Nowadays, it’s easy to see Stephen King’s name and have a conceived notion of his legacy. He remains well into old age one of the most prolific authors of his generation, producing masterpieces that dig under people’s skin and recontextualizes fears we’ve long taken for granted. In this Short Stop series, I will explore a period before he was the icon we know and love. Even with a handful of bestsellers to his name, his status had yet to cement. That is why I’ve chosen to take a look at his first story collection, “Night Shift,” and hopefully get a glimpse into the writer taking shape, before his style was cemented into a cultural touchstone. Was he always the master of horror, or was there a simpler time when he was as messy and weird as the rest of us? All it takes is turning the page to find out.
A lot of King’s appeal during this time relies on his relatability. Throughout “Night Shift,” his best stories have featured some ties to the working class and the various mid-century conflicts they were facing. His best often mixes in a few supernatural elements not in explicit ways, but so that they appear innocuous, curving around the edges of the frame until it suffocates the reader. Despite being one of his simplest and arguably most predictable narratives here, “Strawberry Spring” is a nice detour into the world of on-campus murders that have always remained a problem. If there’s a catch this time, he’s bringing a bunch of grisly descriptions with him.
For a short story, the premise works just fine. It has a basic mystery that it’s trying to solve: who is Springheel Jack, and why does he only appear during the dreaded Strawberry Spring? To King’s credit, he gets a lot of mileage out of his title by first making it sound plausible before unveiling a larger reasoning behind its use in the story. To start there, he describes it as being a “false spring,” much like an Indian Summer, where the temperatures are miserably high and creates disorientation. Given that the actual description doesn’t come until the back third, it’s a clever way of trying to determine if this is referencing a real phenomenon (which is plausible) or a construct. After all, Springheel Jack is a reference to English folklore called Spring-Heeled Jack. Like a lot of this anthology, maybe King is just cribbing from the past with a modern interpretation.
Though to understand the history of “The Terror of London” is not necessarily important this time around. Where certain stories, like “The Mangler” and “Sometimes They Come Back,” rely on a certain reader understanding of tropes, this is a straightforward dive into an event that by itself would be horrifyingly real. The additional choice to set this in March 1968, when it was published in Ubris that same year, is the icing on top. It begins to feel more plausible and, given that very little of this strays too far into overt fantasy, it’s easy to imagine King locked these ideas in certain collegiate minds to the point they couldn’t wander around campus after dark or began to create conspiracies around missing friends.
It also feels reminiscent of “The Boogeyman,” which was a haunting psychological exploration of parenthood through the eyes of a reluctant father. Things elevate by the page until it ends with personifying the demons inside. “Strawberry Spring” refuses to play that game, and while it’s a nice break from prior texts, some aspects of it begin to feel underwhelming. This isn’t a story with a solution so much as a fascination with the macabre. It’s a story meant to disarm comfort levels while posing the question if evil lurks among us. Not only that, but how banal it can seem when it’s not directly stating its purpose.
On the one hand, it is a relief to see King make a story that reads more as a tabloid than as a progressive plot. The protagonist, who isn’t really given much detail beyond a vague relationship to his environment, describes everything that has happened and ends with the same call of defeat. Somewhere in the Strawberry Spring’s heavy-fogged nights (thanks to their New England coastal locations), Springheel Jack hides among his prey. There’s no real defense other than to hope you lose him in the intangible barrier that separates everything. By the time he catches you, there’s no time to process the brutality he is likely to inflict.
It also explains why efforts to catch him have been mostly ineffective. There have been no witnesses to the original act. Anyone who goes missing is doomed to their fate. In one of King’s more effective tools here, he creates rumors and false ideas about what makes somebody a target for Springheel Jack. He is ultimately a figure who is not detectable because he has never been seen. At most, the narrator tries to use the alibi that he’s with his wife, living the humble New England life. It’s not to say that murderers can’t have healthy love lives, but it’s a great misdirect in a story lacking in extratextual details.
At most, it works in contrast to what a “sane” person would feel in these situations. The family unit is often associated with values of safety. The idea of having a wife who could die in the fog is bad enough, but any additional kin would create a nightmare during Strawberry Spring’s run every eight years. It makes sense that the protagonist is collecting details on the killer just to find some relief, though again it’s all a bit innocuous in how King delivers the exchanges. The protagonist is ineffective, unable to solve anything from afar. In fact, it starts to seem like nobody is once it becomes clear that law enforcement is fearful of Springheel Jack and becomes more selective of operations.
If the story poses one interesting question, it’s why the public trusts a small group to solve the most dangerous cases. This is not a superhero story. Nobody is riding in with magic. At most, law enforcement is putting themselves at risk for potential rescues, but more often than not are just risking their existence. This comes across as a lamb to the slaughter scenario, and makes one wonder how dangerous this serial killer is. Given that he decapitates bodies, there’s a good chance that things will end badly for anyone who so much as bumps into him.
As a narrative construct, “Strawberry Spring” is one of King’s most effective in this early run. Even the last-minute reveal that the protagonist has a victim’s head in his trunk suggests that he’s been performing the violence in an altered state. Much like “The Boogeyman,” it’s one of those haunting what-ifs that ask whether the reader is as kindhearted deep down as they believe. When the elements are changing someone in ways not dissimilar from a lycanthrope, how does one power through and live a pure and honest life? The violence lacking reason here is part of the effectiveness because sometimes people just aren’t that motivated. Sometimes it’s merely who is trapped in a fog that’s both symbolic and metaphysical. It’s also a deceptively simple way to explore how hopeless the public can sometimes be about crimes being easily solved.
Despite being one of the best stories in this collection so far, it’s surprisingly the first one to have not been adapted to a visual medium. Every one of the prior stories had at least a short story take that challenged the material. Maybe it’s because the idea of a Strawberry Spring is hard to depict, especially with an overabundant need for fog. However, it is not without interpretation. In 2021, Audio Up Media and iHeart Media created a podcast interpretation of the short story that was led by Garrett Hedlund and featured the voices of Milo Ventimiglia, Sydney Sweeney, Al Madrigal, and others. It spanned eight episodes and roughly four hours, meaning that it expanded on the story and gave greater nuance to individual moments.
To be honest, “Night Shift” as a collection so far has been underwhelming for me. While it’s been a great chance to see where early King’s mind was at, a lot of the stories feel too reliant on gimmicks and tropes that don’t always pay off. That is why I’m relieved that the past two stories have found him harkening back to more emotionally driven texts, with “Strawberry Spring” relying less on interpretive repulsion but more on the sensation of fear and uncertainty of the real world. The monsters depicted here exist within all of us, and there are only certain ways to fight them. So much is going on that it questions sanity and safety, and even the titular weather phenomenon comes into question about what’s real.
I should state that at first, the ending felt cheap, as if it needed to wrap up in a very short space. There’s not a lot to mull over with this one, even if its ties to true crime are nonetheless compulsory. However, that is to ignore how much of this tale is about the evil hiding just out of sight. Even the narrative’s milquetoast approach has its own metaphorical fog around it. Given that short stories aren’t required to be mazelike to be good, this is King teasing the reader while giving them the ugly, graphic madness they want. This works beyond the typical level of gimmickry. It’s asking if you feel safe and, if you do after reading this, then maybe you’re the one who’s actually insane.
Coming Up Next: “The Ledge”
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