I remember being told that the portrait of the old man above my Nan's fireplace was her great grandad. I remember that nobody else saw his face as a pair of bloodshot eyes and a too-wide smile peering through a thick cloud of cigar smoke. I don't remember anyone mentioning that he was still very much alive.
He really shouldn't be, not with how old he is and sure as hell not with how many cigars he goes through in how little time. By all reasonable accounts he should be bones in a suit but this family's never been too good at being reasonable... or staying dead...
It's hard to understand him through the smoke but he said something about an old family curse or he just saw a hearse. More likely the former. Apparently some thirty years after we die, we get brought back to live eternally as inhuman beings to forever haunt our descendents.
The old man reckons he knows how I'll look when the curse takes me but the smug bastard refuses to give me anything else - not even so much as a subtle hint. Thankfully me and at least two of my cousins don't plan on having kids so the likelihood of the curse dying with this generation is pretty good.
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