Dust and Echoes

Three hundred years after the fall of the old world, the survivors live not in cities… but inside their skeletons. High above the vine-choked ruins of what once was Manhattan, the Stone Tree Clan endures among the rooftops guided by firelight, memory, and the stories passed down since the first flames were lit. Stories that remind them of the sins that burned the world… and of the one law that has kept them alive: Stay close to the flame. Remember the stories. Never go into The Down Dark. But rules can’t hold forever. The Down Dark is a haunting tale of survival, silence, and the weight of tradition in a world built on ashes. A cinematic story told in the rhythm of oral myth, kept alive through fearing the shadows of the past. From Dust and Echoes, this is James Cawley’s The Down Dark

Some places will never let you go. Jeff Bauer thought he escaped his hometown of Burley, Idaho. He traded wheat fields for Hollywood lights, childhood ghosts for film scores and awards. But a phone call from an old childhood friend drags him back into the nightmare that he thought he'd escaped.  Developers are unearthing the farmland where two kids once hid things that they hoped would always stay buried. Now, Jeff must confront the dungeon once again....the town he fled, the boyhood pact he broke, and secrets the Idaho soil refuses to keep. In Burley, silence is currency, memory is a trap, and loyalty can cost more than blood.   Listen to past episodes and see what's next at:  https://www.dustandechoespodcast.com

Long before covered wagons creaked across endless sagebrush and steam locomotives chased the horizon...something ancient arrived from the cold stillness between distant galaxies, and it buried itself deep into the red clay of Shoshone land.  And there, it waited for the old man and the girl.  Generations later, Dzoon awakens it. The visions it brings are unlike anything he’s ever known...not memories, but omens. Fire. Ruin. A ghostly old woman. A warning... A fragile thread of hope that his people might survive a new darkness rising in the East.  Dzoon and Shaya must take a stand to keep the ember of their people alive and protected, before everything is buried behind the coming silence. This is a story about ghosts trapped within the walls of our history. About language, land, and the choice between forgetting the spark of who we really are...or lighting the fire inside ourselves, fighting to preserve the flame to wait out the night. Told in a cinematic, audio-book style by the author and host of Dust and Echoes, James Cawley.  The Sky We Carried blends myth, ancestry, and prophecy into a story that refuses to be forgotten. More stories and peek at what's coming next at:  https://www.dustandechoespodcast.com    

Dust & Echoes is a fiction podcast blending horror, mystery, adventure and suspense in original short story form. Each episode is a cinematic, immersive experience drawing you into tales of the strange, the forgotten, and the haunted parts of being human. Written and performed by author James Cawley, Dust & Echoes delivers a modern campfire experience, one story at a time. Unheard. Unpublished. Until now.  New episodes every Tuesday.  Each one a new original story.  ------------ See what's coming next at:  https://www.dustandechoespodcast.com

When neurosurgeon Garrett Goodwin boards the Celestia Maris with his family, he’s looking for quiet. But in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle, the ocean gives him something else: silence. The kind that feels… alive and watching. As strange orbs appear on the horizon and a boy in the ship’s medical wing whispers in someone else’s voice, Garrett is drawn into a nightmare of reality that science can't explain. The Bermuda Meridian is a psychological thriller that blends cosmic horror with intimate human dread, taking you deep into the terrifying unknown...and into the parts of ourselves we pretend don’t exist.

He took the deckhand job with no experience and no questions asked. Just a one-way ticket to somewhere quiet. A chance to disappear. After years of bad choices and time served, Joey’s ready to leave everything he broke behind. But the further the small fishing boat he gets from land, the more dread builds inside Joey's mind.   What begins as a quiet escape drifts, in thick fog, into darker waters. And as the isolation deepens, Joey starts to suspect this boat was never headed where they claimed...and learns, firsthand, that past the breakers, the dark depths of the ocean keeps its own secrets. The Deckhand is a haunting, slow-burn descent into suspicion, survival, and the choices that pull us under. See more of my stories and what's next at: https://www.dustandechoespodcast.com

In a remote desert canyon lost to time, a weathered archaeologist uncovers the final thread of a mystery he’s chased his entire life, a forgotten Indigenous city hidden beneath the stone. But when a mountain lion encounter leaves him broken, bleeding, and alone, survival becomes a brutal reckoning. Blending myth, memory, and a fire-lit confrontation with the past, Library in the Desert is a visceral tale about what we choose to remember… and what was never ours to claim in the first place.

Out in the wasteland, something still ticks, a briefcase unshackled from a dead chief’s wrist, armed with codes from the old world. Now, a Tribal sheriff must race through a post-apocalyptic Vegas to stop a warlord wearing a stolen face. This isn’t hope. This isn’t redemption.  This is Humanity’s last stand, and it rests on the back of one man. The Fifth Number is an original story by James Cawley, host of the Dust and Echoes podcast.  Make sure to SUBSCRIBE and tell a friend.  I'll have another new original story for you EVERY TUESDAY.  Visit our website to see what's next and to view past episodes at:  https://enterthedust.com

The world ended with a sound. Low, strange, and final. Entire cities froze. The Silent remained: breathless, wide-eyed, deadly if you fall asleep. A gambler, a swimmer, a rock star, and a physicist race toward a rumored safe zone as the last signal counts down. But what they find isn’t safety, it’s the truth behind the end. The Silent is a gripping survival thriller where sleep isn’t rest, it’s a death sentence. Make sure to SUBSCRIBE and tell a friend.  I'll have another new original story for you EVERY TUESDAY.  Visit our website to see what's next and to view past episodes at:  https://enterthedust.com