Something in the air. Humidity, electricity, a hum of dismay. Nell glanced out the window and made a face. Barely ten in the morning and it was as dark as a root cellar out there, the sky one solid mass of nail-gray cloud. The wind blew fiercely, scudding the Keegans' trash cans across their driveway. Definitely a day to stay indoors, hunker down, make a pot of tea, read a good book.

The little flag on Nell's mailbox was up.

Come on, come on. Nell shook herself. Go grab the mail before it starts pouring buckets.

As soon as she stepped outside, the wind slapped her, a giant clammy palm. Nell strode to the mailbox, leaning into the vicious wind, every nerve ending twanging. Simple to put it down to the fast-approaching storm, reasonable, even - something in the air, electricity, humidity - until she lifted the latch, swung down the door, and found the rock candy.

The stuff was wrapped in a scrap of stained and wrinkled red paper, some ancient remnant of holiday gift-wrap, but Nell didn't need to tear the sloppily-taped package open to know what it contained.

Leave it, she thought. Close the mailbox, walk away, pretend you didn't see it. Her spine prickled; the urge to yank up her collar and scrunch down inside her jacket was almost irresistible. Eyes boring into the back of her neck.

Two drops of rain fell, pocking fat wet spots into the dirt next to her feet. The wet spots looked like black, staring eyes.

Rock candy in the mailbox. Julie could not be far away.

The low sky roiled, gray cotton candy in a mixing bowl. A sprinkle of rain fell. Though there'd been no lightning, no thunder, Nell smelled ozone.

She snatched the red packet out of the mailbox. The paper came apart, disintegrating into flakes, and the candy lay heavy in her palm, old, older than the gift-wrap, cloudy yellowish cubes of pure sugar crystallized on a dirty cotton string.

To think I used to eat this stuff by the case. Mom used to say I was the reason the dentist could vacation in the Caribbean every year.

"Hi."

"Shit."

"You cussed," Julie giggled.

Nell turned, her heart thumping. The candy in her hand was sticky, tacky, the crystals' once-sharp edges gone round with time. Julie looked exactly the same. An elf on speed, Nell had called her once, in high school. Big black eyes, pointed nose and pointy chin, weird baby-small teeth. Julie, thin as two sticks, a woman constantly in motion, pacing off nervous energy, spinning on the ball of one foot, gesturing exuberantly…the same. She snatched the rock candy, swiping it off Nell's palm before Nell could blink, and grinned.

No, not exactly the same as the last time Nell had seen her. Julie had a new haircut, porcupine-spiky. Very retro. It suited her.

"You look about twelve," Nell said.

"We're the same age."

"I know."

They'd found each other in the schoolyard one day during recess, more than some people's lifetimes ago. Before the second bell rang, they'd discovered they shared the same birthday. They'd known each other ever since. Best friends. Closer than sisters.

"How long has it been?" Not: how have you been, or what have you been up to. Nell had long since given up trying to figure out the answers Julie gave to such questions.

"Six years, 281 days." Julie juggled the rock candy, one-handed, the fused clump of sugar cutting a perfect circle in the air, faster, faster…

"Feels like yesterday."

Julie grinned. "I know."

Faster, faster. The candy blurred.

The wind had died. The churning nail-gray clouds had gone still.

Now the sky opens up, Nell thought.

Only it didn't.

Julie caught the rock candy, closed her fist around it for a second, then tossed the stuff into her mouth, the entire lump at once, crunching the sugar with the fierceness of a wolf snapping a rabbit's spine.

"Is it going to rain?"

Cheeks bulging, Julie cocked an eye skywards. She shrugged, then shook her head.

Across the street, John Keegan darted out of his front door dressed only in his boxers and slapped barefooted across the driveway to retrieve his trash cans.

"What is it?" Nell asked softly.

Julie stopped chewing. A fat thread of saliva lay on her chin. For a second she went completely still; stark despair settled on her face like a mask, distorting her features so monstrously Nell felt a stab of fear.

Julie spat the rest of the candy, half-masticated, half-dissolved, on the ground. "I can't understand why you love this junk."

"I don't."

"You did."

"I did," Nell admitted.

"Do you remember Claire Metlay?" Despair quick-morphing into rage.

Nell stepped back. "Yeah."

"She has something she shouldn't have."

Julie bounced in the passenger seat, playing with the window controls, fiddling with the radio presets. No point asking her to stop, or asking her to put on her seat belt, either. Nell drove slowly, fighting the impulse to speed up; Julie's jumpiness was catching.

It was a good thing it hadn't started raining. The back-country roads west of Monroe were suspension-challenging at the best of times. When they turned to mud, they were almost impassable.

Nell's hands were sweating.

Claire Metlay worked the midnight to six shift at the Donut Hole. Weekends, she hawked stuff at flea markets. Once, Nell had bought a couple of pairs of second-hand plus-sized jeans from her. It'd felt so good when she'd finally tossed those fat-pants into the garbage.

"What has she got?"

Julie put both feet on the passenger seat - holey sneakers, dirty toes poking through - and linked her arms around her knees. She shook her head.

Nell drove.

"Left," Julie said, or sometimes, "Right." And then, finally, "Here."

Here. No surprise, really. Nell hadn't expected Claire Metlay to be living in a thirty-room mansion. Still, she looked at the rusty-assed Airstream and sighed.

"I know," Julie said. "But it's still not right."

"Do you want to tell me what's going on?"

Julie swung the passenger door open. "Claire found something."

The trailer listed to the left, its breeze-block foundation settling lopsidedly into the clayey Monroe county soil. Grime blanked the windows more effectively than the faded, flower-print curtains. Utter silence from inside - no TV, no radio, no voices. No antenna on the roof, Nell noticed. The side of the trailer sported some impressive dents, though, as if a heavy-booted man had landed several serious kicks.

"Looks like a twister took the notion to snatch it up, then had itself another think and tossed it back down." Julie didn't smile.

"Maybe she's not home," Nell said.

"She's home." Julie walked toward the door. Once, a very long time ago, someone had painted it robin's-egg blue. "She hasn't been out for weeks."

"What?"

"Yeah. Since March." Julie lifted her hand to rap on the door. Her eyes caught Nell's, and held them. "This bad goes both ways."

"How bad is this bad?" Nell whispered. Her throat was dry. There had been other bads. The man with the Dr. Moreau dogs. The teenager who kept slipping through the cracks between minutes. Sometimes she wished she'd never met Julie. Never accepted that first red, rectangular cardboard pack of rock candy forty years ago in the courtyard of their grammar school.

Julie slammed her fist into the door, then slammed it again, and again.

"Stop! You'll hurt - "

Julie punched the door harder.

There'd been a time when Nell would rather have had a package of rock candy than a new pair of shoes or a ten-speed bike.

Every desire carried a price tag.

I hate you, Nell thought, looking at Julie.

Who every day had appeared in the schoolyard with a fresh box of rock candy and a loopy, puppy grin.

Julie cocked her arm back, teeth set, and let loose, landing a thunderous roundhouse blow in the exact center of the door.

I love you.

A muffled cry, unintelligible, from within. Nell shot out her hand, touched Julie butterfly-light on the shoulder.

They both stood very still.

After a moment, Claire Metlay opened the trailer door.

Nell almost cried out. She bit the exclamation back - Holy shit, Claire, what happened to you? Something must have shown on her face; Julie pinched her arm, viciously.

Claire looked like partly reheated death.

She recognized Nell at once; Nell saw her eyes widen a fraction, saw her give a tiny nod as her identity registered. It took a moment longer to clock Julie.

Then she slammed the door shut.

Tried.

Julie caught the door easily and held it open with casual, frightening strength.

Claire's once-full cheeks were sunken; her eyes were as glassy as those of a person approaching the ass-end of a month-long drunk. She wore gray sweat pants and a t-shirt with a panting bulldog on it; the clothes were stained with coffee, with mucus, with blood.

"I told you ---" Claire croaked.

"I told you." Julie shoved the door all the way open and stepped inside, Claire cringing back from her. "When was the last time you took a shower?"

Nell followed, caught in Julie's irresistible wake.

The place smelled like a beehive that had been smoked out, cracked open, then left to decay throughout an entire hot, humid July. The odor was palpable; the smell clogged the inside of Nell's nose, adhered to the back of her throat. A heavy, fermenting sweetness.

Claire lit a cigarette. The eye-stinging harshness of the cheap tobacco came almost as a relief.

"It's time to stop," Julie said.

"You can't tell me what to do."

"It's not right."

Claire hit her, flashing into motion so suddenly her face still bore its hollowed out, vacant expression even as her fist, red-coal cigarette eye in the lead, connected. And Julie, so fast, always in motion, nervous energy boiling through every pore, was caught flat. The cigarette speared her cheek. Knuckles smacked bone.

Nell stood frozen for a half-second that lasted forever; she heard herself let out a yelp, and then her hands were on Claire's arms, digging in as they pushed her back, shoving her into a three-legged table holding a vase jammed with dusty plastic flowers. The table rocked, the vase tumbled. The cigarette was gone, crumbled, lost, and extinguished. Julie's cheek bore a fat red mark, bullseyed with black.

Somehow Nell's hands had left Claire's arms and clamped themselves around her throat.

The cloying scent of rotting sweetness that permeated the trailer had, for a second, faded from Nell's awareness. Suddenly the stench rushed back, suffocatingly powerful, the sweetness shot through with an undercurrent of something sharp and acrid.

"Stop," Julie said, grabbing the back of Nell's jacket. "That's not what we need to do."

Nell stepped away from Claire, coughing. The smell was biting into her chest, tiny invisible snaggle teeth nipping her lungs. I was choking Claire, she thought with disbelief. Her fingers throbbed as blood swept back into squeezed tissue. But she hurt Julie.

Nell looked at Julie, at Julie's face. "Cold water. Ice cubes, ice cubes in a towel."

"It's not important," Julie said. "Claire?"

"No." Shakily, the woman lit another cigarette. The flesh on both sides of her neck was mottled, stripes of red angrier than Julie's burn. Claire's eyes were dead again.

The smell changed, quite abruptly. Cold meat, Nell thought. The butcher section in the supermarket, the odor that seeps through even the tightest plastic wrap.

"Claire."

"No!"

And the rage, Julie's rage, intense and focused as a laser, switched on again --- if looks could melt, the side of the mobile home and everything else in Julie's line of sight, Claire included, would have instantly been reduced to a formless mound of slag. Claire cringed.

"You can't keep it," Julie said. She spun around and strode toward the back of the trailer.

Claire lunged after her, and Nell tackled her; casually, detachedly, feeling as if she were watching herself commit the violence from a point several feet outside her body. Nell kicked Claire in the back of the knee, slammed her to the floor, and sat on her.

Is this why I'm here? To hit Claire, hold her back, stop her from hurting Julie?

She wasn't even out of breath.

"What did you do?" Nell asked softly. Claire squirmed beneath her, then bucked, trying to throw her off.

"Get out of my house!" Awake now, life in her voice; for the first time since they'd pushed their way in, Nell felt this was really Claire Metlay talking to her. Truly Claire Metlay that she was pinning to the butt-scorched, peeling linoleum. Guess I won't be dropping into the Donut Hole for a cup of coffee and two glazed anytime soon…

"Sorry," Nell muttered.

"You have no right!" Claire bellowed.

"You have no right," said Julie, coming out from the back, lugging something big and rectangular and transparent - an aquarium? There didn't seem to be any water in the tank. It looked heavy, though. Julie's shoulders were hunched, her arms straining.

Nell got a glimpse of the tank's contents and quit wrestling with Clair, who immediately elbowed her viciously in the side and scrambled out from underneath her.

"This is my house!" Claire cried again. "You have no right."

Carefully, Julie squatted; carefully, she set the tank on the floor. "You can't keep it."

Ow-effing-ow, Nell thought, curled up around the really quite amazing pain directly under her last rib. Unfortunately, her position on the floor put her eye to eye with what was inside the tank.

A gush of sour, burning liquid filled her mouth. No. I am not going to be sick in Claire Metlay's crappy pathetic mobile home. "Julie."

"You see," Julie said.

Nell wasn't sure which of them she was addressing.

There was something in the tank, and it was alive.

Give me mutant dogs any time. I don't care if the dogs walk, talk, and bake cookies. It has to be better than this.

Hairless, shivering, and the sickly pink color of baby aspirin. Six legs that Nell could see; the thing was huddled in a sort of quivering ball in the middle of a filthy pile of shredded newspaper. Its pink skin was blotched with irregular patches of brown; three of the patches gaped then closed again at slow intervals, displaying a gummy, mucus-shiny interior. Mouths? Nostrils? The other blotches wept a thin, clear fluid.

The thing had one eye. It was a vivid blue, and staring right at her.

"Julie."

The thing was about the size of a kindergartener's school backpack, and it obviously did not belong anywhere near Claire Metlay's mobile home.

"You can't have it! It's mine. I found it."

The stench in the place was emanating from the tank. The lid was on, a glass top, not mesh, friction-taped around and around the edges and corners - how could it breathe? Maybe it didn't have to - but the smell still gushed out, a tangible thing. The odor was peppery now, nose-burning, but lighter than the cloying sick-sweetness of before.

"It doesn't belong to you," Julie said icily.

Nell pushed herself to her knees. The pain under her ribcage had dulled to just short of unbearable. "Julie."

"Yeah."

Third time was still the charm. "You can't keep it either," Nell said, gently, because at the first glimpse of the trapped creature she'd understood Julie's rage, and her outrage.

Shaking her head, Julie said, "I know. I know. It doesn't belong anywhere here."

"Then what are we going to do?"

"Set it free."

Claire let out a howl of fury and despair. "No! It's mine! You can't take it!"

"Claire," Nell murmured. Suddenly her heart was pounding very hard; there was a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. "Where did you find it?"

"It's the only special thing I have!"

"Where did you find it?" Nell repeated.

Claire clapped her hands to her face and burst into sobs.

Nell waited for Julie to do something. Force the location out of her. Hit her, maybe. But Julie merely nodded at the tank, then glanced inquiringly at Nell. "Back seat, okay? I'll ride with it."

"Wait." The bad feeling was getting worse. I'm missing something, Nell thought. Hoped. "Where?"

"Anywhere."

"It's mine!" Claire howled again.

"Shut up," Julie said, absently. Her eyes were bright. She was in motion again, shifting her weight, popping her fingers, nerves jumping just under her skin. Touch her and she'd crackle, like electricity, Nell thought.

"How is it going to get home?"

Julie grimaced, a fierce baring of teeth, a spasm of disgust. "I can't do everything."

"It'll die."

"Here, it'll die. Free, at least it will have a chance."

Nell looked at the thing in the tank for as long as she could bear to. "Julie. It'll die."

Julie blinked rapidly, then gave an infinitesimal shrug. "Free is still better."

"We need to find to find out where it came from - I mean where it showed up here - " In some small part of her mind, Nell was trying to hold on to a vague image, stupidly like a door.

"Claire?" Julie asked.

"You can't take it! It's happy! I take care of it. It's all right." Eyes streaming and fists clenched, her voice straining for earnest reassurance. "It's okay, really. It's fine here. It gives me stuff. - " She flung her arms out. "It gives me everything. It loves me."

"I really don't think so, Claire," Julie said.

Nell tried one more time. "Where did you find it? Where did it come from?"

"It didn't come from anywhere," she said, her voice breaking. "It just came."

The thing in the tank shuddered. Rippling jello, Nell thought. The one eye seemed lidless; it hadn't blinked once the entire time they'd been in the trailer. The brown splotches, the orifices, though, gaped and closed, gaped and closed. The smell permeating the place was now that of a damp, mildewing cellar in which a case or two of gone-to-vinegar wine bottles had been broken. Did that mean anything? Surely she couldn't be the only one to notice the changes in the odor.

Julie snapped her fingers, left hand, right hand, pop-pop-pop. Gonna do this, gonna do it now. Just like when they were kids, jumping off roofs, daring each other to leap off the highest branch of the tallest tree they could find. Learning to fly. Julie with her pockets crammed with those red cardboard packs of rock candy. The boxes always got crushed in the landings, but the candy remained good.

I haven't flown in years, Nell thought. Got too heavy. Got too old. And Julie's stayed exactly the same.

"I'm not sure," she said.

"Free is better," Julie replied, with the implacable, unshakeable certainty of a child. "And if it dies, that's still better than staying here like this. It's suffering."

Suffering. Nell couldn't argue with that. She stepped forward to help Julie lift the tank, and Claire cried out.

The tank weighed a ton. How had Julie managed to haul it from the back bedroom or wherever Claire had stashed it, by herself?

It was hard to hoist the tank and carry it without looking at the thing inside, but Nell did her best, concentrating on Julie's bent head, her spiky haircut, as they maneuvered, Nell walking backwards, through the trailer.

The thing sloshed a little in the tank, making Nell think queasily of jellyfish.

"Get the door," Julie snapped, and Claire, keening like a widow, scuttled in front of them and snatched the door open.

"Fuck you," she sobbed. "Both of you. Fuck you to hell."

In the car, they didn't speak. Julie sat in the back, arm and knee braced on the tank, steadying it. Nell drove in silence until she couldn't stand it any more.

"The quarry?" She was thinking of pools, both shallow and deep; the thing seemed at best semi-solid. Surely it would desiccate without access to water.

"No, the preserve. That egret thing."

So Nell drove to the bird sanctuary, though it was nearly an hour away. OK. The thing wasn't a fish, after all. And there wouldn't be teenagers climbing around the egret preserve, either, scrawling graffiti, emptying cases of beer, and filling condoms. The thoughts ran in her head, until Nell almost had to laugh at herself. Still at it, after all these years, justifying Julie.

The whole ride, the thing in the tank exuded no odor whatsoever.

Cars had only limited access to the sanctuary, and people were strictly forbidden to leave their vehicles. When Julie let out a short, soft huh, almost like a sigh, Nell pulled over.

No egrets in sight.

Nell helped Julie carry the tank down one side of the ditch separating the road from the birds' marshy habitat, then up the other. "Slow down," Nell panted, but Julie didn't, or couldn't. They trudged through bracken. The ground was springy where it was overgrown, tacky where it was bare; Nell almost lost a shoe in a patch of mud. And yet it hadn't rained. Groundwater. Of course. Groundwater.

"Here."

They set the tank down in a declivity shielded from the road by thick bushes covered with shiny, oval, olive-green leaves. The entire time, Nell had managed not to look at the thing inside. When Julie crouched and started tearing off the friction tape holding on the lid, Nell turned away. It wasn't enough; the sound itself flayed her nerves raw. She walked back to the car.

I'm sorry.

Good luck.

She expected Julie to return with the empty tank, but when she finally climbed back on to the road Julie was empty-handed. Nell opened the passenger door. Grinning, Julie shook her head, shook it, shook it; she looked like a marionette bobbing on an invisible string. She came up to Nell, kissed her, and pressed something into her hand. Then she dashed off into the sanctuary.

Gone.

Just like that.

Until the next time.

Nell slid behind the wheel and switched on the ignition. She set the object in her hand on the seat beside her. She was well out of the nature preserve, well on her way back to Monroe, before she looked at it.

A red cardboard box of rock candy. The package was very faded, all four corners crushed. Opening the box, she discovered that every one of the sugar rocks had crumbled off the string. The box was full of fragments.

A block from home, Nell slipped a sliver into her mouth. The candy felt grainy on her tongue, but it was still very, very sweet.

The End

Story copyright Patricia Russo, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com