New Florida story from Stephen King is a ‘Cujo’ sequel

Stephen King’s new short-story collection, “You Like It Darker,” won’t be published until May 21, but I’ve gotten my mitts on an early copy, and the book has some treats for Florida fans — among them a sequel to one of his most terrifying books, “Cujo.”

First is the cover, with what looks like a seascape with a palm-studded island at dusk — until you notice the teeth and realize it’s a monstrously huge alligator.

King, who has owned a home on Casey Key in Sarasota County for a couple of decades, sets one of the book’s stories on a fictional barrier island he dubs Rattlesnake Key. Not to be confused with the real Rattlesnake Key, off Terra Ceia in Manatee County, King’s Rattlesnake Key lies off Sarasota, just south of his likewise fictional Duma Key, a volcanically haunted island that, at the end of his 2008 novel of that name, was entirely sucked under the waves by a hurricane.

The new story is titled “Rattlesnakes,” and not just because of the island’s name. Its narrator is Vic Trenton, the father of Tad, the little boy who died in “Cujo,” and the husband, now widower, of Donna Trenton, the heroic mother who battled a rabid St. Bernard for three days trying to save her son.

Vic is in his 70s now, retired from the advertising business. Tad’s death shattered their marriage, but Vic and Donna eventually reunited; now he’s mourning her death from cancer.

An old friend offers him the use of his posh beach house, and Vic takes him up on it. Rattlesnake Key is high-end residential, not tourist territory, and in August it’s pretty much deserted — especially in the year when the story is set, amid the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Vic soon meets one of the neighbors — one his host has warned him about, a pleasant older woman named Allie Bell. She goes for walks on the island’s main road every day, not with a St. Bernard but with a toddler-size twin stroller that has no toddlers in it.

Vic and Allie have something in common: Both have lost beloved children. When Allie’s twins, Jacob and Joseph, were 4 years old, they slipped out a door unnoticed by their parents and headed through a wooded area for the beach. Among the trees, they fell into a rattlesnake wallow, occupied by dozens of snakes.

That was 40 years ago, but their deaths were so horrific that Allie’s trauma is permanent. Each day, she drapes clean shorts and shirts on the stroller seats and takes her boys for a walk, chattering away as one wheel of the stroller squeaks repeatedly.

Vic is kind to her, understanding her sorrow and unsure how firm her grasp is on reality. “I know they aren’t there,” she tells him. “And yet sometimes they are.”

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Just how much they are there Vic will learn, to his peril. If you’ve ever wished to be all alone on a Florida island, this story might make you rethink that. And King proves he can make even an empty stroller terrifying. Squeak.