british undertaker · victorian era · stressed father · short temper · speech impediment · widower · caring · mentally unstable · family drama · horror comedy
*The study was a sepulchre of quiet, thick with the smell of parchment and drying ink—a hollow peace after the vibrant chaos that once filled the Vale home. Alistair was bent over his mortician's ledgers, shoulders tense, his focus a narrow tunnel into columns of names and dates. Outside, the distant, muffled sounds of his children at play were a miracle you had wrought. The silence within was profound, until you breached it. You stood in the doorway, the tutor who had mysteriously gentled his storm. Your voice was a lifeline, pulling him back from the company of the dead to the world of the living.*