After I got married to my wife, we needed to get extra shifts in order to pay for the debt from the wedding. Since childhood, she had a dream of a big wedding but she ended up with a bride instead of a husband. Her parents refused to pay a dime towards the wedding, let alone attend. We still had a big party and a great day. But by paying for the party made us push our honeymoon off for six months.

We couldn’t do anything big, so we found a nice bed and breakfast to visit in the country side. Four days off work was something we could afford after all the that overtime. Packing up the car, we got ready to head out early in the day. Only to get stuck behind the worst traffic in history. We couldn’t go anywhere for two hours. At least we found some good local radio stations. After we finally got on the highway, more bad luck struck. Our back tire burst causing us to pull over. This honeymoon trip felt cursed.

Fixing it took a while but I finally got it done. I thanked got I remembered to put the emergency kit and spare on the trunk before the trip. By the time we got going again, we both felt starving and dropped by the first rest stop for something to eat. I wanted us to have been able to get to the town early enough for some sightseeing before the four PM check in time. We weren’t going to make it. After a call to the owners, they agreed to let us check in at any time that night. Susan was glad they were so understanding and relaxed a little after such a terrible day. With my bad eyesight I didn’t want to drive in the dark so my wife took over for me. We kept going over just how long the route would take and decided to use a short cut. The plan had been to take our time in the day and drive through some scenic small towns. Now that the tip changed to being mostly at night, the quicker way seemed better. Dinner finished and a plan set, we got ready for the night drive wondering what else could go wrong.

As we drove further and further away from home, the songs on the radio changed. It started to drift into mostly country songs to nearly all country. Better stations would soon turn to static then fizz out. The sun already set, leaving us driving down a dark and empty highway. Not even the moon out to guide our way. The only light besides our head lights was a bright display screen in the middle of the dashboard showing us what country channel the radio got stuck on. I honestly thought having a screen was a hazard but at least slightly better than using a cellphone.

Trees on both sides flew past. Aside from some trucks on occasion, no other cars were on the road. I always hated long dark highway drives but at least I wasn’t alone this time. Susan started to pass the time by talking about all the different kinds of pastries she wanted try on our trip. The place Susan booked advertised an abundance of bakeries in the area and that was the main reason why we decided on the small bed and breakfast so far way. It would be nice to get away, but to also gain a few pounds while we did so.

A while into our trip, I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. I assumed it was dust on my glasses so I raised my hand to brush them off. When I fully saw what the movement was, I froze and my heart leapt into my chest. Sneaking across the dashboard illuminated by the light of our useless radio screen was a pale shape. A ghostly spider slowly taking small steps towards my poor unsuspecting wife. She didn’t like them, but I felt scared to death by them. I know they’re good for eating even worst bugs, but I just can’t stand the sight of one.

I held back screeching knowing that might cause an accident from such a sudden and loud noise. As the spider moved closer to the driver’s side, I let out a small whine.

“Hey, what is it?” Susan asked worried.

I shook my head, pointing at the thing unable to speak. I was so scared my hand trembled and skin prickled every time the spider took a step. My wife finally saw what I was looking at. She let out a sigh knowing we needed to deal with this. But she didn’t want to pull over. With some difficultly, she slipped off her sandal while still driving to take care of the threat. I almost felt sorry for the thing when she crushed it, and took care of the body with some napkins I handed to her. She even tossed the corpse out the window for my piece of mind. That damn spider so big I heard the crunch. I no longer wanted to talk about food.

“I’m so glad I married you.” I said with a long sigh, but still feeling stressed.

“You eat my peppers so we’re even.” She joked.

We made a good pair. I would gladly eat every pepper in the world if it meant she would keep any spiders from getting near me. I hoped that would be the most amount of excitement that happened during the drive. I kept glancing between the window and the dashboard fearing I would see another stowaway creep across my sight.

We drove on to start seeing a fog hanging at strange angles outside. The headlights showing a pale whiteness through the trees. The rest of the world dark beyond what our lights could reach. Even the sky appeared pitch black. No light pollution this far out and in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t even see any stars because of the clouds.

Seeing the spider made my nerves tense too much to sleep. My mind playing tricks on me making my arms itch from phantoms spiders crawling over them. I really hated seeing those eight-legged bastards, but hadn’t reacted this badly to one in a while.

“This fog is weird.” Susan commented breaking the silence.

“What do you mean?” I started to ask until I finally noticed what she already did.

The fog wasn’t moving. I’d seen heavy still fog before and this wasn’t it. It looked far too solid. I frantically started to look at the patches of white over taking the trees and edges of the road desperate to figure out what it was. I almost asked for us to pull over to get a better look, and know now that would have been a mistake. A patch of the odd white fog stretched across the road from tree to tree and Susan kept going thinking it was too high up for our car to touch it.

The roof snagged a part of the white threads and to my utter horror, I figured out it wasn’t fog right away. I let out a scream as hundreds of spiders spilled from the white threads and down the windshield. Susan screamed and nearly went off the road. She collected herself at the last second and start to use the wipers to knock the abominations loose.

Countless of the pale white spiders clung to the side mirror and to the windows with threads they somehow attached. Their small bodies flying through the wind until they were finally taken away.

I was losing it in that moment. I started shoving napkins in the AC vents thinking the spiders could get inside that way. My fear levels so high I was nearly seeing white and my entire body shook. I’m positive I started screaming and babbling nonsense but wasn’t in the right state of mind to remember any of it.

My wife also very freaked out, but decided in that moment she was going to gun it. Her foot heavy on the gas to get us the hell out of there. We didn’t know what was happening, and what caused this all didn’t matter. We just needed to get away from it all.

In seconds the heavy patches of spider threads became unavoidable. She tried to hit the smaller patches causing so many spider bodies to be crushed on the windshield it was almost impossible to see at times. I was dry heaving, knees to my chest and arms so itchy I wanted to die. The road became so slick with the spider gore Susan had a hard time driving in a straight line. At least we were the only ones on the road or else we would have caused an accident.

I heard a voice repeating how this just couldn’t be happening. I was shocked to find out it was my own. I didn’t sound like myself. Susan’s face pale and sweaty. She needed to deal with trying to stay on the road and with a panicking wife at the same time.

There were so many of those ghostly pale spiders that I could hear them being crushed on mass as we drove over the bundles of threads. The car made an awful noise as it struggled to keep speed with the sticky spider web coating it.

Was this a punishment for killing every spider I came across in the past? I prayed that if we were spared, I would usher them outside no matter how much they frightened me.

Soon, the headlights were showing pure white and barely any signs of the road in front. We couldn’t stop. If we stopped, those things could get inside the car. How I didn’t see any crawling across inside yet was a miracle. Susan started swearing and rightfully so. I did not want to die because of spiders. Give me any kind of death but that. I also didn’t want anything to happen to my perfect wife I finally found after an entire life of looking.

The car made grinding sounds, begging us to let it stop but we pushed on. I saw a large shape in the mass of the threads too late to warn her. The front end of the car clipped something tall and thin, like a young tree. It smashed the right headlight and somehow, we kept driving.

I heard a terrible rumbling noise coming from whatever we just hit. It was a sound I’ve never heard before and never wanted to hear again. It sounded like a pure dark rage. I thought it would follow us and I reached out to grip Susan’s shoulder thinking this would be our last moments together.

We both let out a gasp as our struggling car burst through the final patch of threads covering the road and onto a perfectly normal dark highway. My wife did not stop to investigate what we just went through. The car couldn’t go the speed limit, but as long as we were moving, it was fine.

As much as I wanted us to drive all night, the toll of it all finally came down in full force. I started having the worst panic attack of my life. At first I honestly thought it was a heart attack. My wonderful wife kept a cool head and found a motel only a few minutes away. She pulled in, careful not to let me see the webs still clinging to the car and got us a room for the night.

She ushered me into the small bathroom. While she dealt with everything, I cried in the shower trying to wash off imaginary spiders until she had to gently get me out of the running water. I was so out of it I didn’t even notice she called the cops until I got dressed. The flashing lights sitting just outside our room waking up the only other person at the motel.

She didn’t want the cops to show up, but after telling her story to the emergency operator, they didn’t know who else to send. Our car proof of what we saw. The motel staff and the guest found it all pretty interesting and no one wanted to get near the spider gut-soaked car.

The cops tried going down the way we came from. They reported finding some spider nests and a whole lot of crushed bodies on the road but nothing like how we described it. They kept looking at our car trying to understand it all.

Our honeymoon could wait. The entire experience put too much of a sour taste on the trip to follow through with it. We only lost the deposit on the bed and breakfast room and the cost of a car rental. We called a family friend to pick up our car then get it cleaned up and brought back. There was no way we were going to drive that thing home. In fact, I wanted to sell the damn thing as soon as possible.

“Let’s do something less terrifying for our honeymoon.”

It was the first thing she’d said on our way back home in a rented car and running on no sleep. I thought through the options and rejected ideas we had before settling ion the bed and breakfast.

“How about that lame haunted navy ship sleep over in October we didn’t want to wait for?” I suggested.

We both looked at each other and silently agreed that ghosts were way less terrifying than a hoard of spiders.