THE SECRET 13 SOCIETY
NOW
It is either funny in a sardonic way or unique in the way that an anomaly is unique, whatever the case may be, cowards will never tarry and address you face to face. Nor will they apologize for their transgressions especially when they’ve stabbed you in the back and hoped to all that is good that you would at the very least go away or at the most, be dead. Sadly for these particular cowards, hope is the thing by which I will rob them of, but I will be good and feed them the one dish that I expertly know how to conjure, fear.
….………
THEN
I’d only heard about the clandestine group through hushed rumors and referenced allegory. No one knew if they were truly real or if they were born from the speculation of those men who had hoped to join the ranks of this fabled enclave but did not know where to find them. If one did not know any better, one would think that I was speaking of the Illuminati, but hardly. It is in fact, the Secret 13 Society, they were a smart few who purposely grew gossip among the populace that they were merely practitioners of legerdemain and not at all valid. However, when rank amateurs or plebes of the paranormal world would foolishly employ the use of a spirit board or a short paragraph of a whole incantation to summon a ghost, without any real knowledge of what they were doing, the secret 13 society would literally manifest from the shadows and intervene. Somehow, the society knew when things of this nature were on the boil and they would avail themselves to manifest and give their help or to severely reprimand. Words were formed that the true nature of the secret 13 society was one of true magic and that all 13 members were masters of various arts of sorcery and the like, indeed it was not a rumor.
I was approached one evening after imparting a few brief psychic readings at a Halloween party thrown by a friend who owned an entire floor of a downtown condominium. I’d cautioned those who sat before me that the readings were in fact messages being delivered from the other side of the veil and not a foretelling of their future. The last person to deliver himself before me did not want a reading, rather he commented that what I shared was spot on information which was not encouraged through practiced questions meant to feed clues to myself through the clients answers. He handed me a note with a handwritten address and a time with which to appear.
“By taking this from my hand and accepting it, you have already bound yourself to us. You will bring yourself before us and the light will be shed upon you.” He an was older, darker Hawaiian man with gray hair dressed in a coat and tie who said only those words before he excused himself and departed. On the day following I was surprised to find myself standing before a dentists office, and upon entering the building the secretary greeted me and opened an unmarked door which led down a flight of stairs. At the very bottom of the steps stood a younger man smartly dressed in a suit and tie, he appeared to be guarding the door to which he had been most likely assigned to watch. He held his hand out and uttered only two words, “The paper.”
I quickly knew that he meant the paper which I was given the night before, he received it and opened the door. Before me was a room covered in a plush carpeted blue color from the floor to the wall, to the ceiling and it was bathed in a soft light. Seated in a semi-circle were twelve men who were dressed in all black suits and ties with one empty seat between them. I was blindfolded immediately and then a voice spoke which I could only assume belonged to one of the black-suited men.
“Read,” for some strange reason I knew that what the voice commanded was for my ability to relay messages for anyone of the twelve men who sat in front of me. Only one message came through and it was for me, “Your closest friend will bear thee the sharpest blade in your back.”
I could hear their bodies shifting in their chairs and suddenly I was released from my hoodwink, the twelve men were now standing, each of them gesturing toward the empty chair. The rumors were true, membership only became available when one among them passed through the veil. After which the remaining twelve would filter through society as if they were living divining rods in search of purity. Sadly, it was only myself that they could find and I became their 13th member, the society was whole again and there was balance once more.
….………
NOW
A society of men becomes corrupt from within its own house when the men who occupy seats of some matter remain in those seats for too long. A membership of any group of men must thrive through youthful applicants who should be mentored to one day take the places of the very same men who bring them along. This has been my proposal throughout the years while serving as a member of the secret 13 society, but the other 12 have been resistant. However, this is not what serves as my point of contention. That point came about when I’d stayed late one evening and began going over the finances of our membership, I’d accidentally discovered accounting that did not add up, not from our secretary or treasurer nor our trustees. Upon further examination, I also discovered that the deceased member of whose place I had taken years before, left a will to our membership. In it, he bequeathed to our ranks an amount of seven hundred and fifty million dollars. In the ten years of my membership, I have never witnessed anything materially or otherwise that reflected our inheritance of seven hundred and fifty million dollars, that is until I had come across the faulty accounting. I hadn’t a clue that my findings were planted so that I would discover it, the other twelve knew that I was an honest man who had no stomach for misdeeds and that I would present them with the evidence, which I did. An argument ensued and they feigned innocence which then turned into outrage and I was struck from behind several times and dragged upstairs and bodily thrown into the dirt parking lot behind our building. The police conveniently arrived and arrested me as a vagrant for causing a disturbance, by the time I paid my bail I found out that I had been excommunicated from the secret 13 society where all my rights and benefits were removed. The message that came to myself at that initiation many years hence had come true, indeed the men I had called friends were the very architects of the betrayal which they visited upon me. These men were so rife with corruption that they had forgotten their own purpose in the society and in turn slowly lost their psychic gifts, which in turn became the root of their corruption. It was a year later on a late night when their monthly meeting adjourned and all plebes who would never ascend to any of the 13 chairs had already gone home with the hope that one of them could be next. They sat in the middle of the plush blue room filling themselves with makers mark whiskey while entertaining the company of young girls to whom they paid a fine amount of money for certain favors. Bloated, fat, and filled with the kind of gluttony that only seven hundred and fifty million dollars could buy, they indulged in sinful debauchery which made them weak and very unprepared to see me. Thankfully they still held true to our most sacred cardinal rule, which was that not a one of us could leave the building and return directly home without cleansing ourselves at the falls near Kaniakapupu first. So it was, that in the wee hours of the morning an hour before the sun would rise over Konahuanui, the twelve men ascended the trail towards the ruins of Kamehameha III old summer palace with flashlights in hand. They were still drunk and unsteady and in no condition to run, they were perfectly in place when I stepped into the path they were taking.
“Gentlemen, I suppose it is futile to ask for an apology?” I mused.
They were surprised at first but when their bleary eyes were finally fixed upon me, they scoffed at the idea of any kind of reparation. Knowing that such a thing would never be forthcoming I then returned a smile to them which would be the last kindness they would ever know.
“No matter,” my reply was off-handed and cavalier. “You have all been so indulgent in your depravity that you’ve forgotten that the only night we do not ascend to this place after leaving our lodge is on the night when those who travel in the deep dark roam this valley……which is now.”
The twelve were set upon by the massive procession of Hawaiian warriors who moved through the forest with their torches, the sound of drums and conch shells drowned out the horrible screams of the twelve whose senses were too dulled to have foreseen the coming of the night marchers. They were found by errant hikers close to the hour of ten the following morning and were hardly recognizable as whole corpses as their arms, legs, and torsos were strewn about in a macabre mess.
The secret 13 society was reformed on the basis of longevity through the mentorship of its younger members who would eventually take the place of its senior members. Of course, to be a part of our ranks was by invitation only and only when ones true psychic abilities could be confirmed. One can never tell, you could be in attendance at a dinner or at a food court or at a picnic. Someone will sit in front of you and offer you a piece of paper with an address, date and time written upon it. Think carefully before you accept, it could or could not change your life.
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