The Thirteen Club
As the younger son of a wealthy New England family, Darian Winchester had an advantage over his older brother in that he was free to decide his own future. The elder sibling, as firstborn, had no choice. Duty led him to take a position in the family's shipbuilding business. Darian, however, had no interest in ships, either in building or sailing them. He was the intellectual of the family and wanted an education above all else.
"Perhaps I could arrange for you to go to West Point," suggested Jules Winchester, the patriarch of the powerful family.
"Actually, Father, I want to go to Harvard and study medicine."
Jules frowned with displeasure. In the early nineteenth century, physicians were not regarded as educated professionals. In fact, in some circles, they were viewed as little better than snake oil salesmen.
"Harvard is an excellent institution, but wouldn't you rather become something more respectable—like a lawyer?"
"No."
"You always were a rebellious one, but in God's name, why do you want to be a doctor?"
Darian wanted to tell his father that God had nothing to do with his decision, that it was his love of science that made him choose medicine, but he held his tongue. Jules Winchester was a devout man who would applaud a son devoting his life to the church but not one dedicated to saving the lives of his fellow man.
"I want to do something useful with my life," the son persisted.
"Useful is it? Then go into politics."
"I want to be a doctor."
Jules sighed and reluctantly yielded to his son's wishes.
"All right. If you've got your mind set on studying medicine, then so be it."
At that time, in all of New England, only Harvard and Dartmouth offered courses in medicine. Yet despite the excellent reputation of those two schools, the moral values of the day prohibited many of the advantages more modern students take for granted. Not only did the 1815 Act to Protect the Sepulchers of the Dead prohibit the use of cadavers for medical dissection, but access to living patients was limited to those at the Boston Almshouse and the Marine Hospital in Charlestown.
Darian frequently criticized the unjustness of the law.
"How are we to learn to be physicians if we cannot see diseased organs firsthand? The dead are dead. What does a corpse care if we cut it open to see the condition of its heart, lungs or liver?"
It was at this point in his life that Darian began to resent those strict Christians who shared the rather narrow viewpoints of his father. He became furious with the popular belief of the day that men of science had no business meddling in the affairs of God.
"Their thinking is medieval!" he complained one evening at a Boston tavern. "How is man ever to advance if he must adhere to archaic traditions and deep-rooted fears?"
Weldon Ainsworth, one of his few close friends at Harvard, poured him another mug of ale.
"Here, drink up and forget about those Bible thumpers for one night."
Darian drank greedily from the mug, spilling much of the ale onto his shirt.
"Religious superstition! Those pea brains are afraid to try anything forbidden by the church."
Weldon, who had a bit too much to drink, laughed uproariously and added, "I'll wager they cross their fingers when they pass a graveyard, too."
"That's my point," Darian cried, drunkenly slurring his words. "I've passed graveyards for years, and I've never crossed my fingers. Has my luck changed in any way? No! Nothing bad has ever happened. But I bet if the population of Boston were to parade past the Granary Burying Ground, nine out of ten people would cross their fingers."
"That means one out of ten Bostonians has a brain," Weldon laughed and downed another ale. "Maybe they ought to form a society—one that has no need for good luck charms, amulets or talismans."
Darian put down his drink, turned toward his fellow student and said, "That's not a bad idea. Why don't we form a society and deliberately defy all the old superstitious taboos."
"How can we find enough rational people even in the hallowed halls of Harvard to form a society? I doubt there are more than a dozen people who would be interested."
"Then our group will consist of a dozen members. No wait. Make it thirteen."
"That's perfect, for what superstitious lunkhead would dare sit at a table with twelve other people?"
"That's it then," Darian declared, raising his mug in the air. "A toast to you and me, the founders and charter members of the Thirteen Club."
"Here! Here!" Weldon bellowed.
Shortly thereafter, he drained his mug, belched and passed out on the floor.
Three months later, on the evening of Friday, the thirteenth of January, Darian Winchester, Weldon Ainsworth and eleven handpicked classmates met in a private dining salon above the tavern. As he entered the room, each man was required to walk beneath a ladder that was placed next to the door.
The young Winchester acted as host.
"Welcome, gentlemen. Before you sit down to dinner, I must ask that you all take off your shoes."
The eleven students looked at one another with uncertainty.
"Please bear with me. I'll explain what you are to do with your footwear at the end of the meeting."
Darian removed his own shoes and placed them under his chair. The other members followed suit.
"You may be seated now."
The twelve men sat at the table, looking toward their host—the only man still standing—for guidance.
"Fellow men of science," he intoned. "I call this first meeting of the Thirteen Club to order."
A sprinkling of applause broke out.
"In order to affirm our contention that certain practices and customs are nothing more than unfounded superstitions, we will begin each meeting with a simple ceremony."
The host then walked toward a large, elegantly framed mirror that hung on the wall above the fireplace.
"A simple mirror," he said. "Nothing more than a silvered pane of glass. It has no power to capture a person's soul. It can't even make a plain woman look more attractive."
He picked up the fireplace poker, swung it and shattered the mirror. The tinkling sound of the falling shards of glass was drowned out by the cries of surprise from those seated at the table.
"Now, my friends, if the doomsayers are correct, I can expect seven years of bad luck. I say balderdash!"
Laughter broke out around the table, but Darian interrupted the merriment.
"Just in case I'm wrong and they're right, I want each of you to share the risk with me. On the table are a dozen saltshakers. I want you to spill salt from a shaker, and I don't want to see anyone cheating by throwing a pinch of it over his shoulder."
Once the preliminaries were over, all thirteen students enjoyed an evening of dining, drinking and good fellowship. Throughout the meal, the ongoing irreverent banter praised science and the pursuit of knowledge over religion and superstition. Finally, when the brandy was gone and the last cigar smoked, Darian adjourned the meeting, but not before one final ceremony, in which the young men had to put on their shoes left foot first, open an umbrella inside the building and exit the room, walking beneath the ladder. As a final defiant slap in the face of superstition, the host arranged for several black cats to be placed at the tavern's front door.
"Nice touch," Weldon laughed as he clapped his friend on the back. "I have to hand it to you. Our little club had quite a successful first meeting."
* * *
Two days later Darian went to his parents' home for Sunday dinner. He was quite surprised to find, sitting at the formal dining table, one of the most exquisite young women he had ever seen.
His mother made the introduction.
"This is Juliet Morrow. Her father is an old friend of the family from New York. She's going to be in Boston for several months, and we've invited her to stay here with us."
"What brings you to our fair city, Miss Morrow?" the son asked politely.
"I've come here to study music."
"Oh, do you wish to learn to play the piano?"
"I have been able to play since I was a child. I want to study musical composition because someday I hope to write a symphony."
Darian's eyes widened in surprise.
"You want to become a composer? That's quite a lofty ambition for a woman."
"Why? Doesn't a woman have ears to hear good music or the sense to appreciate it? Why then shouldn't she be able to write it?"
Mr. Winchester tried to change the subject, for neither he nor his wife was comfortable around free-thinking women. Their son's interest, on the other hand, was heightened considerably by the fact that Juliet had both beauty and spirit.
"I only meant that it is a field dominated by men," he said by way of an apology.
"Aren't all fields—with the possible exception of prostitution—dominated by men?"
Mrs. Winchester nearly choked on her salmon in aspic.
"My dear young woman," Mr. Winchester sternly cautioned, "such subjects may be considered proper dinner conversation in New York, but here in Boston they are not."
"Forgive me, sir. I have a tendency to speak my mind freely, and I apologize if my comments offend your sensibilities."
Darian could not suppress an amused smile. He knew some women sought equal rights with men, including the right to vote, but he had never actually met one before. And unlike the stuffy, chauvinistic men of his social class, he found them utterly fascinating.
* * *
As the night of the thirteenth drew near, Darian prepared for another meeting of the Thirteen Club.
"Where are you going?" Juliet asked when she saw him dressed for an evening out.
"I'm meeting some friends from Harvard."
"Are you going to attend a lecture at this hour?"
"No. I belong to a social club. The members meet once a month, on the thirteenth, go out for dinner and engage in scintillating conversation."
"Sounds like fun. Can I come along?"
"I'm afraid it's for men only."
Juliet's eyes narrowed with anger.
"Is that so?"
"Don't be mad, my love."
"Why shouldn't I be? You pretend to agree with me that women are equal to men, yet you belong to an all-male club."
Darian explained the formation and purpose of the Thirteen Club, ending with the assertion that a fourteenth member would defeat one of the club's foremost anti-superstition rituals.
Juliet sighed and reluctantly conceded.
"I don't suppose there is anything unlucky about the number fourteen, but I want you to promise me that should one of the members resign, you will let me take his place."
Darian did not carefully consider his answer since he did not want to be late for the start of the meeting.
"I promise, darling," he said, giving Juliet a quick kiss on the cheek.
Then he bid goodbye to his parents, who were sitting in the parlor, and hurried off toward the tavern.
* * *
The months that followed were good ones for Darian. After a brief courtship, he and Juliet became engaged and planned to marry upon the completion of his studies. His life was full, and he was happier than he had ever dreamed possible.
Then one night after the end of a meeting of the Thirteen Club, he and Weldon Ainsworth were walking back to their apartments when Darian realized he had left one of his textbooks behind. He returned to the tavern, where an elegantly dressed, middle-aged man offered to buy him a drink.
"I saw you at Dr. Willard's lecture," the man told him.
"Are you a teacher at Harvard, sir?" Darian asked.
"No. I'm more of an advisor actually. I couldn't help noticing you and your friends earlier this evening. If you don't mind my asking, what is the business with the black cats?"
Darian laughed and blushed with embarrassment.
"It's just a little ritual we observe."
He then gave a lighthearted description of the ceremonies held at the Thirteen Club meetings.
"That sounds like an amusing way to pass the evening. Others at Harvard might frown on such goings-on, but I myself see nothing wrong with a little harmless fun—as long as that's all it is."
There was something about the man's tone of voice and the steely look in his eyes that made the young student apprehensive. Could the man be keeping an eye on him and his friends on behalf of the university's administration?
Darian slept badly that night, his mind overrun with doubts about the validity of the Thirteen Club. What purpose did it serve if the members did nothing more than act like drunken braggarts?
The following day he expressed his concerns to Juliet.
"Maybe the society should disband," he said.
"There's no need to dissolve your club. Just refocus on more enlightening pursuits."
Darian did not see the point of meeting once a month to study Latin or materia medica. The students got enough of both at school.
"Then make it a point to learn something you won't learn at the university," Juliet suggested.
"Like what?"
"I once read that secret societies such as the Illuminati and the Rosicrucians have been in existence for centuries. Their members, like you, value scientific knowledge above superstitious beliefs."
Darian had never heard of either of those groups and was amazed that Juliet had. He was a Harvard student while she received most of her education by reading dusty old books from the lending library. Yet she undoubtedly knew more than he did about most subjects. But men were supposed to be smarter than women. Perhaps it was time he restored the natural balance in their relationship.
* * *
At the next meeting of the Thirteen Club, Darian outlined several proposed changes. The other twelve members looked at each other nervously, and the heightened sense of fun that normally characterized the meetings suddenly vanished. The meeting ended early, and after the members filed past the black cats on their way out, Weldon pulled his friend aside.
"Where you serious in there?" he asked.
"About what?"
"That nonsense about studying the black arts."
"It's not nonsense, and alchemy and the Kabbalah are not black arts. Besides, I thought the purpose of this club was to look beyond the taboos of society and the church and search for the truth."
"We were talking about four-leaf clovers, rabbits' feet and saying 'God bless you' when someone sneezes."
"Now it's time to move on to the next step."
"I'm sorry, Darian. I just don't want to get involved with this sort of thing. I'm leaving the group."
"But we can't have a Thirteen Club with only twelve members."
"I'm sure you'll find someone to take my place."
When Juliet learned of Weldon's resignation, she was ecstatic.
"I can be the thirteenth member."
Darian was hesitant. In all honesty, he did not want her in the club. Still, he had made a foolish promise and could not, in good faith, go back on his word.
* * *
Darian and Juliet dined at a lovely inn, much quieter than the raucous taverns he usually frequented. When the serving girl showed them to a table near the fireplace, the student recognized the man sitting alone at the next table. It was the well-dressed, middle-aged gentleman who claimed to be an advisor at Harvard.
"Hello again, Mr. ...?"
"Gardener," the gentleman introduced himself and then turned to Juliet. "And you must be Darian's lovely fiancée."
"Yes, I am. Won't you join us for dinner, Mr. Gardener?" she asked, eager to get to know all of Darian's friends and acquaintances.
"Thank you," Mr. Gardener said and took a chair opposite Juliet. "I was wondering about your social club. What was the name again?"
"The Thirteen Club," the young man replied.
"That's right, the Thirteen Club. Are you still holding those meetings above the tavern?"
Mr. Gardener's piercing stare made Darian uncomfortable. The student did not want to discuss the club with the older man, but Juliet jumped in.
"Yes, but the club is about to change drastically," she announced proudly. "It will no longer have an all-male membership. I'm to be the first female member."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, and we're going to dedicate ourselves to the pursuit of knowledge. We ...."
Her fiancé interrupted her midsentence.
"Darling, I don't think we should bore Mr. Gardener with all this talk."
"You must stop those meetings before you do something you'll regret," Mr. Gardener urged them. "Sometimes the price of knowledge is too great."
"I don't care to discuss the club with you," the student said frostily.
"You must listen to me. You think you know what you're doing, but you don't."
Darian stood up and took Juliet by the arm.
"Let's go," he said, steering her toward the door.
"Please listen to me," the man called after them. "There are some things man was not meant to know."
But neither Darian nor Juliet paid attention to Mr. Gardener's warnings.
* * *
On the night of the thirteenth, the members of the Thirteen Club met not in a private dining salon but in a clearing in a cemetery on the outskirts of Boston. Juliet brought with her an ancient tome penned in Latin that was believed to hold the secrets of a pre-Christian religious sect.
Darian took his watch out of his vest pocket and checked the time. It was almost midnight. The thirteen members formed a circle around the large book that lay open on the ground. When a nearby church bell started to toll twelve, the young seekers of truth and knowledge held hands and recited the ancient Latin incantation that, according to the book, would allow them to see into the future. The final word was spoken in unison with the twelfth bell. Afterward, all was silent. A cloud passed over the moon, and everything was swathed in darkness.
Darian felt foolish standing in a graveyard in the middle of the night, whereas Juliet felt only a keen sense of disappointment.
He was about to suggest they all go home when there was a break in the dense clouds above, and a beam of exceptionally bright moonlight fell on the book. Suddenly, the pages began to turn of their own accord. The members of the Thirteen Club watched in awe as the progress of science and man appeared in swiftly changing images inside the strange beam of light. They were witness to a bizarre kaleidoscope of science's greatest achievements: the invention of the automobile and the telephone, the first successful heart transplant, the moon landing and the wonders of the computer.
However, the brief look into the future showed disasters as well as triumphs, images of death and destruction undreamt of in the early 1800s: the carnage of the Civil War, the two world wars and the conflicts that followed them. They witnessed the aftermath of the battle at Gettysburg, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Juliet could stand it no longer. She covered her eyes with her hands, fell to her knees and screamed. With the circle broken, the beam from the moon vanished and the cover of the book slammed shut. The porthole to the future was closed, but the images it had revealed would never be forgotten. They were forever branded on the minds of the thirteen observers.
Within a year from the day of that last meeting of the Thirteen Club, five of the members ended their own lives and six (including Juliet) went insane. Only Darian kept his wits, but he was not left unscathed by the experience. With the woman he loved committed to an insane asylum, he quit medical school and dedicated his life to the church. His newfound faith was predicated on the belief that God would never let such atrocities as atomic bombs and the holocaust be inflicted upon his children.
* * *
In April 1861, Father Darian Winchester lay on his deathbed in Massachusetts General Hospital.
"There's someone here to see you," the nurse told him.
Darian was exhausted, but he willed his eyes to open. He saw a face from his past, but it was not one he could recall.
"I'm sorry. I don't remember you. Were you one of my parishioners?"
The visitor looked down at the dying man with compassion.
"No. I met you when you were in medical school."
It was a time in his life Darian had chosen to forget, and he did not wish to be reminded of it now.
"I first saw you in a lecture given by Professor Willard, but we didn't officially meet until I bought you a drink in Revere Tavern."
Darian's heartbeat quickened and he took a closer look at the man.
"Juliet and I saw you in the inn. You tried to warn us."
"Yes," the man said sadly.
"How could you have known?"
"It happened to me," the man explained. "My wife and I knew absolutely nothing of the world around us, and we were happy that way. But we sought to taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and that sin led to our expulsion from paradise."
"You speak as though you were ...."
"In the Garden of Eden? I was. I am Adam, the father of all mankind."
Most people would have thought the man was mad, but Darian was not so quick to judge. He knew there was a thin line between insanity and reality.
"The Bible speaks of the curse Eve and I had to endure because of our sin. But toiling in the field and bringing forth children in pain cannot compare to the agony we suffer when we see our sin repeated through the centuries. Time and again I have tried to subdue man's hunger for knowledge, but the desire to learn is like a vicious beast that cannot be tamed once it is set free."
"What is the alternative then?" Darian asked. "Should man remain in ignorance?"
"No. But knowledge was meant to keep pace with man's spiritual growth. Invention without humanity, technology without compassion, progress without regard to loss of life—where does that lead? Man worships knowledge, but is he really any smarter if he does not know how to put that knowledge to a just and humane use?"
"I don't know," Darian moaned. "That night has haunted me for decades. Now all I want to do is die in peace and leave this world of sorrow behind."
Adam took pity on the dying clergyman. What would it profit mankind for him to show Darian the error of his ways now when it was too late to correct them? He smiled sadly, and without a further word, he was gone.
"I must have imagined him," Darian told himself, grasping at a slim hope. "Or perhaps he is one of those mesmerists. That's it! He hypnotized me. Adam, indeed! Terrorism and genocidal dictators—it's all hogwash!"
Darian closed his eyes, praying that when he opened them again, he would be a young man attending Harvard Medical School, looking forward to becoming a doctor and marrying Juliet Morrow. But during the night Death paid him a visit and in so doing closed his eyes forever. In a way, it was a blessing, for the following day, in Charlestown, South Carolina, Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter. Darian Winchester was mercifully spared seeing the horrifying future he had witnessed one night in a Boston cemetery become a grim reality.
Was it his uniform number or the fact that Salem crossed the base path that caused A-Rod's hitting slump?
