Chapter 2: The Receipt and the River

Leo hadn't slept for the remaining hours until dawn. He'd spent them pacing his apartment, the mysterious receipt clutched in his hands like a talisman against madness. Every rational explanation he'd constructed crumbled under the weight of physical evidence—the water stains on his floor had dried into strange, geometric patterns that hurt to look at directly, and the receipt's ink seemed to shift when he wasn't focusing on it.

By 6 AM, he'd made a decision. If he was losing his mind, he'd document the process. If something impossible was really happening, he needed to understand it. Either way, those coordinates were his only lead.

Leo fired up his laptop and input the numbers from the receipt into mapping software. The result made his coffee mug slip from nerveless fingers, sending ceramic shards skittering across his kitchen floor.

The coordinates pointed to the exact center of the Willamette River, roughly fifteen feet below the surface of the water. No bridge existed at that location—just dark, flowing water that had claimed more than its share of bodies over the years.

His hands trembling, Leo opened a browser and began searching for anything related to the coordinates, dream bridges, or impossible toll receipts. What he found made his blood run cold.

Buried deep in the corners of the internet, in forums with names like "Sleepwalkers Anonymous" and "The Midnight Travelers," were posts that read like his own experience. People describing identical dreams—endless bridges over tar-black oceans, doppelgangers with twisted smiles, and always, always, the wet feet upon waking.

User "BridgeBurner1987" had posted just three days ago: Got my third receipt last night. Coordinates keep changing but they're always over water. Anyone know what happens if you don't pay the toll within 72 hours?

The thread had seventeen replies, but only one response chilled Leo to the bone: Ask Jenny_from_Salem. She found out two weeks ago. They found pieces of her car in the river, but never found her. The weird part? Security cameras show her driving straight into the water at 3:47 AM, but her face in the footage... it was smiling.

Leo's throat constricted. 3:47 AM—the exact time he'd been waking from the dreams.

He scrolled deeper, finding more stories, more coordinates, more people who'd received receipts and disappeared. But scattered among the horror stories were posts from survivors—people who claimed to have "paid their toll" and lived to tell about it. Their accounts were fragmented, written in a strange code-like language that seemed designed to hide meaning from casual observers.

One post caught his attention: The Homebound app appeared after my second passage. Don't delete it—you can't anyway. It's how They keep track of their passengers.

Homebound app? Leo frowned and checked his phone. His home screen looked normal—email, weather, a few games he never played. But as he scrolled to the second page of apps, his heart nearly stopped.

There it was. An app he'd never downloaded, with an icon that looked like an endless road disappearing into darkness. The name underneath read simply: "Homebound."

Leo's finger hovered over the icon, every instinct screaming at him not to open it. But the forum posts had been clear—deletion was impossible, and ignorance was apparently fatal. With a deep breath, he tapped the app.

The screen went black for a long moment, then slowly resolved into what looked like a primitive GPS interface. But instead of streets and landmarks, it showed something else entirely—a network of bridges spanning impossible distances, with small dots moving along them like digital ants. One of the bridges pulsed with a soft red light, and coordinates appeared at the bottom of the screen: the same numbers from his receipt.

A menu bar at the top showed several options: "Current Passage," "Toll History," "Rules & Regulations," and ominously, "Passenger Status." Leo tapped on his status first.

The screen filled with information that made no sense: "Passenger Class: Novice. Passages Completed: 0/3. Toll Balance: -1. Warning: Payment overdue. Next collection window: 47 hours, 23 minutes."

Collection window. The words sent ice through his veins.

Before he could explore further, his phone buzzed with a text message from an unknown number. The message was brief but terrifying in its simplicity: Your next passage is waiting. The river remembers what the bridge forgot.

Leo stared at the message, his analytical mind racing. Someone—or something—was monitoring his access to the app. They knew he'd opened it, knew he was reading about the impossible rules of this nightmare game he'd been drawn into.

He quickly screenshotted the app and the message, then opened his laptop to document everything. If something happened to him, maybe someone else could use this information to survive.

As he typed, more posts appeared in the forums he'd been reading. New victims, new coordinates, new disappearances. But one post made him pause: To the newbie asking about receipts—check your local missing persons reports. They're always bodies of water. The bridges exist where people drown. The toll collectors need fresh supplies.

Leo's stomach lurched. He opened a new browser tab and searched for recent drownings in the Portland area. The results painted a horrifying picture: seven unexplained water deaths in the past month, all occurring at exactly 3:47 AM, all showing the victims driving or walking directly into rivers and lakes with no apparent reason.

But it was the eighth article that made him bolt upright in his chair. A woman named Clara Hendricks, age 26, had been reported missing just yesterday. Her car had been found abandoned on the Morrison Bridge at 3:47 AM, keys still in the ignition, but no sign of her anywhere. The article included a photo—a young woman with kind eyes and a nervous smile, someone who looked like she'd never hurt a fly.

Leo's phone buzzed again. Another message from the unknown number: Clara is waiting. The bridge is hungry.

His hands shook as he realized the horrible truth. The coordinates on his receipt—they weren't just pointing to empty water. They were pointing to where Clara Hendricks had disappeared. And somehow, impossibly, she was connected to this nightmare that had consumed his life.

The Homebound app pulsed on his phone screen, its icon seeming to throb like a digital heartbeat. In the forums, more posts appeared by the minute—people sharing coordinates, comparing receipts, desperately trying to decode the rules of a game where the stakes were life and death.

Leo looked at the countdown timer on his phone: 47 hours, 12 minutes. Less than two days to figure out what the toll really was, and how to pay it without ending up as another missing person report.

But first, he needed to understand what had happened to Clara Hendricks. The coordinates led to the river, but his dreams showed bridges. Somehow, the two were connected—the real world and the nightmare realm bleeding into each other in ways that defied every law of physics he understood.

Leo closed his laptop and grabbed his car keys. The rational part of his mind screamed that he was walking into a trap, that investigating would only pull him deeper into madness. But the alternative—waiting for the collection window to close—seemed infinitely worse.

As he headed for the door, his phone buzzed one final time. The message contained no words, just coordinates—the same ones from his receipt. But now they were followed by a timestamp: 3:47 AM, today's date.

Less than nineteen hours to find Clara Hendricks and learn the rules of the bridge. Less than nineteen hours to discover what the toll really demanded.

Leo pocketed his phone and stepped into the hallway, not knowing that with each step toward his car, he was walking deeper into a web of supernatural horror that had been claiming victims for far longer than the forum posts suggested.

The bridge was waiting. And somewhere in the space between dreams and reality, Clara Hendricks was running out of time.