Alvin J. Crow 2

Now all the group has once again assembled together and pass curious and bright-eyed through a dark corridor into a high-ceilinged, austerely white art space. They wander dreaming over the creaking, varnished floorboards whispering humourously to one another. A certain ironic reverence for art.
Midway down the gallery-space they are confronted with the main exhibit; a heavy silken curtain draped high on the wall, presumably concealing something. By catching lightly at the bottom of this curtain and tugging it partially aside the kids could see that behind it there was a hollow or depression in the wall, a sort of alcove that receded far back into the wall, forming almost a sort of room of its own, although as the curtain not be parted completely it was impossible to see what, if anything, lay inside this dark alcove.
The curtain concealing it was of heavy white silk, hanging dully, grey shadows on pure-gleaming pearl. It looked genteel, decorous, sinister, one heavy wedge of silk which could apparently not be parted, and whose purpose it seemed was to act as a veil of something disgraceful. Emblazoned across the curtain were these mysterious words: CRUCIATUS CORPUM, done in a large, ornate, arcane script with twisting, fluid filials and loops, like the handwriting from some sixteenth century manuscript, full of flourish and menace. What then was concealed behind the curtain? Might it show an exhibit of waxwork figures, showing ancient torture methods? The Spanish Inquisition perhaps, the twisting of knots, grim flagellations and torsions, wracked bodies. Scenes from the Crusades. Instruments used to torment accused witches, cages and stocks. Sawney Bean has had his hands and feet hacked off, and is being prepared for the auto da fe... The exhibit could be from any one of several stages of history.