Authors Notes:Something slightly different today. This story is probably going to reach 4000 words easily. So for ease of reading its being chopped into two parts. This gives me more room to explore this particular facet, without forcing the reader to read 4000 to 6000 words at once, which I personally find annoying.

Enjoy

Sharon (Part 1)

Sharon leaned over the edge of the canoe, looking into the dark water. She shivered as yet another cliff rose out of the water blocking the sun.

“Pat, why are we going down this boring river, instead of doing something fun and exciting?” she asked teasingly.

“There’s an old oracle of the dead up ahead I want to see. And by the time we get there it will be nice and dark. We’ll be able to see it in all its glory without any other tourists.”

She turned back to look at him. “Oh joy. We get to explore a dark temple for the dead, all alone, after dark, on the river Acheron. It sounds like the set up for a bad horror movie. The joys of dating an archaeologist and being in Greece.”

Laughing he splashed her with his paddle. “Hey you knew what you were in for when you agreed to come with me. I could leave you on the bank while I have all the fun.”

She looked around at the gorge that surrounded them. “I think I’ll take my chances with the ghostly temple.”

They paddled on in silence, enjoying the peace and quiet.

---

“Um, Pat?” Sharon said, a few hours later.

“What babe?” he said, sounding distracted and looking at his map.

“There’s a cave in front of us, and no other branch. Are we suppose to go through a cave? Because I didn’t sign up for that.”

“What!” Pat exclaimed. “The map says we should be coming up to a nice smooth spot. What the hell is a cave doing here? Lets turn around and find a bank or something. I could use a break anyways and we can figure out where we’re suppose to go.”

Sharon happily started paddling harder, as Pat turned them around. She wasn’t claustrophobic exactly, she just didn’t like enclosed spaces.

As they began turning the current suddenly picked up. The canoe rocked wildly for a second, causing Sharon to yelp in fear. Pat shouted orders to paddle backwards, as he tried to turn them again. Her paddle bit deep into the water, getting her hand wet as she tried to fight the current. The current pulled at her paddle, it felt like hands were trying to wrench it out of her grasp.

Tightening her grip she paddled harder, desperately trying to help turn the canoe. But the current held them tightly, as the cave mouth loomed closer. Sharon could swear the caves mouth widened as they neared it. She switched sides and began paddling madly backwards, rocking the boat with each stroke. Terror made her movements jerky, and virtually useless against the raging current.

The canoe entered the cave, despite the efforts of Sharon and Pat. The sunlight was abruptly cut off. There wasn’t even a faint glow from the mouth of the cave. They screamed as the canoe dipped, as if it was going over a waterfall. The only sounds were their screams, and the sound of rushing water. The two sounds echoed off the walls, mingling and interacting, becoming an insane laughter, that battered their ears.

Leaving the paddle beside her, Sharon grabbed both sides of the canoe, and tried to stay perfectly centered. She rocked back and forth, nearly being thrown from her seat as the canoe banged off of rocks, and bounced off of shallow the shallow bottom. The scraping sound as the bottom was gouged and dented, sent jolts of terror through her. She wished she could see, than they could avoid the worst of the rocks.

How would they get out of this?

How far did this cave go?

No one even knew where they were. They had rented the canoe for two days, and lied about where they were going.

The boat finally slowed down, as they reached calm waters. Sharon breathed deeply. She had thought people only forgot they were holding their breath in books, but as she gasped for air she realized she hadn’t been breathing for a while.

“Sharon? Are you ok?” Pat asked, sounding breathless as well.

Slowly releasing her death grip on the sides of the canoe, she got herself under control. “I, I think I’m good.”

She heard rustling behind her, as Pat clumsily tried to get into the backpack at his feet. Sharon reached inside her life jacket, trying to get at her coat pocket. Her questing hand found the small mag-light she had brought along to help explore the ruins. Holding it in front of her so she didn’t blind Pat she turned it on.

The stone in front of her looked like a wall obsidian. It was pitch black, almost absorbing the pitiful beam of light. She looked all around them, no rocks rose out of the water, there wasn’t even a current where they were. But that made no sense. The rapids were just behind them, she could hear them roaring and echoing, but the water didn’t move, it was like a mirror.

Pat finally found what he had been looking for and turned his much larger flashlight on. She saw the beam move back and forth letting him see the exact same darkness she did.

“Where are we?” he asked. From the sound of his voice he wasn’t expecting an answer, he probably didn’t know he was speaking out loud.

She answered anyways. “I don’t know. But do you know how we can get out?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “The Acheron river goes underground and reappears after a few miles quite a bit, and it has a lot of branches that go into caves. That’s why the Greeks thought it led to the underworld. We must have accidentally gone down one of those branches.”

“Well we can’t go back the way we came,” Sharon said as she played the beam over the battered canoe. “I don’t think we have any leaks. But even if we had the strength to get past those rapids, the canoe wouldn't survive a second attempt.”

“S-so we should stay right here and wait for help?”

Sharon shook her head. “No one knows where we were headed. And we got lost, so no one will think to look here. I think we should keep going, maybe we’ll reach another opening. As long as we go carefully we should be able to stop before we hit anything dangerous. And if we hit a dead end we can come back and try the rapids.”

Pat was silent for a few moments. “I thought we were suppose to stay put when we got lost.”

Sharon shook her head in disgust. Pat was a wonderful archaeologist, and a nice boyfriend, but he didn’t always see the obvious. “If we were outside than yeah, staying put is the best idea. But how will a plane, or searchers see us inside a pitch black cave with the entrance cut off by rapids?”

“Oh,” was all Pat could say in response.

“Turn off your light. We need to conserve batteries. So we’ll use my light first until we need a bigger beam.”

He turned the light off and carefully passed it up to her, in case she needed it in a hurry to see an obstacle. Sharon put the small light on the bill of her baseball hat, and used some duct tape to hold it in place.

“Away we go into the unknown,” Sharon whispered to herself.