“Our parks are rife with horror. As of yet, there may be no bloodshed, but there will be, of that much I am sure. All of humanity will feel the pain, the pain gestating in our municipal areas. For this horror is not human. It does not operate from the cold calculation of human reason, with comprehensible psychologies that we might, as thinkers, hope to quantify, to explain. It is borne wholly of the madness of nature, unpredictable in its movements and devastating in its effect.
This horror I call Mandrake.
Darwin, in his genius, speaks of his ‘Survival of the fittest’, and I quote him here: “in the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.”
This supposition is central to my own. Namely, a process of evolution is in operation within the workings of the planet earth, and humanity itself is merely an aspect of that process. There is no realisable ‘end’ to the process, but a perpetual development of natural selection. In simplicity – and it is the simplicity of Darwin’s claims that are perhaps most crushing to the folly of the spiritual community – all life is descendent from a common ancestor. It has then branched off into its myriad directions and possibilities through this aptly termed natural selection, which posits that, over periods of time, certain characteristics favourable to the longevity of a species will be duplicated in their future offspring. Any trait that better meets the need to, say, hunt or reproduce, will be desirable, whilst those which fail to augment these natural necessities or even hinder them would be, quite clearly, undesirable. By omitting these undesirable characteristics, often over periods of many thousands of years, an altogether stronger example of the species is so slowly created, by evolution, one in which the traits which once, perhaps, slowed the creature down, made it vulnerable prey to a more adapted predator, have been eventually deemed of an unsatisfactory quality and, ultimately and in short, superseded by those which better suit a fruitful life within the functioning planet. Therein lies the adaptation Darwin so eloquently exhorts. A successful species will adapt to the environment in which it finds itself; if hot, it will adapt accordingly, if cold or sparse of vegetation or prey, likewise.
It is this ability to adapt, over time, that eventually brought about the growth of sentient life, and which saw the loss of a great many species throughout the our earth’s history, simply because of their failure to suitably adapt to the demands placed on them by changing circumstance.
It is a theory dowsed in elegance, yet also at once the theory which elucidates the very horror I speak of, the fear that has consumed me, swallowed into the darkness of a search for an unbelievable truth in an enlightened age. I say again the word, and implore your audience: Mandrake. Feel the word pass your lips, the chilled spine of its consonants, the nausea of its vowels. Feel the word with the sadness of bereavement.
The Mandrake will destroy us. They have already infiltrated...”
*
“And what is this Mandrake, you ask, and rightly so. Put in the simplest terms, the Mandrake is of the family Anatidae, that is to say, duck. With the superficial characteristics of the common mallard (a species known not only for its propensity towards interbreeding but also its rapid evolution), the Mandrake has evolved with one inherent difference from its cousins, pertaining in specifics to the observable leg measurement of the creature. Where one might expect a leg of 2 – 3 inches, say, on an everyday duck, the Mandrake – adapted fully to the available underwater dimensions of its day-to-day habitat – possess legs of a basically identical appearance but growing to sizes as large as 10 feet in length (with a width in suitable concordance to that length).
With such legs in place, the Mandrake is free to explore the new aspects of life so associated with species of a far larger constitution. Rather than swimming atop the surface of a pond, for example, the Mandrake will simply ‘walk’ along the bottom, its sternly constructed limbs providing more than sufficient resistance and flexibility against the currents. Yet it is the potential of what the Mandrake could provoke when out of the water that so terrifies me.
As a keen ornithologist and amateur zoologist, I have seen only too often the sheer brutality of the natural world. It operates without emotion, functioning through the veracity of a desire for survival. Likewise, so many animals within this system are themselves governed by similar primitive urges and desires, to breed and prosper. It is only the ingenuity of the human species that has, to date, secured us our position of apparent dominion over the lesser beasts of the earth, but the authority we like to assume of ourselves is infinitely more tenuous than one would either hope or expect. Considered within the scale of even the known universe, our meagre technologies – which so embolden us to conceitedly label our own as genius, as approved caretakers and guardians of the earth – simper with their own insignificance. The power we consider ourselves to have, as men, is not exclusive to us, is not a birth right of the species. It is simply representative of the fact that, at the present time, we have struggled our way over the millennia to the top of what one might call the food chain, using our large brains and (comparatively) large physical size to ensure that the threat of predators is minimized satisfactorily.
History would suggest that the day will come when a new predator will overpower the human contingent, will take back the earth we have colonised and expropriated for our own greedy ends, will make humanity serve penance for the authority it claimed, over life, land and sea. Considered thus, it somehow puts into perspective the frail meaninglessness, the fragility of our perceived custodial privileges over the natural world.
I posit that this predator is here, now, and it is called the Mandrake.
But can a duck, even a 10-foot duck, really threaten the human race?
Of course the simple answer is a crashing yes. Even the smallest changes to a precision system such as this earth have the most profound consequences upon its functioning, and therefore on the functioning of those species within it. The evolutionary passage from common duck to Mandrake is not a small change, quite the opposite; it represents adaptation on a colossal scale, the result of which has the potential to reverberate around the globe with a significance synonymous with the extinction of the dinosaurs. Imagine it, if you can. Like all animals, the ducks have lived as servants to mankind, as the oppressed classes. They exist in unison with ourselves; we grant them that, but solely on the terms that we ourselves sanction. They may swim the ponds, lakes and rivers, bob for their titbits, ‘quack’, even, but within the strict understanding that we are their rulers, their masters. We will eat them roasted as it takes our fancy, will feed them the bread we would otherwise dispose of solely for the purposes of our own entertainment, and not for any care or consideration for the animals themselves. When the Mandrakes take their steps from our municipal waters, the oppressed will have finally found their voice, and the centuries of abuse, consumption and slavery will be over, the Anatidae emancipation will be complete. Man will fall at the legs of the Mandrake but there will be no reconciliation. They will enslave us, leaving the human race doomed to an eternity of servitude. It will start quietly, the change, the liberation – inexplicable drownings, reports freak duck attacks – but when it has sustained its climax the face of the world will have irrevocably shifted. The foothold of man will be webbed.
The question that remains, perhaps, most prominent in my mind is precisely why it is that this species remains so undocumented, studied and reported throughout not only the scientific community, but the social community also. I assume that the only explanation for this bizarre anomaly is that people are scared. Scared not only of the realistic possibilities of the Mandrakes existence and what that would mean for human society, but scared of change, and of what any change can mean for the world at large. The public do not have the time for Mandrakes in the hustle and bustle of the everyday; they may see a duck as they saunter through the parks, but nothing further will register, they have no reason to delve deeper into the animals submerged world. I fear that even a direct experience of the Mandrakes would do little to convince the simple masses – they are simply not prepared to accept so obvious a breakdown of the paradigms with which they structure and make sense of the world.
Furthermore, there is a distinct failure on the part of the academic scientific community to conduct due research and experiment into the phenomena, despite my best efforts. My correspondence to Cambridge University has fallen on deaf ears, it would seem, despite my thorough tabulation, logged sightings, and hypotheses which, whilst perhaps not conducted in accordance with the rigours of the academic standard of control, would certainly – I would suggest – warrant the further investigation by the Department of Zoology that the discovery of any new species would demand. And yet John Stanley Gardner, esteemed Professor of Zoology, will not deign to grace me with a response. For the scientists, I am little more than a madman, a lunatic, infringing the purity of the scientific method with personal manias, obsessions. Yet is the history of science not itself composed of these lunatics, the bold few men with an outlandish hypothesis who dared to stand up and force the world to change its theories, to reconsider the very essence of our understanding of the world, the bold few men who can truly call themselves genius? Most certainly.
For the academics of our time, my suppositions are simply too far out of their accepted world order. Despite the growing body of evidence I have collated in support of the existence of the Mandrake, the scientists I have approached have singularly refused to investigate my claims further. Again, I believe, this wilful ignorance is a product of fear. They are afraid to have their established knowledge undermined by the truth about the Mandrake. Despite the empiricism of the scientific approach, disproving current assumptions and models with newly meticulously assessed alternatives, tweaking the truth into its purest form, it is no doubt a painful process for the scientists. In the case of the Mandrake, the sheer scale of the threat of this evolutionary incongruity posed to the civilised, enlightened world is so great that it is perhaps simplest for those very men who should be examining its existence and finding solutions for the threat to instead ignore it, to place their hope in the faith that they have so effectively destroyed.
As fearful as I am of these Mandrakes, I don’t doubt our human capacity to stop their rapid colonisation, if we act with sufficient force and within a suitable timescale. Without the interplay of these two factors the human race might well consider itself thwarted, outrun by the immense hidden legs of these sub aqua monsters. The first step must lie in research. The second – and I disgust myself with the knowledge that this may be the only option – in conflict.
*
*
On the origins of the word itself, Havelock has this to say:
“Mandrake (ˈman-ˌdrāk) – a compound noun attempting to convey, linguistically, the curiosity of this hitherto unrecorded species. The word comprises both ‘man’ – a reference to the enhanced leg measurements of the species more in keeping with the perceived view of man as tall, even superior, of leg and therefore height – and ‘drake’ – pertaining to the masculinity of the duck. Presently my still very limited research into the Mandrake has found exemplars of the species only in the male gender. Whilst I am not yet in a position to hypothesize about this fact, and whether it is consistent with a larger pattern of common monosexuality to the species, it is an interesting aside nonetheless, and I have drawn attention to it in the twice utilised masculine form of its compound (I do sincerely doubt that the unlikely adaptations of the Mandrakes leg would similarly feature a solely male species, thereby rendering itself incapable of conventional reproduction and propagation, unless of course their reproduction functions with the efficiency of some kind of asexual division, wholly separate from their Anatidaen relatives).
Whilst not to be confused with the plant root of identical nomenclature, there are a number of interesting and wholly unintentional parallels one could conceivably draw (although I would like to clarify at this juncture that the name of Mandrake, as pertaining to the Anatidae, was devised in an act of spontaneous linguistic expression on my own part, based on a knee-jerk response, of sorts, to the immensity of my discovery within the parks of Norwich City and its environs. I had, at the time, conducted no research into the plant genus of the Mandragora, of which the mandrake is one such member, and had no insight into the possible connotations of the word. These findings very much followed my initial naming of the unrecorded animal species, and have since ‘stuck’).
Firstly, the roots of the mandrake (belonging to the nightshade family) have long been used within magic rituals, despite their toxicity, due to their deliriant hallucinogenic properties, and there are legends suggestive of the fact that the dug root of the mandrake will omit a scream, killing all who hear it. However, I am curious as to wondering whether perhaps such ancient legends and near mythologizing of these mandrake, of the regard they are so greatly held in, is not itself implicating the existence of the Mandrakes of the family Anatidae for a period far longer than I might hitherto have assumed?
In his translation of Arthur Edward Waite’s 1896 work, “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie”, Eliphas Levi writes: “The first men were, in this case, a family of gigantic, sensitive mandragores (mandrakes), animated by the sun...” Whilst I am not naive enough, in the 1920s, to presuppose the presence of my Mandrake in some primitive creation fable, it nonetheless strikes me as remarkable, at the very least. Do such myths really make reference to the plant species that bears this striking name, or could it not be suggested that instead these references are made to the Mandrake of my writings? Were the Mandrakes once a respected, almost divine element of the animal kingdom, God’s amongst men, worshipped, revered, adored in their majesty and grace? It is no doubt a matter of interpreting the legend suitably, such as in the scriptural references to manna, but I would posit that these ritualistic usages of purported mandrake root in Wiccan religions might well, in fact, represent the symbolic consumption of the ancient Anatidae Mandrake. Humanity consumes duck to this day, and I do not consider it so fantastic a leap to conclude that a more archaic system of beliefs would consider the actual physical consumption of the “first men”, the “gigantic sensitive mandrakes” to in some way harness mystical powers for the diner. Indeed, one might similarly conclude that this devout consumption of the flesh initiated man’s dominance over his once magnificent Mandrake Gods, and gave him the greed necessary to force the species into the subservience of prey. In short, initiated the animosity still existent to this day between man and his grand Anatidae counterparts.
There is further suggestion of the spiritual significance of the Mandrake written in the Judeo-Christian Scripture. In Genesis chapter 30, Reuben, son of Jacob and Leah, comes across Mandrakes in the fields. Rachel, sister of Leah and second wife to Jacob, asks for the Mandrakes and agrees that in return for them Leah may spend a night with Jacob. “’You must sleep with me,’ she said. ‘I have hired you with my son’s Mandrakes.’” Leah, who believes herself barren, bears a further child from the act, thus associating Mandrakes with conception (a myth which is concurrent with many other belief systems), and thereby associating Mandrakes with the God who breathes the life into all men. Were Mandrakes considered Gods?
It would certainly seem to point towards a deep spiritual union between man and Mandrake throughout the historical past, but a union now severed in the twentieth century by generations of human aggressors and the growing threat of Mandrake revolt.
Of course, such supposition is beyond my field of expertise, preferring as I do to work with observable fact rather than conjecture. However, it would certainly make for a fascinating point of study into the historical and cultural significance of the true Mandrake. For me currently, there are simply too many anomalies with these observations, as curious as they may be. Firstly, how could Mandrake and man have existed on the same earth for so many thousands of years without extensive report and documentation existing of the former? Secondly, the very gravity of my terror pertaining to the Mandrake stems from the certain knowledge I possess – as a result of behavioural study – that humanity itself is at risk from these creatures. It would be inexplicable to assume that no past incidences of Mandrake attack would have been recorded throughout the annals of history.
No, the one certainty I have at this present juncture is that Mandrakes do exist now. I cannot comment on the past, I shall leave such work to the historians and anthropologists whom I pray shall follow me and my work, but I know, as a point of unarguable fact, that there are Mandrakes in our parks.
I note the homonyms above merely out of a certain academic curiosity. Perhaps these differing meanings and their poetic, often supernatural history take on a striking new resonance when considered alongside my own, as extensions of it, of each other?”
*
Later in his life, Havelock, a once spiritual man (although apparently largely religious by default and not by practice, he still believed vehemently in the existence of a ‘higher power’, as he termed it) lost his faith completely. This, too, was directly resultant of his Mandrake ‘discovery’:
“[so I ask you] can science really hope to explain the Mandrake phenomena? Answer me this, I say: what but the icy hopeless distance of the indifferent world could ever create such monsters? This is not the work of a divinity, for what benevolent God would ever create such beasts? Where God fails, only the quantifiable and emotionless facts of science – outside of humanity, some silent, motiveless instigator – can create a comprehensible narrative around the Mandrake. It is that narrative we so desperately need should we ever hope to understand them.”
And further:
“God? I once looked into a jar of Colman’s mustard and saw God’s work, yet now I see that of man. I look in the eyes of the Mandrake, on the hand, and I see God’s death. The two simply do not require one another, you see, and I have certainly experienced the one.”
*
Havelock gives significant attention to the so-called ‘Song of the Mandrake’. On this his notes are very garbled, almost unreadable for the better part. He talks briefly about the existence of an audio recording he had made of the song, but as far as I can see there is no further reference to it among the documents. If it did ever exist it is no doubt lost, forever forgotten as a meaningless noise:
“I have seen it written, and what better description of the haunting Mandrakes cry is there but this?: ‘And shrieks like Mandrakes, torn out of the earth, that living mortals hearing them, run mad.’ For this is the sound they make! It is not the gentle communication of their smaller kin but a most deathly, macabre sound, their Siren song luring many a man to the shipwreck of madness! No, it is not the alluring sweetness of the Mandrakes call that devours their prey, but instead its hideousness, which sinks beneath the skin and destroys the functioning body from the inside out. It is made of a sound unlike any on this earth; it is a warning, a threat, a call to arms for the Mandrakes of the country. It is awful, wretched, grotesque.”
“I have seen grown men fall to the floor on hearing the Mandrakes song. There is something intolerable about its pitch, its tone, its atonality that can drive even the sanest of men to catatonia. It may be rare to hear it, and rarer yet to tell the tale, but it is there. I have heard it myself, on several occasions, and whilst I retain my larger faculties, of thought and process, I would be foolish to deny the profound effect it has had on me. I am, in every sense, a man broken by the Song of the Mandrake.”
I find it interesting that he uses the Sirens as a reference point here, in this slightly manic passage, the Sirens themselves being seductive ‘bird-women’ who would lure travellers to their end with the majesty of their song. I couldn’t help noticing the significance of the symbolism of human sized bird-woman hybrids, a symbolism undeniably close to the Mandrakes that so plagued Havelock’s mind.
Unfortunately there is little legible notation of a descriptive nature referring to the song. Havelock’s senses seem to have been marred by this – I think later – point in his life, and he struggles with both handwriting and coherence, the notes often breaking into erratic obscurity rather than structured language.
*
Finally, I include this ‘Table of Sightings’, as prepared by Havelock for the year of 1924. The original document was so faded that the scanner couldn’t translate the text into an adequate digital format, so I have had to re-type the entries with all the clarity of the postmodern:
*
I have, as yet, barely skimmed the surface of the immeasurable wealth of Havelock’s Mandrake writings, and I will publish more as I get to it. The more I read, the more convinced I am that he was an authentic character, a man carved from the very oddity of the Norwich streets which he loved so much.
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