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.
The voice was a low, ragtime warble, tinny like an old phonograph. It drifted from the drainage ditch ahead. Riley slowed. A rusted culvert pipe jutted from the bank, and something was blocking it. Not something. Someone.
“…Jeepers creepers, where’d ya get those eyes?” Jeepers Creepers
Then the singing started again, soft and playful.
“Jamie! The lighter!” Riley choked out. Riley grabbed Jamie and ran
Jamie screamed. Riley clamped a hand over his mouth, dragging him backward. “Run,” she whispered. “Now.”
A floorboard creaked directly above their heads. A single yellow eye peered through a knothole, blinking slowly. They reached the Impala
As Riley peeled out, she looked in the rearview mirror. The church was a pillar of fire against the night. And standing on the roof, silhouetted against the flames, was the creature. It was burning. But it was not dead. It was watching them go. And it was smiling.
A body. Or what was left of one. A man in a tattered postal worker’s uniform, his back arched at an unnatural angle. His eyes were gone—two wet, hollow sockets staring at the stars. And from his open mouth, the song continued, a recording stitched into his vocal cords.