SKIN-WRITING ON BURN VICTIM

     Very little is known about how Stock ended up in the position that she did. A single mother of a ten-year-old boy, she had left her house at about 6:00 in the evening to rent a movie for her son to watch. But Stock never made it to the video store, authorities report. After she had been away from the house for about two hours, her son, Brandon, called the police, who initiated a preliminary search. The search area was increased several hours later when no evidence of Stock's whereabouts had been found. Finally, two truckers reported a car was off the road several miles into Buchanan County farmland. When police arrived early that morning, what they found baffled them.

     Lewis smashed a rear window with his flashlight and unlocked the door. He pulled Stock out of the car and wrapped her in a blanket. "She was breathing all right," continues Officer Lewis, "but I couldn't wake her up for the life of me so I put out a call for an ambulance. I wasn't too sure if I should be touching her burnt skin with my bare hands. And that's when I noticed some really weird things. Like although all her skin was burnt, her clothes weren't even singed! And her hair was all there, too. The inside of the car was as undamaged as the outside. Not a single indication the fire could have taken place inside the car."

     After the emergency squad taken Stock to Georg von Podebrad Medical Center, Lewis noted one final anomaly at the scene. While it appeared that Stock had driven her car off the road into the shallow ditch, there were no tire tracks. The grass and weeds between the road and the car still stood straight up. "It's almost like a giant hand from above put the car here," smirks Officer Lewis.

     Some GvP Med Center experts are contemplating attributing Stock's condition to spontaneous human combustion. But there is one final piece of the puzzle refusing to fit. On the inside of Stock's thigh, about two inches from the knee, is a design, the only part of her skin not burnt. Though evidently of intelligent design, no-one has yet been able to determine the meaning of the symbol. It is hoped that the origin of this two-inch long enigma will be unraveled, so that doctors will have some idea of what happened to the burn victim. But until then, only Helena Stock, deep in a coma, knows for sure.