When the Fog Rolls In
Strawberry Spring, Jack the Ripper, and Dissociative Identity Disorder
Good morning readers.
Welcome to The Barrens, Kindling’s Stephen King book club. If you’re new here, we have been making our way through Night Shift, King’s first short story collection. Today’s post is on Strawberry Spring, but if you want to join in, grab a copy and read The Ledge for next week!
This story features King’s more literary writing style, something that I really enjoyed from Bag of Bones. I took more imagery from that book, the loons at night and the lonely lake, than I have from any of King’s other stories. I read this in bed while the sun rose. I couldn’t see it, but every time I glanced out the window, the branches of a tree nearby glowed first soft pink, then orange, then finally the shadows were banished by yellow and the sky turned clear blue.
It didn’t fit the story unfolding on the pages I turned, transmuting letters to images, memories I’ll hold in my mind of things that never happened. Fictions. Lies. Tales of a northeastern strawberry spring that brought premature warmth, dense fog, and Springhill Jack.
Retrospective.
A story in the newspaper takes our narrator back in time to eight years before, when he was a student at New Sharon’s Teacher College, and a serial killer prowled the campus, murdering young women in the fog laden night. It’s a simple premise with a twist I saw coming from a mile away. But the joy for me was not in the mystery—again, there was none—but in the writing. Take this early line describing the sudden break in winter weather as that mythical strawberry spring moved in.
And when night came the fog came with it, moving silent and white along the narrow college avenues and thoroughfares. The pines on the mall poked through it like counting fingers and it drifted, slow as cigarette smoke, under the little bridge down by the Civil War cannons. It made things seem out of joint, strange, magical.
A strawberry spring, we learn, is a false spring, similar to Indian summer. It’s a change in weather, an illusion that winter is through, just before a great winter storm comes barreling through, dumping winter piles on slush laden streets that only days before were filled with night walkers, lovers and strangers and the sleepless. And, of course, Springhill Jack.
Gale Cerman.
The first girl to be killed. An art major, a mousey thing, at once ugly and cute, is found by another student, her throat slit. Everyone talks. Everyone knew her. Everyone has a suspect in mind, but even as they utter their theories, they watch one another, wondering if the killer is in their own huddled circle, whispering in hushed tones false planted stories to throw everyone off guard. But of course, the boyfriend is the primary suspect.
Amalara.
Carl Amalara, the ex-boyfriend of Gale, is the first to be arrested. A knife under his bed and Gale’s mutilated photo next to it is all the evidence the police need. They had been fighting. They broke up the week before. It seems an obvious catch. Until the fog.
The fog came again that night, not on little cat’s feet but in an improper silent sprawl. I walked that night. I had a headache and I walked for air, smelling the wet, misty smell of the spring that was slowly wiping away the reluctant snow, leaving lifeless patches of last year’s grass bare and uncovered, like the head of a sighing old grandmother…
…I walked until nearly midnight, until I was thoroughly mildewed, and I passed many shadows, heard many footfalls clicking dreamily off down the winding paths. Who is to say one of those shadows was not the man or the thing that came to be known as Springheel Jack? Not I, for I passed many shadows but in the fog I saw no faces.
There has been another murder.
Our anonymous narrator wakes to the bustle of bad news. Amalara was let go. Another body was found. This time, the killer took her head with him. Ann Bray is the unlucky girl, a beauty queen, a baton thrower, a smart student who was president of this and that. Our narrator remembers her as the editor of the school paper who turned down both his column idea, and his date proposition.
The students are of course on edge more than before. Not a crime of passion, but a hunter killing at random. These two girls, apart in social standing and probably never friends, both killed for no other reason than the night and the fog that shielded the murderer.
There was someone dark among us, as dark as the paths which twisted across the mall or wound among the hundred-year-old oaks on the quad in back of the gymnasium. As dark as the hulking Civil War cannons seen through a drifting membrane of fog. We looked into each other’s faces and tried to read the darkness behind one of them.
A quiet hysteria overtakes the campus.
Police crawl the streets surrounding. Students spread rumors, details from the crime scenes. The press finally names the killer, deemed serial by that point. “Springheel Jack,” for the absence of footprints in the muddy earth Ann Bray had been found in. They seem to miss, or purposely ignore, the resemblance our nighttime killer has to Jack the Ripper.
Plainclothes detectives pepper the student body, going undercover to try and tempt—and catch—the illusive serial killer. No one knows who’s real and who’s not. But it’s of no use. The fog rolls in again as our narrator crams for a trig exam, the myth of strawberry spring heavy on his mind. His roommate takes off to play pool, and leaves him alone to wonder: when will the storm come?
For a long time after he was gone, I could only look out the window. And even after I had opened my book and started in, part of me was still out there, walking in the shadows where something dark was now in charge.
HA! HA!
The words were written in blood on her windshield, her body left propped behind the wheel. Other parts of her scattered in the back seat, and in the trunk. She worked at the Grinder, making burgers for college students five hours a night.
Without any other likely suspects, the police arrest Hanson Gray, “an innocuous homosexual sociology student” who couldn’t remember where he had been the nights of all three murders. But while he’s locked up, Marsha Curran is killed, a nobody who rented a place with a few other girls, and wandered the foggy night to her unlucky end.
Why she had been out and alone is forever beyond knowing—she was a fat, sadly pretty thing who lived in an apartment in town with three other girls. She had slipped on campus as silently and as easily as Springheel Jack himself. What brought her? Perhaps her need was as deep and as ungovernable as her killer’s, and just as far beyond understanding. Maybe a need for one desperate and passionate romance with the warm night, the warm fog, the smell of the sea, and the cold knife.
The college closes early for spring break, and the narrator heads south with six other people crammed in the car. That winter storm moves in just like the old-timers said it would, and just like that, April is there with its clear nights and showers. Springheel Jack stops his string of murders, and our narrator graduates and moves on with his life, gets married and has a kid.
Until the paper that morning shows up with the killers nickname, given to him those eight years before. The snow is melting, running down the gutters. He can smell the sea from the front porch. The mist is creeping along roads and fields. A girl was killed near those Civil War cannons, her body laid in a snow bank, butchered and missing parts.
My wife is upset. She wants to know where I was last night. I can’t tell her because I don’t remember.
Ah. We’re seeing the pieces come together now.
I’ve been thinking about that foggy night when I had a headache and walked for air and passed all the lovely shadows without shape or substance. And I’ve been thinking about the trunk of my car…and wondering why in the world I should be afraid to open it.
All his foggy night walks timed with the murders make sense.
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.
DID-Dissociative Identity Disorder.
This story was first published in 1968, the same year that hysterical neurosis, dissociative type, was defined in DSM-II (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Later it would become popularized in media with the case of Billy Milligan, a convicted rapist and murderer who claimed not to remember any of his crimes, due to what would eventually be called multiple personality disorder.
He claimed that severe childhood abuse and trauma had led to personalities of all ages and gender, that would take their turn in the “spotlight,” when they would control his body and actions. Most of the personalities were harmless, but there were a couple that were violent and dangerous. Of course there have been other famous cases. Sybil being another one that led to books and films.
And this bled over into pop culture. Fight Club, Mystic River (though there is some argument around a diagnosis of PTSD vs. DID), and The Host to name a few. But does this work anymore? I know that I saw the twist coming a mile away. It’s akin to our main character waking up, and realizing everything was a dream. The story is well written, entertaining. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, and for its time, it was probably a shocking ending.
Can it be done well now? I’m not so sure. I’ve seen some twists on the DID storyline in a recent book I reviewed, but I don’t want to name it, because it completely spoils the ending. Suffice it to say, it flips the trope by making us think the character with DID is the bad guy. It worked for me. I felt surprised by the ending.
Is surprise out altogether? Maybe thriller and horror are entering a new phase. Maybe they can’t shock all of us content saturated readers and watchers. What do you think?
Truly, tell me. Did you see the ending coming? Were you surprised?
And if you’re like me and finding that you can often see the end coming from a mile away, tell me about a story that truly left you flabbergasted. Something you never expected. A twist, a trope flip, whatever it is.
This brought back memories of reading the story. I remember being surprised, because back when I read it, I could block out all other thoughts except the words I was reading. I could be completely in thrall to the author.
I love the passages you choose to excerpt. That first one describing the fog is beautiful. What a great detail to include the Civil War cannons to give a sense of being out of time, consistent with being out of season, and in a world out of order.
Thanks Shaina!
Greatest twist of all time for me was the sci-fi classic Ender’s Game from elementary school. I had no idea it was coming and never thought a narrator or book would intentionally mislead the reader. Really got me hooked. I’m glad to see you read or watched Mystic River. That character really was gripping. If you’re looking for a tour de force psychological drama with twists/turns, I highly recommend the anime called “Perfect Blue.” It has many of the qualities you asked for in recommendations. Be prepared though as it can leave the audience shell shocked.