Normally, it’s my husband who ventures in there — he knows where everything is, keeps it more or less organized. I barely ever step foot inside. But that morning, for reasons I still can’t explain, I felt the urge to go in myself.

The air inside was stale. Dust floated in the beams of a flickering bulb overhead — the kind of light you always mean to fix but never get around to. I stepped carefully, my shoes echoing on the concrete floor, scanning the shelves for the rusty red box I vaguely remembered.

Then I stopped.

In the far corner, behind an old cabinet cluttered with half-empty paint cans and forgotten tools, something caught my eye. At first, I thought it was just a pile of dust or insulation — grayish, fuzzy, tucked into the shadows. But then… it moved.

I leaned in closer, and that’s when I saw it.

A nest. Or… a web. Massive, dense, and layered like cotton soaked in shadows. And inside it — movement. Subtle at first, then undeniable. Dozens, maybe hundreds of tiny creatures. Crawling. Breathing. Alive.

Spiders.

They coated the surface like a living skin. Some darted in and out of the webbing. Others clung still, like they were waiting for something. I didn’t wait to find out what.

I didn’t scream — I couldn’t. My body just reacted. I bolted out of there faster than I’ve moved in years, slammed the door, and stood in the hallway trembling, breathless, heart pounding.

I didn’t go back in until my husband came home. He chuckled at first when I told him, until he opened the door himself and saw what I had seen.

The web stretched across the wall like something out of a nightmare. The nest had clearly been there a long time — growing, expanding behind cabinets and boxes we hadn’t touched in ages. Threads of silk clung to the walls, and among them, thick-bodied spiders moved with slow, deliberate purpose. Some were small. Others were terrifyingly large. And then we saw the eggs — clustered and waiting.

“How did we even live here, all this time?” I whispered as we stood frozen, already reaching for the phone to call pest control.

I haven’t been back in the garage since.

Sometimes, I still think about that moment — how close we live to things we never see. How easy it is to forget what’s hiding just behind the walls. But I don’t dwell on it too long.

I just avoid the garage. And I double-check my shoes. Always.