Plot summary
In the small town of Home, Pennsylvania, a woman gives birth to a deformed baby. Three similarly deformed men bury it near their dilapidated house during a rainstorm. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are sent to investigate after the corpse is found by children during a sandlot-ball game. While talking to local sheriff Andy Taylor (Tucker Smallwood), Mulder asks whether the Peacock brothers—the inhabitants of the house nearest to the crime scene—have been questioned. Taylor informs him that the house dates to the Civil War and is without electricity, running water or heat. He also insinuates that the family has been inbreeding since the war. The three Peacock brothers watch the agents from their front porch.
During an autopsy, the agents discover that the baby suffocated by inhaling dirt—meaning that it was buried alive. Scully suggests the baby's defects could have been caused by inbreeding. Mulder insists this hypothesis would be impossible since the Peacocks seem to live in an all-male household. Suspecting the Peacocks have kidnapped and raped a woman, the agents investigate their now-abandoned residence and discover blood, scissors and a shovel on a table. In retaliation, the Peacocks enter Taylor's house during the night and murder him and his wife, Barbara (Judith Maxie).
Laboratory tests indicate the baby's parents were members of the Peacock family. Believing that the three Peacock brothers must be holding the dead baby's mother hostage, the agents and Deputy Barney Paster (Sebastian Spence) go to arrest them. When Paster breaks down the front door of the house, he is decapitated by a booby-trap, before the brothers rip the body apart. Mulder and Scully then release the Peacocks' pigs to lure them out of the house before searching it.
The agents find a quadruple amputee hidden under a bed. She is revealed to be Mrs. Peacock, the mother of the boys. She was presumed dead from a car crash several years previously; however, she survived and continued to have inbred children. Mrs. Peacock reveals that neither she nor anyone in the family can feel pain. The brothers realize Mulder and Scully are inside their house and attack. The two youngest sons withstand several gunshots before dying, one of them impaled on another booby-trap. Afterwards, the agents discover that Mrs. Peacock and her eldest son have escaped in their car, planning to start a new family elsewhere.
Credits
Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Home (The X-Files). Paragraphs and formatting adjusted; illustrations, reference markers, block quotations and non-story material omitted.