InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Tightly Strung ❯ Summer Blue Fades to Black ( Chapter 1 )

Tightly Strung

Kagome Higurashi stood at the crossroads, fidgeting nervously.

Well, nervous was sort of an understatement.

The landscape that stretched out before her was completely foreign, and for all it's languorous beauty, unsettling. The air here was heavy with water, and the night brought with it the sounds of nocturnal life. Insects, scrabbling sounds of unknown creatures that hunted…or either were the prey of something that spent its nights hunting …along with the faint sounds of vehicles from someplace far to the west of her; this myriad collection of noises made up the sound track to her latest misadventure.

Kagome sighed and looked down at her watch. ~ 11:48 pm.~

"Gotten your ass into a crack this time haven't you, Kags?" she whispered under her breath. `It's always like this. I get an idea in my head and I just run with it, never thinking of the consequences. And now, of all the times I could have chosen to pull something this idiotic…'

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It had all started the night before, during her last shift. She had been working at Axle's, a small Blues café in Midtown since she turned eighteen six months ago. It was a really nice place. Management wasn't sleazy, and the tips were good. The owner, Axle Greene, was an ex-bluesman himself & had hired her with no experience, kindly showing her the ropes. He was a giant black man from south Mississippi, with a warm, happy countenance and a cheery outlook. Axle had the scoop on all of his employees, since he always took the time to find out what was going on in their lives, which meant that he knew about all of the gray things happening in the Higurashi household. Her youth had not been easy thus far, but having such a sympathetic ear about was a blessed comfort.

So of course after closing, she had found herself on her favorite stool, as Axle wiped out glasses.

Axle had smiled over at her. "What's wrong, pretty girl?"

Kagome hadn't looked up from the bar top. Making patterns on it's top with her fingertip, she scrunched her face into a frown and sighed. "Who says anything's, wrong Ax?"

The Barkeep rolled his eyes and tsked, making Kagome giggle in spite of her mood. "Emily said that you really seemed down tonight. That's not like you at all. We're all worried about you…you know it's better sometimes if you just talk about it." He shuffled over to the counter behind him and poured two large cups of coffee. Returning to face Kagome he set one in front of her, and raised his to take a small sip. "Besides, I can't have you runnin' around with that long face on, depressin" all my customers."

Kagome grinned up at him. "Whatever, I work at a BLUES joint. Our customers aren't shopping for perky service," she quipped.

Axle laughed, and set his cup down. "Maybe not, maybe not…How's your mama?"

"She was discharged yesterday afternoon. The doctor wants her to go into a hospice program, but she really isn't having it. She said she just wants to be at home, where things are familiar." She had felt the waterworks gearing up, and seeing the pity in Ax's eyes just made her want to burst into tears. Clearing her throat, she shot him a crooked grin and opted for a change in subjects. "So who's that guy back there…your Grandfather or something??" she asked, motioning to a framed sepia picture of a young black man with sad eyes holding a guitar. The image graced the wall behind the bar like that of a war hero…solemn and almost foreboding.

Axle pulled an incredulous face and gasped. "You're pulling my leg, right?"

Kagome just shook her head, a blank expression on her face.

Axle shook his head and frowned. "I oughta fire you right now. You work at the Best damn Blues café in New York City, and you don't know who that man is? Woman, that's Robert Johnson!!" She shook her head slowly. "Robert Johnson!? Crossroad Blues?" Kagome's expression remained solemn and blank.

Suddenly a laugh behind them caught Kagome's attention. The young man, who had played a few sets earlier, walked up to the bar and nodded at Ax. Looking over to the girl beside him, he grinned, revealing a set of pearly, even teeth encased behind a rakishly handsome smile. Kagome looked him over as he took the bar stool next to her. He had to be about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, and had the appearance of most of the young bluesmen she had seen roll through their club: Boots, faded jeans, and a slightly rumpled tuxedo shirt. His hair was a dark shade of blonde, and just a tad too long, giving him a messy, unkept easiness that made him look like he'd just gotten out of bed and walked straight into his set.

"Don't you teach these little girls anything, Axle?" he asked, his eyes running slowly up and down Kagome's petite form.

"I teach `em to stay away from anything that talks smoother than they do and carries a guitar, Jake, so you can just save whatever game you were about to spit for some other time." Setting a glass down in front of the younger man, he gave him a smile with an edge that seemed to reinforce his previous statement. "What'll ya have?"

Jake looked at Kagome and hung his head with a gentle sigh. Raising his gaze to look at the now grinning barkeep, he chuckled and set his guitar case on the bar. "Southern Comfort, on the rocks. I was hoping for a little Northern comfort, but it looks like I'm outta luck, huh?"

"Sorry, Mr. Jake." She smiled apologetically. "I was told not to entertain the entertainment."

This sent Jake and Axle into a round of laughter, and Kagome was just about to excuse herself, so that Axle could take care of business with his performer, when Jake turned back toward her with a somewhat curious expression on his face. "Hold up, baby. Don't you want an answer to your question?"

The young man's voice had a rich, singsong quality to it, and looking into his sky blue eyes, Kagome felt a slight disorientation. `I never really understood the whole stay-away-from-musicians cliché until now. This guy is not even trying' …but there was just something about him. Magnetic, yet tragic. She just couldn't quite put her finger on it. Shaking her head slightly, she looked at him and squinted her eyes.

He smiled. "You remember. The guy in the picture?"

Axle leaned forward propping his elbows on the bar and held a white envelope out to Jake. "Robert Johnson was one of the finest Blues musicians who ever lived, lots of people say he was the father of Rock and Roll. And as far as guitar players go, he was immaculate…" Ax breathed reverently in explanation.

"And with what he payed for those guitar lessons, he damn well oughta be."

"What do you mean, `with what he payed for his guitar lessons'?" Kagome gave Jake a long stare. "Did he have a really famous teacher or something?"

Chuckling again, Jake turned his head toward her, and leaned it to rest in his hand so that his fingers raked through the silky honey colored hair. He smiled mysteriously, and licked his lips. "Yeah, baby, he had a famous teacher, alright. Or infamous, depending on how you look at it."

She frowned at him impatiently…she could tell when she was being baited. "Well…are you going to tell me or not?"

Apparently he thought the frown was the cutest thing yet, because it earned her another soft laugh. "I don't know if you're old enough to hear such morbid stories right before bed. I'd hate to send you to bed all alone with only nightmares to keep you company."

"Ignore him, Kagome. He's just trying to rattle you. That whole business with Robert Johnson is just an old wives tale. Son House made a wild comment one night at a show, and the crowd just ran with it." Axle glared at the player half-heartedly.

Jake took the envelope and gazed inside. Taking out a one hundred dollar bill, he shoved it into his pocket, then scribbled something onto the back of the envelope. Opening the guitar case, he removed a worn out trade-sized book and tucked the envelope into it. "We've had this discussion before, Ax. Believe what you want, but it's no old wives tale." With that, he drained the remainder of his drink and stood up to gather his guitar case. He placed the book in front of Kagome, cupping her chin in his hand, and winked at her. "Little present," he said softly. With a brief smile to Axle, he padded out of the front door as silently as an alley cat.

Kagome looked at Ax, who wore a strange expression - almost wistful, one might say-as he stared at the door the younger man had just exited through. "Strange one, that Jake. Never says goodbye. I never know if I like him or not. But he can play the living daylights out of that raggedy acoustic, can't he?"

"I could care less about Jake's playing right now! Who was his teacher, Ax? That Robert guy?" Kagome demanded. "How come Jake wouldn't tell me?"

"Jake was just being Jake, Kagome. He's like that…he was teasin'. You see, there's an old legend associated with Robert Johnson. People said that in order to be able to play like he did, that Robert sold his soul to the Devil. Pretty common thing in Blues." Axle glanced around the café, and smiled down at the tiny woman. "It's late now and I've got a lot to do yet…let me call you a cab. Don't really want you on the subway at this hour."

She smiled. "Okay, sure." She could tell that something had made Axle uncomfortable, and unfortunately her curious streak wouldn't leave it alone. Once he had called for the cab, she zeroed back in for the kill.

"So, how do they do it, though?" she asked.

"Do what?"

"You know, sell their souls. It's not like the Devil has an eight hundred number, does he, Ax?'

Arching a brow, he set back to wiping glasses. "I reckon not. There's lots of variations. The most popular is that you go to a crossroads, in the middle of the woods, just before midnight. You make sure that you have the instrument you want to learn to play with you. Then, at the stroke of Midnight, a big black man will come walking up to you, and ask to see the instrument. He'll tune it for you and play a bit. Then he hands it backs and asks you to play and see if it sounds all right to you. You try it out and all of a sudden you can play that instrument like a bird flies, or a fish swims. It's just as natural and simple as can be. So you tell him that it sounds just right and he smiles, and keeps walkin' on. And that's it."

Kagome gaped at the uncomfortable look in his eyes. "You have just got to be kidding me. There's no way it could be like that. There would have to a…a contract or something. A real understanding…."

Kagome frowned at him. "At any rate, it's too fantastical….if you could sell your soul, everyone would be doing it. Half the population would be famous, or rich, or whatever you GET for selling it."

Axle fidgeted and picked up another glass. "Devil's like a cat, baby-girl…I don't think he just comes whenever he's called…just maybe when the caller's got something that appeals to him."

Kagome turned on the stool to look at the stage across the room, where Jake had played hours before. It was dark now, writhing with shadow…the thought made her shiver before she could reprimand herself for being such a baby. "And the whole big black man thing….pardon me, Ax, but I think there are a lot of big black men everywhere. How would you be able to tell it was really him if he looked just like everyone else? I think if I were the devil, I would look like something no one would mistake. Like some sort of magical creature. And I would definetly make them sign a contract. Like in their own blood, or something."

Behind her, Kagome heard a sharp intake of breath accompanied by the shattering of glass. She turned to see Ax cross himself as he swore softly under his breath. She eyed her boss carefully and sighed, deciding to come straight to the point rather than try to fox him, which only seemed to cause the poor darling to become more ill at ease than ever. "What is it, Ax? Emily told me earlier that you get this way every time Jake comes around. Do you not trust him or something?" She watched the emotions that played across his drawn face as he swept up the glass, and then seemed to pause for thought, weighing some problem behind his eyes.

Turning to her, Axle looked around the room as if trying to make sure that no one were listening to them. "Kagome, Jake does make me nervous. Real nervous." The older man looked around the room again, and then began again quietly. "Jake and I met when he was twenty-one, one of the first musicians to play on that stage, just a little after Halloween five years ago. I hadn't heard anyone play like him in a long, long time. He floored everyone, played all night, like it was the only thing in the world that gave him any comfort at all."

"Last night that he was engaged to play here, me and ole Jake, we kicked back afterward and decided to drink a little, do a little pickin'. I brought down my guitar, and we played a few tunes, just drinkin' and getting to know each other. I asked him where he learned to play like he could, and he just looked at me. And then he smiles, in that mysterious way he has, tells me he just picked it up on the side of the road one night."

Axle gave her an apprehensive look, and continued. "I laughed; it's an old Blues joke, right? So I say, seriously, who taught you? Well, he just gave me this look and held his hands out to me, palms up. I looked at those hands, Kagome, and what I saw made my blood turn to ice." His expression turned into a frightened grimace, and his voice trembled slightly. "Boy's hands were as soft as a peach, Kagome. No calluses. No ribs. No nothing."

"Surely you're not saying you think Jake…." Kagome flashed Axle an incredulous stare.

"What I am saying," Ax countered with an impatient, defensive tone of voice, "is that you don't play like Jake plays without getting calluses. Blues players don't have soft hands."

"Stranger things have happened, Ax. Sometimes people just pick up an instrument and play it, by ear, without lessons. Maybe Jake is just some sort of idiot savant."

"It's not just that, Kag. It's the whole story. It's Jake…the way he is, the way he looks. The certainty when he told me. He believes it, which makes him either crazy …or the property of the Devil himself.

Neither one makes me feel very cozy." With a slight shiver, he mumbled on under his breath as he finished setting up the glassware, in a manner that would have been unintelligible for anyone unused to listening to him. " Got lots of crazy things he tells, `bout how the Devil is some white boy with long, silver hair. Fangs and claws…and dog-ears. I'd laugh all night and most of the next morning if somebody told me some shit like that, normally, but when I heard Jake say it, looking at he with those dead-pan eyes…"

Axle's expression was as solemn as a judge. For the first time since she had met him, he looked his age, looked old.

"You just mind yourself around Jake is all, you hear, Kagome. Something in my bones tells me that one's headed for a whole heap of trouble."

As if to punctuate that cryptic proclamation, a hair-raising screech sounded from the street outside the café. Two heads snapped toward the window, and then Kagome was on her feet moving toward the door. Behind her, she heard Ax call out to her. "Kagome, you stay inside here while I call 911."

Ignoring him, she stepped onto the sidewalk, breath catching in her throat as she took in the scene.

A long, black Cadillac, still running & complete with blaring radio, now sat amidst the glass and twisted steel that had once sheltered Kagome while she waited for the city bus. The gunpowder smell of colliding metals and expelled airbags lent a dark ambience to the air, turning her stomach. Beside the caddy's open driver's side door, a thin, blonde haired woman knelt, oblivious to the glass everywhere underneath her. The woman rocked back and forth, obviously in shock.

A chill ran its fingers down Kagome's spine almost luxuriously as she heard the words that tumbled from the blonde's lips.

"I didn't even see it in front of me….didn't even see him…" the woman mumbled in a thick, drunken voice to the air in front of her.

Following her gaze, Kagome saw him. Jake lay still and quiet several feet beyond the destroyed shelter of what used to be the Eight street bus stop. Rushing over to him, Kagome knelt down and began to examine him. The blood trickling steadily from his lips was a sure indication of internal injuries, Kagome knew, but she was more concerned by the fact that Jake's head lay in a puddle of crimson liquid that, even as she watched, grew in circumference like a bright halo, suggesting that the musician's landing on the concrete had been less than gentle.

"Jake. Jake can you hear me? Hold on! Axle is calling 911; the paramedics will be here soon, so try not to nod off because you've hurt your head, okay? Just be still, and talk to me, okay?"

Jake looked up at Kagome, and squinted his eyes as if trying to place her. Finally, recognition flickered in the azure pools, and he smiled softly. "Hey, pretty baby."

Tears welled up in her eyes as she did her best to smile back. An extraordinarily kind person by nature, Kagome hated to see people hurt. Jake had just been waiting for the bus, just minding his own business and waiting for his ride home. It wasn't fair that he should be in this position now.

"Jake, help will be here soon, okay. You're going to be just fine…just fine."

The dry chuckle that had escaped him earlier made a repeat performance, and he reached toward Kagome's face. "You know, if there's one thing I can spot a mile away, it's a lying woman." His smile widened slightly, and despite the sound of his words, there was no malice in the gesture. "But I guess you've got a good reason…I must be pretty bad, huh? Might as well `fess up."

The tears spilled down her cheeks, and her naked gaze was riddled with doubt. It seemed to be all the answer he needed. "Don't cry, baby. I've been expecting it for a while now…kinda relieving, actually."

Kagome looked properly shocked, and before she could call herself back, she had slapped his chest lightly and ground out, "You shouldn't say such things!"

The smile shifted into a smirk, and he seemed to settle slightly as he fitted his hand into hers. Closing his eyes, he sighed softly. "All gotta pay the piper sometime, little girl. Unfortunately, I suspect I've run up one hell of a tab." Laughing at his own joke, he squeezed Kagome's hand, and looked up at her with a strange sort of finality in his eyes. It was a solemn, soul-searing sort of look. The sort of look that the Mother Superior at Kagome's middle school gave when she asked whether or not you were telling a falsehood after you tried to weasel out of whatever scrape you had gotten into. Finding herself unable to shift her gaze, Kagome understood why Axle might just find himself hard-pressed to believe whatever Jake told him.

Narrowing his eyes slightly, he quirked an eyebrow at her and his hand tightened around hers with an almost bruising pressure. "Be a good girl, Kagome. Mind where you roam."

His gaze seemed to go unfocused suddenly, and his grip on her hand fell slack. In the distance, she heard the sirens of the ambulance that would arrive too late, Axle's footsteps on the pavement rushing toward her, and the woman from the Cadillac retching miserably. Fresh tears clouded her field of vision as she reached forward and closed Jake's wide, staring blue eyes. Beautiful summer blue eyes that would never see another dawn.

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The police finally released them.

Axle said that the café would be closed for a few days, until after Jake's funeral. Kagome was secretly displeased; work helped occupy her mind, giving it release from her plenteous trouble and grief. With this newest sadness weighing on her, life without distraction would only be that much more unpleasant.

Walking to the bar, she retrieved her book bag from the chair she had occupied before the accident, and made to walk for the door. Axle was still speaking to the detective who had told them that the woman who had hit Jake had been intoxicated, and had claimed that she had swerved to avoid hitting a dog. The police had arrested her after she was breathalyzed, and began asking questions about Jake. He was an orphan, it seemed, so Ax was making plans to take care of the arrangements.

Kagome adjusted the pack's weight on her back, and made for the door. Sleep sounded so good right now. Hopefully her over active mind would allow her a few hours before the nightmares kicked in…

"'Scuze me, miss?"

Turning, Kagome looked an the young officer who had accompanied the detective to the scene. His gentle brown eyes were warm, and mildly concerned. He looked so placid and kind that Kagome had to scrounge up a smile for him, even though she felt so exhausted and ill-used that she feared she might drop on the subway. "Yes, officer?"

He held out an object toward her. "You forgot your Book."

The smile on her face wobbled and then collapsed. Reaching out uncertainly, she grasped on to the trade without looking at the, feeling an odd sort of shock when her flesh connected with the book. `Certainly I imagined that.' She tried to mask her uneasiness, and smiled at the young man. "Thanks."

He beamed approval at her. "No problem, young lady."

Stepping out into the early morning light, Kagome took a deep breath and began to walk. The subway was relatively empty, for the time of the morning, but that suited her just fine. Taking a seat by the door, she at last looked down at the trade nestled in her hands.

Two old women and a short chubby man in a 3-piece suit all turned inquisitive gazes on the young girl after they heard the wild choking noise that rumbled from deep within her throat. They watched with interest at the emotions playing on the face of the young woman gaping at the tattered volume in her hands.

But Kagome did not see. She had eyes for one thing, and one thing only…the book resting in her hands entitled "Crossroads."