"Here's another question for you" Helen said, crossing to stand at the side of the ditch. "It's after midnight on one of the hottest nights of the year-and a public holiday. Why does someone walk across one of the most dangerous roads in the county wearing head-to-toe dark clothing?"

"If you don't want to be seen" Julie said, her tone starting to clear of panic.

"Hello, people? What are we going to do about this?" Barry demanded.

"We call the cops," Helen said determinedly. "Where's the car phone?"

"Are you crazy?" Barry cried.

"Follow my words, Barry." Helen told him, her face intent and utterly different from that of his girlfriend of the past two years. "We call the cops now, and we make sure Ray gets blood tested straight away. When he turns out to have a zero blood alcohol level, they're going to bag that guy's clothes for evidence. When they find out that Rubber Guy is splashed in human blood that isn't his or ours, don't you think the cops are going to be more interested in how that happened than how we hit him?"

"We can't take that chance" Barry told her.

"We have to" Julie told the group. "If he dies now, we'll be charged with manslaughter at the least. If we call the ambulance now, we might not even be charged with anything. This is our best chance to get away clean, Barry, and I say we take it!"

"No!"

Ray walked towards the two of them and said "Barry, we have to!"

"It's my phone, and I say we dump the body, take care of tall dark and mysterious here, and don't tell a soul."

"Too late" Helen called from where she stood. Her three friends turned to look. They had been so intent on their argument that they hadn't noticed her join the stranger, who now held a cellular phone in his hand. As Barry started towards her, Helen made a double fist and punched herself twice in the stomach. As the others stood gaping, the stranger handed her the phone and Helen, now crying with what only they knew was pain, spoke into the phone.

"Come to Dead Man's Curve quickly! He just came out of nowhere, and I think he's hurt badly!" After a slight pause, she spoke again, crying harder "Didn't you hear me? He just came out of nowhere! Who walks around in full fishing gear on the fourth of July anyway? Hurry, please, I think he's dying!" She broke the connection and wiped away the tears. With a slight leftover hitch in her voice, she asked her companion "How long until he dies?"

"Fifteen minutes. Maybe less."

"Uh, Helen?"

"What Ray?" she asked, turning to face the three who came towards her.

"This was real great of your friend and all, but who is he? Why did he help us like this?"

"Does it matter?" she asked him.

"Well then, could you explain what happened to you? What happened to my sweet and bubbly and just a little ditzy best friend?" Julie asked.

"I wouldn't mind hearing this myself" Helen's mysterious friend asked.

"What, you don't know everything?" Barry asked, still on the verge of exploding.

"We haven't seen each other in a little over two years," the stranger replied, his eyes on Helen.

Helen took a deep breath, and explained "Back when we knew each other, I was going through some very…weird and traumatic times in my life. One night things went too far, even for me, and I couldn't take it anymore."

"What happened?" Julie asked.

"I came back from the dead."

"What?" Ray asked in astonishment.

"I died, and a friend brought me back with CPR. The next week I went to stay in LA with my Dad for the summer. I woke up screaming every night, and my parents eventually agreed to send me to live with my uncle."

"So that's where the Shivers came from," the stranger said. "Where did you get Helen?"

"It's my middle name" Helen told him.

He replied "Changing your name was very clever. I'm still not sure I would have found you if it hadn't been for the picture in the paper."

"So that's how you found me," Helen told him, with the air of a mystery solved. "The library puts the newspaper onto a computer database, and Willow found the issue with the contestants for the Croaker Queen."

"Right. Even with the picture I wasn't sure, so I came down to check. Lucky for you."

"Was it?" Barry asked. At the stranger's look of inquiry he added, "You just did the four of us a big favor, what's in it for you?"

Part three is here.

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