If I remember the Baby Dawson case?

Ma’am, I can’t unremember it.

The mother, Kreszentia, was hysterical. We had her in that interview room for five hours, but we never got a single coherent sentence out of her.

We couldn’t figure it out why she did it. Drugs? Postpartum psychosis? No answers from poor Kreszentia, though. All she did was yell that word, over and over.

Bytting.

We learned the meaning of the word from her husband. Some european folklore legend.

A bytting is when a newborn is stolen by a subterranean species known as the underjordiske, and replaced by a near identical unholy spawn. According to her husband, Kreszentia was overly obsessed with protecting their baby girl, and she’d often tell him that they were watching her.

That night he came home to a house in complete shambles, furniture in pieces, windows smashed, poor Kreszentia a hysterical mess, breaking everything she could get her hands on.

And the baby…

The baby was dead. Suffocated. Smothered by a pillow most likely. There were no other suspects. Just Kreszentia. She was already ill, I suspect. Way before the night of. But she never received any help.

It took us a few weeks to get her talking. I remember her story like it happened yesterday. Her mumbling words, the tears that just wouldn’t stop streaming down her pale face; everything. Clear as day.

She told us she put her baby down in her crib. They’d just gotten a new nanny cam (her husband wanted her to have it, since she wouldn’t leave the room otherwise), and when she sat down in the living room to adjust it, she saw it.

A person entering the nursery.

She ran into the room, but when she arrived it was empty. Just the crib and the baby. Frightened beyond words, she took the baby with her, and went back into the living room to call her husband.

Inexplicably, her eyes was drawn to the nanny cam once more.

The person was still there. And so was the baby. It was holding the newborn now, ready to leave the room with it.

Kreszentia panicked. With the baby still in her arms, in a maniacal state of frenzy, she bolted back to the nursery.

But they were gone. Vanished.

She knew now what had happened. They had tricked her. The underjordiske. Tricked her into picking up the wrong baby. Tricked her into picking up the bytting, escaping then with her true child.

Bytting! she yelled.

And so she smothered it. Killed it. Crushed it.

Bytting…

We solved it weeks later. What had really happened.

The nanny cam...the feed...was set on a delay. 5-10 seconds or so.

So you see, there never was any underjordiske. No bytting. She just saw herself. Herself in the nursery, 5-10 seconds in the past. Herself leaving the room with the baby, 5-10 seconds in the past.

She wouldn’t believe us. Still don’t.

She’s still just mumbling that word, over and over.

Bytting.