JD Devine

I’m honored to share that my flash horror story “What They Cannot See” has been published in Flash Phantoms October 2025 collection alongside 40+ other talented horror writers.

This piece came to life after visiting Salem and Proctor’s Ledge in September. Standing at the actual execution site, I couldn’t stop thinking: what if there were real witches among them? Not the innocents who died, but someone with actual power, watching in silence while others died for crimes they didn’t commit.

What They Cannot See by JD Devine

Blood seeped through the rope binding Martha’s wrists. They dragged her past my garden, where everything had died from the drought—except my rosemary, blooming violently purple against the September wind. A crow landed on my shoulder as the cart passed, its black eyes reflecting something hollow.

The cart stuttered over cobblestone slick with spilled ale and something darker. Martha’s bare feet scraped against wood, her ankles raw from iron shackles. The crowd closed in like a living wall of righteous fury and morbid hunger.

“Witch! Witch! Witch!”

The chants built like thunder. I walked among them, invisible in my brown wool dress, hands folded in false piety, while power hummed beneath my skin. The iron pendant grew warm against my chest.

Salem stank of fear and rot—of unwashed bodies, chamber pots emptied into gutters, the sick stench of decay from Gallows Hill where other victims lay. Windows slammed shut as we passed, but faces peered through shutter cracks. Good Christian families watched while their suppers grew cold.

Martha’s grey hair came loose from her cap, silver strands against her bruised face. Her brown eyes locked with mine through the crowd. She had the same terror Grandmother had warned I’d see in innocent faces. She knew what I was. What I’d done to keep the ravens fed, the magistrate’s cattle struck with illness.

She’d never whispered a word about me.

Near the blacksmith’s forge, my hands began to tremble as thunder rumbled in the cloudless September sky. The reverend’s pale hands clutched his Bible, knuckles white—like another boy’s hands once clawing at his chest behind the meeting house. I was fourteen then, palm pressed to flesh, one word stopping breath forever. They found him blue-faced at dawn and called it God’s judgment. The pendant burned hotter now, hungry and remembering.

Since then, I’d cursed livestock belonging to wife-beaters. I’d poisoned wells serving families who turned away the hungry. I’d called storms to destroy crops owned by those who’d let children starve while their barns burst with grain. Every death, every illness, every strange misfortune plaguing Salem these past twenty years had flowed from my hands.

The cartwheels creaked like breaking bones as we approached Gallows Hill. The ancient oak waited under a grey sky, ropes hanging ready from massive branches. The executioner checked his knots while the reverend opened his Bible.

“Confess!” someone screamed. “Confess and save your soul!”

Martha straightened despite the ropes, despite blood and bruises. Her voice cut through chaos like a blade.

“I am innocent.”

The crowd roared disapproval, but I heard something else beneath their rage—the first whisper of doubt. Deep in their bones, they knew she spoke truth. The pendant seared my flesh.

I knew Martha was innocent.

I was guilty of what they couldn’t imagine. Two girls had pushed this mania forward with lies and fits, but I was the reason their accusations found fertile ground. My real magic had worked in Salem for decades, giving shape to their fears, making nightmares real—twenty years of guilt-building pressure behind my ribs.

I could make these fools scatter, turn the ropes to ash. One word from me and every rope would crumble to dust. One gesture, and the ground would swallow the magistrates whole.

But they would see. They would know. Grandmother had warned me never to reveal myself.

Martha stumbled. Crashed to her knees. The noose jerked tight, and her face went blue, but she didn’t scream my name. Even choking, dying, she protected me.

The rope creaked. Her feet kicked once, twice. Still.

Hidden fury crystallized in that moment. I thought of every innocent I’d watched suffer while the real witch walked free. The pendant cracked from the heat of my rage. Grandmother’s voice whispered through me: Let them reap what they have sown.

This would be the last innocent abandoned to the crows.

I placed my hand on the oak’s ancient bark and felt the pain of every victim who’d died beneath its branches. The tree remembered them all, their final words, their terror, their desperate prayers. Through my palm, I felt magic humming in wood older than Salem, older than the Puritans who’d defiled this land.

More executions were planned. More innocents would die while the real witch walked free among their accusers.

“I curse all thee who aided this tragedy,” I spoke to the wind, calling forth a storm to match their crimes. My fury broke free at last.

The air screamed as my power exploded outward. Lightning split the September sky, not Christian lightning, but something older. The fury of earth itself, the rage of every woman burned, hanged, drowned for the crime of being inconvenient.

The first bolt struck the oak where I stood. The massive trunk split with a sound like the world breaking, ancient wood exploding into splinters that flew through the crowd like arrows. People screamed and scattered as the tree crashed down, its branches crushing two magistrates.

But I was just beginning.

The sky turned black as midnight. Wind howled through Salem’s streets, tearing thatch from roofs, shattering every window. Lightning struck the meetinghouse, the magistrate’s house, and the reverend’s home. Each bolt perfectly aimed, each strike a judgment rendered by forgotten powers.

The earth beneath Gallows Hill cracked open. From the fissures came voices of everyone who’d died here—generations of the executed, the murdered, the forgotten.

The reverend’s Bible burst into flames in his hands. The accusers found their tongues swollen shut, lying words trapped forever in their throats.

When the storm finally ended, when my rage was spent, Salem lay in ruins around me. But Martha hung dead, and I stood revealed at last, no longer hidden, no longer afraid.

Let them see what they cannot imagine.

Let them know what real witchcraft looks like.

You can read more incredible horror stories in the Flash Phantoms October 2025 collection.