Strawberry Spring

American horror author Stephen King published the short story “Strawberry Spring” in the Fall 1968 edition of Ubris, the literary magazine of the University of Maine, where King received his bachelor’s degree in English. In 1978, the story was included in King’s first collection of short stories, Night Shift.

King is one of the most prolific authors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries and is known as the “King of Horror” for his many iconic novels and short stories in that genre. King has won such prestigious honors as the Bram Stoker Award, the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letter, the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and the National Medal of Arts. King’s work has been widely adapted for film, television, radio, and podcasts. This guide uses the Kindle edition of Night Shift.

“Strawberry Spring” takes place at the fictional New Sharon Teachers’ College in Maine. Most of the story is a flashback set in 1968, told by an unnamed narrator in the story’s present day of 1976. The story is written in the first-person past tense during the flashback and the first-person present tense in the present day.

“Strawberry Spring” is about a series of grisly murders that occurred on campus while the narrator was a senior at the college. A local newspaper dubs the elusive murderer Springheel Jack after the 19th-century English serial killer Dr. John Hawkins who murdered his five wives (187).

The first victim, murdered on March 16, 1968, is Gale Cerman (pronounced Kerr-man), an art major whose throat was cut “from ear to ear” (183). Her boyfriend Carl Amalara is arrested but soon released when another student, Ann Bray, is found decapitated. The murders cause chaos on campus, and though police are constantly on patrol, no arrests are made.

Rumors circulate about the culprit’s identity. It is the height of the Vietnam War, and students believe that politics may play a role in the murders. Some blame a radical element of the anti-war group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), while the others suspect outside agitators (187). The situation is made even more tense because plainclothes detectives have been deployed among the student population; with so many strangers on campus, anyone could be the murderer.

One of the most important factors in the murders is the warm, foggy weather known as strawberry spring. The narrator’s roommate explains that it is a local term for a false spring that occurs during late winter, much as Indian summer is a false summer during early autumn (188). Strawberry springs occur every 8 to 10 years and precede the worst storms of winter. The unusual weather enthralls the narrator, who takes evening walks in the fog when the campus has a mysterious, romantic atmosphere. He begins to connect the atmosphere with the crimes and muses that the murderer is male, and the fog is female (188).

On March 22, a third victim, Adelle Parkins, is found dismembered in her car with “HA! HA!” scrawled in blood on her windshield. The police arrest a “homosexual sociology graduate student” who could not remember his whereabouts on the nights of the murders (189-90). The student, Hanson Gray, is released after another murder occurs on March 23. A student who lives off-campus, Marsha Curran, is found “slaughtered on the mall” (190). The narrator does not understand why she would have come to campus after curfew and again muses on the combination of the foggy night and violent death. The next day, the college’s president announces the beginning of spring break. The students leave campus, and the narrator takes six of his friends on a long drive home downstate. The drive is unpleasant because, with no arrests having been made, the students suspect one another. Strawberry spring ends when the students leave campus. The cold northern winter returns, and by June the murders are all but forgotten.

The narrative then jumps to the present day, and the narrator recalls what has happened in the years since his graduation: He attained a job at a local publishing house, was married, and had a child (190). He is disturbed because he read in the paper that morning that Springheel Jack has struck again, eight years after the original murders. A female student was found dismembered on the campus of New Sharon Teachers’ College campus.

The narrator’s wife tells him that he did not come home the previous night. To his dismay, he cannot remember what happened. He recalls getting into his car after work and noticing the same foggy weather—strawberry spring—that occurred during the murders eight years before.

While his wife cries in the other room, thinking that he spent the night with another woman, the narrator comes to the horrifying realization that he may have committed the murders.