The desolate and remote "small town" of Bitter Lake, Kansas, August 1996. An anonymous tip leads us to finding mass graves all around town. At least 62, each holding hundreds of skeletons. Skeletons. Completely picked to the bone before burial. Clear signs of tool/weapon use. All murders. Brutal, grisly ones. Dismemberment. People chopped up like farm animals. People from all over the world. People that we don't have any way of DNA testing because their DNA is not human. Full skeletons of extinct, archaic hominins in pristine condition. Fresh condition. Neanderthal, Erectus, Habilis, et cetera, many of which killed within the last month. Defies all logic. The plots of land these graves were found on all belong to one clan, one family. The Lawless family. They're the only people who live in Bitter Lake.
We arrive at the Lawless household around 4PM. It's a miserably hot and sticky day. Humid enough to suffocate in. It's unlikely that the Lawlesses know they've been found out. Only we know. I knock on the front door, two other agents waiting in the car. A few minutes pass. I sweat like a pig. Pigs don't sweat, actually, but I feel the colloquialism is apt regardless. A haggardly old woman answers the door. She seems outwardly friendly, hospitable. Carrying child despite her age, and something is slightly off about her face. Too robust. Neanderthal. For sure. I introduce myself as agent Cold, and I tell her that I'm with the F.B.I; as is standard procedure for my actual agency when interfacing with the public, "suspects" included. We don't really have "suspects," we aren't really "law enforcement," but I can't think of a better term. Consider it another factually inaccurate colloquialism that just happens to be apt. I tell her I just need to ask her a few questions and ask her if I may come inside. She invites me in. Everyone always does. It's the smile that wins 'em over, I'd like to believe. I can't tell what's going on behind her eyes at all. I step inside.
The interior of the house is entirely typical of the area. Nothing stands out or is of note. I can hear three children playing in another room of the house, and there's a baby in a crib next to the sofa where she sits down. She is heavily pregnant. Probably only a month to a week away from delivery. Good for her. I take a seat on the wooden stool across from the sofa. I signal my backup to begin searching the rest of the property for anything of interest. They begin doing exactly that, and I begin questioning the woman, who will hereby referred to as Mrs. Lawless.
I ask Mrs. Lawless how involved she is with managing other property that the family owns. She says that it's the men who deal with the fields, and she typically stays at home. I ask her where we can find these men. She tells me they're out hunting. This area is a barren wasteland. Nothing lives here. It's barely even suitable as pasture. I ask her where they are hunting, and what. She tells me she doesn't know, she's never asked. I ask for her permission to look around a little while I wait for the men to come home. She allows it. It's the smile. I signal the other two agents to regroup. They can't find anything. Everything seems completely normal. I thank them and we wait in the car.
8PM. A red pickup truck pulls into the driveway of the Lawless household, its bed covered with a tarp. Finally. This must be the men, back from hunting God knows what, God knows where. I wait for them to exit the vehicle and enter the home. They relinquish the tarp from the truck's bed, and begin hauling several massive coolers indoors. Once they have completed this task, I wait nine more minutes before exiting the car and walking up to the door again. It's dark out now. I knock, and this time, an old man appears. He was the driver of the truck. I tell him my name is agent Cold, and that I work for the F.B.I; and that I'd just like to ask him a few questions. Another Neanderthal. He invites me in. There's a reason it's me out of the three of us who does this part of the job. And that reason is (obviously) my smile.
I step inside of the completely normal house for the second time. There are at least seven adult men in the building now. There were only two in the truck. I can feel them eyeing me up and down. I know that they know that I know. I ask the old man, Jed Lawless, where he goes to hunt. His face lights up like a child with a secret, and he tells me just that. "Old family secret." I inquire further about the various identities surrounding me within this house. Jed and Allison are married, and have been since they were both seventeen. They did not relay their current age. Everyone else in the house are their offspring. The baby in the crib is male, Jedediah Lawless II, and the one in Allison's stomach is a girl, named Tracy. I exchanged niceties, typical social ritual regarding good wishes for a pregnancy, and then begin to press Jed (the first, obviously) for some actual details about his hunting grounds. I tell him he might want Allison to leave the room for my next question. He says it won't be necessary. I acquiesce and tell him we've found the body pits. He chuckles a little. Allison chuckles a little. The other men, their sons, all chuckle a little as they give me the stink-eye. Jed II imitates their chuckle, and it's quite adorable.
Mr. Lawless says to me that he'll spill the beans, but that I won't believe a word of it. I assure him whatever it is I've seen stranger. He says I definintely haven't. I definitely have. He then goes on to tell me about various tunnels around Bitter Lake, tunnels that his father's father found, way back before there were even roads that went this far out. Back in "cowboys & Indians times," he put it. "Crawlers," he calls them, sometimes emerge from these tunnels. He must call them that to distance himself from the fact that they're (mostly) human. He says that they look like people, but aren't, and they don't speak a lick of English, or any other language as far as he can tell. They emerge disoriented, wet, and screaming. He says those things are the only thing that grows out here. So he's set up traps to catch and kill them for sustinence. He and his boys then butcher these "crawlers" and bury the bones, which seem to be the only part of them that the Lawless family does not consume. I ask him if his family or anyone in their family history are from the tunnels. He says no. They definitely are. I tell him I'm going to need him to bring me to all of these tunnels. He's reluctant at first, but my smile wins him over.
I escort him to the car where my fellow agents are waiting. They sit in the back seats, Mr. Lawless sits in the passenger seat. I drive, he tells me where to go. We scout out all of the tunnel openings and the agent in the seat directly behind mine marks their locations on a small map. He tells me that we won't see any "crawlers" now, because they don't come out of the tunnels when it's dark, and that they prefer to emerge around noon-time, and on some days, none come out at all. He says that for a while, even the "crawlers" seemed to have dried up. Some of the tunnels did, and still are dead and fruitless. But recently, they've been outputting at a much higher rate than ever before, as high of a rate as they used to put out back when he was a boy and his father first taught him how to trap and field dress one. He must think he's in trouble because he begins to try and justify trapping and eating them. Their family has been doing this for nearly two-hundred years now, and it's been their only source of food. I assure him he's not in any trouble, and after marking all of the tunnels, we drive back to the Lawless house.
"While you and your family are not in any trouble," I begin to explain to them, "my agency will be seizing Jed II for research and closely monitoring the tunnels." Jed seems unphased by this. Allison is upset, of course. Not about the tunnels being monitored, but about us taking her baby. I comfort her, telling her that she will still see her son plenty often, and that with Tracy on the way, she'll appreciate our helping hand in the matter. My smile wins her over. I knew it would. It always does. I thank the family for their time and information, carrying little Jed to the car with me. My smile doesn't win him over. This annoys me, mildly, but he'll grow up to be a fine agent for the B.F.A; I'll make sure of it.
Bitter Lake, Kansas is cordoned off from public access under the guise of being a military test site. The Lawless family are the only individuals allowed to enter or leave site premises. We still aren't sure how the tunnels work, and no similar phenomenon has ever been found since.
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