Jeepers Creepers ★ ❲Recent❳
Riley grabbed Jamie and ran. They didn’t stop. They ran through the burning church, through the graveyard, past the corpse in the culvert, whose mouth had finally fallen silent. They reached the Impala. The keys were still in the ignition.
Jamie screamed. Riley clamped a hand over his mouth, dragging him backward. “Run,” she whispered. “Now.”
It lunged. Riley shoved Jamie through the church’s broken door and slammed it shut. The wood splintered instantly as a claw punched through, retracted, punched again. They scrambled over pews, into the dusty apse. A stained-glass window of a saint watched them with serene, indifferent eyes.
The harvest moon hung low and swollen over the backroads of Poho County, a jaundiced eye watching the rusted Chevrolet Impala crawl along the asphalt. Inside, sixteen-year-old Riley tapped the steering wheel, her younger brother, Jamie, snoring softly in the passenger seat. They were three hours from home, taking the “scenic route” back from a college visit. Jeepers Creepers
They drove until dawn. They didn’t speak. They didn’t cry. They just drove. And twenty-three years later, Riley still checks her backseat every time she gets in the car. She still locks the doors before the sun goes down. And she still wakes up some nights, sure she hears it—flap, flap, flap—just outside the window, waiting for the next spring.
They ran. The song followed them, not from the corpse, but from above—a rhythmic flap, flap, flap of leathery wings. Riley looked up once. Mistake.
“Every twenty-three years,” it whispered, tapping a claw on its chin. “Twenty-three springs. I wake up. I eat. For twenty-three days. Then I sleep. And you, little mice, are the first course.” Riley grabbed Jamie and ran
And then she saw it. A loose board in the wall behind the creature. Beyond it, a glint of metal. An old fuel oil tank.
It reached for Jamie. Riley lunged, driving the broken bottle into its shoulder. Black ichor sprayed. The creature didn’t scream. It laughed—a high, wet, wheezing laugh.
The cellar was a crawl space, barely four feet high. They pressed themselves against the dirt wall, holding their breath. The floorboards above groaned. The creature was inside the church. It wasn’t walking. It was… sniffing. A wet, rhythmic snuffling, like a dog tracking a scent. They reached the Impala
“The cellar,” Jamie gasped, pointing to a rusted ring in the floor.
But it was the eyes that froze her blood. Yellow. Hungry. Ancient. They weren't just looking at her. They were savoring her.