In 1978, Stephen King released his first short story collection titled Night Shift. Personally, it’s my favorite King horror collection. The gems are everywhere: Children of the Corn, The Boogeyman, Graveyard Shift, the underrated Salem’s Lot sequel One for the Road. The list goes on and on.
Among those gems is a story titled Strawberry Spring. I don’t hear this mentioned often among King’s disciples. I’ve actually met a few who have never heard of it. It’s a shame. This story is very good.
The Plot
It’s about a series of murders at New Sharon Teachers’ College in the late 1960s. The story takes place during a false spring that brings a thick fog at night. The fog provides a perfect blanket for the killer’s crimes. Every time the fog drops a body appears.
Gale Cerman is the first victim. The killer slits her throat. Ann Bray is next on the chopping block. The killer decapitates her. He gets a little cocky with the third victim, Adelle Parkins, mutilating her, propping part of her body behind the wheel of her 1964 Dodge, and placing the rest of her in the backseat and the trunk. He even leaves a message on her windshield in blood: HA! HA! Sick.
Marsha Curran is the last victim. She is knifed to death while wandering alone on campus one night.
No one is caught for these crimes, leaving investigators hysterical. They arrest two suspects, hoping to bring justice to the victim’s loved ones. First, they go after Carl Alamara, Gale’s boyfriend. Then they arrest a sociology student named Hanson Gray who suspiciously couldn’t account for his whereabouts during the murders. But both men are freed because the murders continue while each suspect is in custody.
The murders end when false spring ends.
A decade later, another false spring arrives and New Sharon is plagued by murders once again.
Who Did It?
Spoiler alert!
Throughout the narrative, it’s implied the narrator is the murderer. At the end of the story, it’s revealed he has frequent episodes of memory loss that coincide with the killings. When the new false spring begins, he drives home from work one night in the fog. The next thing he remembers is his wife being upset with him for coming home late. He reads an article in the local newspaper about a girl being murdered at New Sharon the previous night. Suddenly, he is overcome by the fear of opening his trunk.
The story ends with these powerful last few lines.
“I can hear my wife as I write this, in the next room, crying. She thinks I was with another woman last night. And oh dear God, I think so too.“
Beautiful.
I love mentally unhinged protagonists. Their fatal flaws consistently fuel external and internal conflict. They keep the stakes raised in even the most worn out plots.
Why Springheel Jack?
The newspapers label the murderer “Springheel Jack,” like the devilish entity that allegedly terrorized Victorian England. But the narrator informs us the murderer is named after the infamous Dr. Jack Hawkins of Bristol. Hawkins was a serial killer who murdered five of his wives with “pharmaceutical knickknacks.” I’m assuming Stephen King made this up, because I haven’t found a single thing on the internet about anyone named Dr. Jack Hawkins.
The name association with a legendary entity makes me wonder if King was implying there’s something supernatural about the killer. Does he literally transform into another being when he’s on the prowl?
Or is it simply metaphorical?
You know what I mean. When the fog comes, the monster within him is unleashed.
I’m content with never receiving answers to these questions. It means I’ll wonder forever about King’s intentions, which means the story will always stay fresh in mind. These are good signs. If a story lingers in your mind after you finish it the author did his job successfully.
Potential For More
I’m surprised this story isn’t a longer fiction piece. It’s one of those shorts that feels like it’s both missing something and holding itself back. It’s never explained why the narrator has these episodes of memory loss or why he is compelled to kill every decade or so when false spring arrives. The first person point of view prevents readers from exploring other characters’ perspectives on events. In a story such as this, I think it’s beneficial to hear voices outside of the narrator’s own. It adds more to the plot.
The narrative also ends right as the narrator realizes he may be the murderer.
What does he do next?
Does he kill again?
Does his wife realize he is the killer? If so, does she help him cover his tracks?
Does she become his accomplice?
Or does he have to silence her to avoid criminal charges?
So many unanswered questions.
Now that I think about it, there aren’t any notable horror novellas or novels with a college setting. I attribute this to the negative stigma surrounding teenagers and young adults in the genre. Rarely have they been portrayed as complex characters. Their entire existence usually revolves around school, sex, and survival.
Strawberry Spring had the potential to break the mold. King is a descriptive writer. He creates strong, immersive worlds and detailed action and suspense sequences. He’s also an expert at characterization. Just look at the way he developed the Loser’s Club in It or the Torrance family in The Shining. I’m sure he would’ve given the students at New Sharon the same dynamic treatment, taking them far beyond the realm of usual stereotypes.
Strawberry Spring Adaptation
This story reminds me of another one in King’s second short-story collection Skeleton Crew, Morning Deliveries. Morning Deliveries is about a deranged milkman who leaves deadly surprises in customers’ milk bottles. Another storyline with great potential. Honestly, the premise sounds like a good Netflix series. It could be similar to Ice Cream Man, but a bit more sick and twisted.
In the right hands, a fully fleshed out Strawberry Spring could be one hell of an adaptation too. Center stage is a stressed out college student that is mentally on the brink of collapse. He has random blackouts or randomly enters a dissociated state and every time he comes back to reality a murder has just occurred. Perhaps, he has a close friend or girlfriend that suspects him and monitors his behavior. Maybe a hard boiled homicide detective is hot on his trail too, but is lacking sufficient evidence to bring him in. And at the end, the filmmakers give the audience a twist ending nobody saw coming.
In the right hands, this could easily become an iconic thriller. I’m envisioning the second coming of David Fincher’s Seven.
All of the ingredients are there.
Maybe I’ll make it one day.
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