understanding his father's desperate attempts at destruction. There was something cathartic about fighting back, about refusing to accept the supernatural tyranny that had ruled his family for generations.

When the flames died down, he swept the ashes into a trash bag and carried them outside. The remains went into the garbage bin at the curb, mixed with ordinary household waste until no trace of the casket remained visible. Then he returned to the basement and scrubbed the floor with bleach until it gleamed.

For the first time in months, the basement felt clean. Empty. Free of the malevolent presence that had poisoned his home and his marriage. Liam climbed the stairs with lighter steps, already planning how he would explain the smell of smoke to Clara in the morning.

He'd tell her he'd burned some old documents—family papers that held too many painful memories. She would understand and comfort him, and their life would return to normal. The curse was broken. Clara was safe.

But when morning came and Liam descended to the basement for his coffee, the familiar creak of a casket lid made his blood turn to ice.

It stood in the exact same corner, in the exact same position, looking exactly as it had before his violent assault. The wood showed no scars from the hammer or axe, no char marks from the fire. Even the satin lining was pristine, unstained by the violence it had witnessed.

And Clara lay inside, her brutalized face staring up at him with those same accusing eyes.

The casket had repaired itself overnight, just as his father had warned. It was truly indestructible, immune to physical destruction or human rage. And its prophecy remained unchanged—Clara would die by his hands within days, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to prevent it.

Unless he removed himself from the equation entirely.

The thought of suicide flickered through his mind like a candle flame—brief, tempting, quickly extinguished. If he died, the casket would simply wait for the next Carter to inherit it. And Clara would be left alone with a cursed object she couldn't understand, couldn't fight, couldn't escape.

No, there had to be another way. Some loophole in the supernatural contract that bound his family to this malevolent force. The casket wanted him to kill Clara, but what if he could give it what it wanted without actually harming her?

The plan that formed in his mind was so audacious, so desperate, that it took his breath away. But it might work. It just might work.

He closed the casket lid and climbed the stairs, his mind already racing with preparations. The game wasn't over yet. He still had moves to make.

And if he played them correctly, he might save Clara's life—even if it cost him his soul.