The Foxglove Lullaby

In the winter of 1995, my mother’s antiques business sent out a promotional mailer to celebrate the opening of her new shop in the hills of western Virginia. The mailer was a reproduction of a Victorian-era greeting card, adorned with pressed foxgloves and a faded lithograph of a plantation house. Inside, a small paper mechanism was set to play a tune when the card was opened, a jaunty little number that had been popular in the region a century ago. She had ordered a hundred of these, each one hand-assembled by a local printer who insisted on using old materials he’d found in a barn. The tune, she said, was called ‘The Foxglove Lullaby’, and she’d chosen it because it sounded sweet and nostalgic, perfect for her shop’s image.

We lived in the apartment above the shop, and my mother kept one of the cards on the counter as a sample. The first time I opened it, I was alone in the store, closing up for the night. The card played its tinny melody, but there was something off about the tempo, as if the gears were catching on a small, stubborn dust mote. I didn’t think much of it then. But that night, I heard it again, faintly, from the shop below, as if someone had opened the card and let it play through once, then twice, then a third time. I told myself it was just the house settling, or a stray cat knocking something over. But the melody had lodged in my head like a splinter.

The next day, a woman came in, a local historian with a keen interest in the region’s folklore. She saw the card on the counter and turned pale. She asked where I’d gotten it, and I told her about the promotional mailer. She said, slowly, that she recognized the tune as a variation of an old Appalachian folk song, but not one meant for children. It was called ‘The Lullaby of the Hollow’, and it was said to have been composed by a woman who lost her daughter to the fever in 1888. The song was meant to lure the girl’s spirit home, but instead it trapped it in the family’s music box, and anyone who heard the song would be compelled to keep it playing, to never let it stop, for fear of losing the child forever.

I laughed it off, but that night, I couldn’t sleep. The melody was still humming in my head, an earworm gone feral. Around 3 AM, I got up to get a glass of water and found the card on the kitchen counter, open, playing the tune on its own. The mechanism had never been wound, yet it was moving, the tiny teeth of the music box comb catching on a rotating drum, making the same few notes over and over. I slammed it shut, and the sound stopped. But I felt a presence in the room, a cold spot near the window, and the faint scent of lavender and dust.

I called my mother, who was out of town at a furniture auction. She said it was probably just a battery issue, but the card clearly had no battery. She told me to throw it away if it was bothering me. So I wrapped it in a plastic bag, took it out to the dumpster behind the shop, and tossed it in. When I came back inside, the card was on the kitchen counter again, open, playing. I stood there, my heart pounding, and I heard a whisper, barely audible beneath the tinny notes, a woman’s voice saying, ‘Please, don’t let her stop. She needs to hear it.’

I didn’t sleep at all that night. The next morning, I called every number I could find for the printer who had made the cards. His shop was in a small town three hours away, and when I finally got him on the line, he was evasive. He said he’d bought the materials from a estate sale, an old music box that had belonged to a family that had died out. He said he’d stripped it for parts, and that something about the mechanism had felt off, but he’d needed the money. He warned me that the card might be ‘persistent’, and that it would follow me until I did what it wanted. When I asked what that was, he said, ‘You have to play it for the little girl. She’s been waiting a long time.’ Then he hung up.

I was terrified, but I couldn’t just dispose of the card. It would come back. So I decided to try to understand it. I went to the local library and found an old newspaper article about the Lullaby of the Hollow. It told the story of a woman named Elspeth Morrow, who, after her daughter Clara died, became obsessed with capturing her spirit in a music box. She hired a clockmaker to build a special mechanism, and she composed the lullaby herself, claiming she could hear Clara singing it from the spirit world. The music box was buried with Elspeth when she died, but the article mentioned that a grave robber had reportedly exhumed the body in the 1920s and stolen the box. The trail went cold.

The card, I realized, was made from that music box. The printer had unknowingly taken its soul. I now understood that the daughter’s spirit was bound to the music, and if the music stopped for good, she would be lost forever. But the card was never meant to be shut. Every time I closed it, I was condemning her to silence, however brief.

I decided to do what the printer said. I took the card to the cemetery where Elspeth and Clara were buried, in the hills overlooking the town. It was dusk, and the air was thick with fog. I opened the card, and the lullaby began to play, but this time, it sounded different—slower, sweeter, almost as if a child’s voice was humming along. I knelt by the tombstone, which was worn and mossy, and I said, ‘Clara, I’m sorry. I don’t want to stop you. But I don’t know how to help you.’

The card stopped playing on its own. The mechanism wound down, and the music faded into the wind. For a moment, there was silence, and then I heard a small, clear voice say, ‘Thank you.’ I felt a warmth pass through me, and the card went cold and still in my hands. It would never play again.

I thought it was over. I drove home, the card sitting on the passenger seat, harmless. But when I got to the shop, I found the door ajar. Inside, all the other cards from the batch, the ones my mother had stored in the back room, were scattered across the floor, every single one of them open, their little mechanisms buzzing, each one playing a different note, creating a discordant symphony. And in the center of the room stood a small, ghostly figure, a girl in a muslin dress, with hollow eyes. She smiled at me and pointed to the cards. ‘Now there are more of us,’ she said. ‘We’re not lost anymore.’

I tried to run, but my legs wouldn’t move. She walked toward me, and behind her, the cards started to skip, merging into a single melody—the same lullaby, but slower, more mournful. I felt a cold hand on my cheek, and I heard the girl’s voice in my ear, ‘You’ll play for us now. You’ll be our keeper.’

I woke up in a ditch the next morning, the cards gone, but the melody still echoing in my skull. I’ve not been able to stop it since. It plays constantly, a low hum in the back of my mind, and every time I think I’ve silenced it, I see the girl’s face, and I have to open my mouth and sing the tune. I’ve become part of the music. I don’t know how many others have received those cards, but I know they’re out there, and I know that when they open them, they’ll hear the lullaby, and they’ll be brought to us. We are the keepers of the hollow, and we’re never alone.

The shop is closed now. I live in the forest, away from people, but I can still hear the cards playing, in the rustle of leaves, in the chirp of crickets, in the wind. They’re all versions of the same song, and they’re waiting for new ears.

If you ever receive a promotional card from a small antiques shop in the hills of western Virginia, with pressed foxgloves on the front and a tune that sounds too sweet, do not open it. Burn it. Bury it. Throw it into the river. But whatever you do, do not let it play to the end. Because once you hear the last note, you’ll hear the girl, and she’ll ask you to sing.

And you’ll sing.

We’ll all sing.