"Many interesting books in this room here. Do you like books my dear?" The man's voice was a low tenor, and had the silky-smooth tone, one carefully practiced, meant to put people at ease. It wasn't working.
"Who are you!?" Aya asked again, louder this time. She was asking that a lot lately and no one seemed keen on answering.
"Oh, no need to be so wary, I am merely a salesman." The man turned to Aya and removed his cap, revealing a face with sharp, angular features that looked slightly too uniform for a human, a set of crimson eyes, and ears that seemed to be pointed. His head was completely bald, and the only traces of hair on his entire head were a pair of thin eyebrows. "Call me ogre. I hope to get to know you, young lady." Aya stared in silence. "But it's quite troublesome. To think that corpses wonder this mansion." He sounded more amused and curious than disturbed.
"Corpses…? Those monsters back there? They're like creatures from a story. Why would monsters like that suddenly…?" Aya could still barely believe what was happening. The adrenalin rush from the situation had prevented her from fully processing the insanity the situation, and it seemed even more insane than she'd previously realized. Aya slumped to her knees and put her hands on her head, struggling to process everything.
"Well, it's a curse." Aya glanced up in surprise. "What you saw were the corpses of your father's test subjects. Overcome with anger, those deceased have been brought back by the power of a curse. To take revenge against your father… of course." Ogre spoke with a casual tone decidedly at odds with the insanity he was speaking. It was as though this sort of thing were the most normal occurrence in the world.
"What!? I have to save him!" Aya's fear was suddenly drowned out by a sense of urgency.
"Why is that?" Ogre asked. It was less a question, and more a demand for justification. "Toward his own ends, he has killed countless people in his experiments. This is his retribution. You must have realized by now… your father's true nature… and yet you wish to save him?" His voice trailed off towards the end, letting the words hang in the air. The Doctor had a similar tic in his voice, one that Aya mimicked from time to time.
Aya realized that she was nowhere near as shocked to hear about her father's crimes. She had always known he was up to something in that lab of his. Still, a part of her had hoped that she was wrong, that her father really was doing important work in his lab, that he really was just a normal doctor, that her family was a normal one. She briefly wondered how many people he'd killed. How many she could have saved if she'd said something. She was then reminded of what her mother told her, about what would happen if her father was found out. It was all too much for the girl, and she immediately shifted focus back to the task at hand. She rushed out the door without another word.
"My my… Perhaps she cannot yet understand their suffering." Ogre mused to himself. He was always curious about humans. They considered children to be the most innocent and pure of their ilk, and yet ideas such as empathy and objective morality didn't develop until later years. He looked forward to seeing the path Aya would take.