Dust and Echoes

MOUNTAIN DEVILS

A TRUE STORY.  Five armed prospectors in a remote cabin were attacked by creatures that science denies... 
Welcome to Ape Canyon. 
In July 1924, on the volcanic slopes of Mount St. Helens, Fred Beck and his crew made a fatal mistake: they shot a massive, "Bigfoot" creature who was watching them from the cliffs.
THEN....That night, they struck back.
From the thunderous impact of boulders shattering the roof to the heavy, primal breathing testing the door, this is the harrowing true story known as the Ape Canyon incident.
Step inside the claustrophobic nightmare where Sasquatch folklore collides with gritty reality, leaving five men trapped in the dark with one terrifying question:
What happens when the apex predator isn't you?

DON'T ERASE

When the world refuses to let a star die, it builds something to replace her.
After the death of actress Tessa Hawthorne, a synthetic continuation wakes up years later...perfectly engineered to perform, speak, and exist on command. But fragments of memory begin to surface: a childhood trailer in Idaho, a grandmother’s kitchen, a death that doesn’t match the official story.
As the line between machine and person collapses, buried truths emerge about ownership, control, and what it means to be kept alive for profit. This episode explores identity, memory, and the terrifying cost of immortality...through the eyes of something that was never meant to remember.

SALT AND SHADOW

In the dead of winter, 1862, Jean Baptiste wasn’t just digging graves; he was harvesting them. To the families of Salt Lake City, the cemetery was sacred ground. To Baptiste, it was a supply closet. He cracked open coffins like walnut shells, stripping the stiffening bodies of the innocent...men, women, and children...treating them as nothing more than mannequins.
But the horror wasn't just in the ground. It was in his home.
When police finally kicked down his door, they didn't just find stolen suits or wedding dresses. They walked into a nightmare: a house heated by the splintered wood of coffins, the air thick with the smell of death, and a corner stacked high with the most terrifying trophies of all-sixty pairs of children’s shoes.
This is the true story of a monster who lived among us, wearing the clothes of our dead. A man who was branded and exiled to a desolate island in a dead sea, only to vanish into the night.
Did he drown in the salt? Or did the boogeyman walk back ashore?Written and Read by the Author, James Cawley.   Dust and Echoes Podcast.  

THE WARRIOR CAVE

Senior Marshal Silas Thorne thought he had seen every kind of evil the frontier could offer. He was wrong. When a simple government task in the remote town of Boulder ends in the brutal murder of his son, Silas abandons the law for something darker.
Guided by a mysterious Navajo man and an ancient legend...he carries his boy to the Warrior Cave to demand a miracle. He gets one.
But the thing that rises from the glowing green water is not the gentle deputy he raised. It is a weapon. It is a predator with emerald eyes and a hunger for ruin. As the body count rises and the town of Boulder falls to ash, Silas realizes the terrifying truth.
He did not bring his son back. He let something else into the world.
The Warrior Cave is a supernatural western about grief, consequences, and the terrifying price of second chances.
Written and performed by the Author, James Cawley. 

ISLAND IN THE SKY

300 Miles through the Apocalypse. 10 Hours. One Way Out.
The infection hit fast. The panic hit faster. Now, Jed Thorne is driving a stolen Land Cruiser through a burning Utah, trying to get his daughter to the only safe place left: Dead Horse Point State Park.
But the safe zone is closing. At sundown, the military is detonating the only land bridge to the mesa, turning it into an impenetrable island in the sky. Jed has to outrun the infected, outmaneuver the chaos, and beat the setting sun.
In this week’s episode of Dust and Echoes, James Cawley presents "Island in the Sky" a relentless survival thriller about the terrifying fragility of the world we live in.

THE BURN LINE

In the isolated settlement of Terth, life is defined by the Burn Line...a shimmering, humming barrier that encircles the town, protecting the last of humanity from the radioactive wasteland outside.
To touch the Line is to burn.
To question it is heresy.
Caleb is a tower mechanic, dedicated to keeping the ancient machines running and the barrier strong. But lately, the silence speaks louder than the hum. He’s noticed gauges that never move and power loads that don't match the terrifying stories of the apocalypse raging just inches away.
When a slipped wrench falls into the forbidden zone, Caleb is forced to confront a terrifying reality. 
Now, Caleb stands at the precipice of the ultimate taboo. If the fire isn't keeping them safe, then what is it keeping them in...and what is outside?
A story about the comfortable lies we live in, and the dangerous freedom that comes with the truth.
Written and read by the author, James Cawley>>Something VERY COOL is coming soon, keep an eye out at:<<
https://www.dustandechoespodcast.com/

THE SOUL TRAP

The Grand Banks, 1755.
The fog does not roll; it exhales. And hidden within the stifling gray of the Atlantic, something waits for Lieutenant Thomas Halloway.
Halloway is a man of the Royal Navy, a scholar of the Enlightenment, and a believer in the rational world. He trusts charts, sextants, and the sturdy timber of the HMS Acheron. But when the fog clears, it reveals a vessel that defies all reason: a blindingly white craft, smooth as bone, devoid of sails, floating in the silence of the deep ocean.
Inside lies a corpse dressed in fabrics unknown to history. And in the dead man’s hand, a small slab of seamless black obsidian.
It is cold. It is heavy. And when Halloway touches it, it ignites.
Suddenly, a man of the 18th century holds a window into a terrifying, vibrant future. The stone captures souls in impossible clarity...moving paintings, disembodied voices, and glowing runes that count down the minutes of a dying light.
As Halloway becomes obsessed with the "ghosts" trapped in the glass, he is forced to bring the artifact to the jagged shores of New Providence, where the fanatical Lord Governor Corvus sees not a miracle, but a demon to be purged.
With the light in the stone fading and religious hysteria rising, Halloway must protect the impossible object and the memories it holds. But he is about to discover that the greatest horror is not the magic of the future, but the fragility of the legacy we leave behind.
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THE CARETAKER

Darius Enlo is five thousand days into a lonely mission to harvest a comet that will exponentialize Earth's AI models. Onboard are the scientists who will execute the plan on arrival, frozen in ice for the long haul. Watching over them alone is Darius, a transit caretaker.  But when an impossible message arrives from deep space claiming the mission is a death sentence for "his people", Darius must make a choice.
Does he trust the AI-lead world government's models? Or...does he trust the voice speaking to him from the dark?
He knows he's alone...but someone is definitely watching.
The Caretaker is a tense, claustrophobic sci-fi thriller about the price of following orders and the courage it takes to break them.Written and Read by the Author, James Cawley 

THANKFUL

Stewart believes he is just waiting out the clock. Retired, invisible, and adrift in a life that feels increasingly gray, he drives into the high Utah wilderness not to find something new, but to escape the quiet nothingness of home. He tells himself he is ready for the end.
But the mountain has a way of calling a bluff.
When a sudden winter storm buries the remote road and traps him in a freezing whiteout, the silence of the desert strips away Stewart’s defenses. Isolated in the crushing cold, he is forced to confront the terrifying truth about his own resignation. As the temperature drops and the world dissolves into white, Stewart discovers that the line between accepting death and fighting for life is razor-thin...and that the mundane life he took for granted might be the only thing worth burning for.
A story about the stubbornness of the human heart and the savage clarity that only comes when the cold finally breaks in.

VAMPIRES OF ARCH CAPE

Sent to the dreary, isolated Oregon coast to stay with a grandmother they barely know, two city teenagers find themselves trapped in a war that is older than they are, and far more terrible.
Their family's history is the town's curse, and the only path to survival demands that they sail directly into the heart of the darkness. This is a story about the agonizing choice between running from your past, and the moment you decide to burn it all down.