SIX O'CLOCK HOUSE & OTHER STRANGE TALES

by Rebecca Cuthbert

Published by Watertower Hill Publishing (January 21, 2025)

Review by The Horror Zine Staff Reviewer Jonathan Chapman

Buy the book HERE

There is a certain ease that comes with practice. A comfort and familiarity. A feeling of home and belonging. With every tale, a well-versed writer can lead you into a story with a practiced hand, sinking you into the moment without seeming effort. The story takes you on a journey, whisking you smoothly away to another place and time. Rebecca Cuthbert has written many stories, a wide array of books and commentaries, and it shows. These stories are not hard to read, not hard to be a part of, not hard to envision; they are familiar and real within a few sentences.

The most apt comparison I kept thinking of when reading the stories in Six O’ Clock House & Other Strange Tales was of early Stephen King, and that’s high praise. Before he was the long-time master of horror, he wrote many, many short stories for a multitude of magazines. The hallmark of these early works was his portrayal of average people in average jobs, making their life situation real and pithy, as easy to imagine as our own lives. He made the jobs they worked at a part of the story, often using their work tasks as the back drop to unfolding weirdness and strange goings-on, the seeming normalcy of the mundane portrayed in the story as acontrast to the horror elements he introduced within the story. That’s a formula Ms. Cuthbert uses to her advantage over and over.

The opening story, Joiner, takes us to a country club bar in what is presumed an upscale establishment, where we meet Rebecca, the bartender and closer, as she works her shifts. We are a part of her daily grind as she navigates long shifts, closing duties and work relationships. Ms. Cuthbert takes us there so that you smell the liquor, hear the ice chips in the glasses, feel the wet bar rag move across the bar, hear drunken laughter and see the view out the windows at the lake outside. You become involved with Rebecca as she is pursued by a married patron and find yourself saying, Don’t do it, girl! He’s lying! The story begins to read like a real-life drama with a down in her luck heroine, until…things take a turn. The endingis more Cosmic Horror than Stephen King horror, but it works.

As you read, a trend emerges: Ms. Cuthbert likes to immerse the reader in the daily details of life, the hub bub and busywork of existing and in the midst of these details are the clues of what’s coming. It’s the juxtaposition of these safe, sane and realistic details that make the horror elements all the more interesting. An old Hollywood trope is to “immerse the viewer in the mundane so that the horror is all the more horrific.” Ms. Cuthbert is very skilled at this tactic.

The theme continues in my favorite story in the book, Hey, Stranger. As one would expect from an author of a variety of types of books, from “How To Write” helpers to children’s books to anthologies—Ms. Cuthbert is not afraid to break the mold. This story has the heroine speaking to an unknown patron in the restaurant where she works as a waitress, and the dialogue from that unknown person is omitted—basically we play that role. It’s inventive and it works. Slight novelty aside though, this story starts as a kind of working woman’s dialogue and seems—again—like a daytime TV show about a struggling waitress…until the tension mounts, suddenly and wildly.

Next, we have, Infested, wherein the heroine is visited by her own past selves in goblin form in a humorous but horrific story. The heroine is haunted—literally—but her past selves that were created by responses to societalpressure and stress and attempts to become something more. And the next trend becomes apparent—these stories are steeped in life, in the daily grind, in the hazards of being a woman in a terrifying world, and seeking to fight for a living amongst those who seek to exploit them and abuse them. Many of the scenes are fraught with menace before the horror elements event start!

The coup de grace for me was the closer, Damp In the Walls. This one…made me so uncomfortable I had to stop reading to pace myself several times. A troubled pregnancy. Isolation. An abusive partner. A lonely place with little chance of help. All of it ramps up the tension. The abuse grows as the story goes along, and as the heroine becomes more helpless, the abuse grows more hurtful. It was really uncomfortable to read. Except I couldn’t put it down! And again, the ending was…well, I can’t say but I loved it.

The horror elements in this collection range from the cosmic horror to the body horror to the magical, with no set rules or boundaries. Rebecca Cuthbert is as flexible in her styles as a virtuoso. Each story reads very different from the last, except that they don’t. All carry the central theme of menace, feminine rage against the haunting hazards presented by the modern world and the men who chose to be predators and abusers. It’s a thought-provoking collection that is a must read in this day and age, accomplished with that ease and smooth delivery one expects from a writer with so many credits. I highly recommend Six O’clock House & Other Strange Tales.