DIVINATIONS 
MAGAZINE

3am.

3am was always the worst part of the story. Nestled between the established night owl hours of 1 and 2, and the later lark hours of 4 and 5, 3am always stood alone. For insomniac Lyla Alicia Knight, it was the hour when she could be sure to be awake. She had seen 3am from many bedrooms: beneath the foster carer's faded Beauty and the Beast duvet cover, intended for children much younger; and the children’s home bedroom with its local authority certificates and frosted glass letting in light above the door. In later years, as she had nursed bruises inflicted by Roy, snoring and grunting beside her in the aftermath, 3am flashed across their stained mattress, lighting up the wall streaked with heavy green mould. Then, fleeing with Ange six months later, who told Lyla to keep her head down as they hurried out of town in her Vauxhall Cavalier. Looking straight ahead at the worn dash as she lay across the back seat, the hands of 3am gazed back from its analogue display.

3am wasn’t a coincidence; it was where the name had come from, the cruel rumours from faded friends, the newfound strangers who then too called her Liar-Liar, Lyla once she was taken into care. She had only been fourteen at the time; youthful green eyes and a world of dreams ahead of her. Now a woman, teenage dreams long forgotten, she was still called a liar. None of the girls from Trafton High had stayed in touch after she had been removed from school; none of the adults who had once spoken highly of her ever spoke of her again. Back then, before the era of awareness days and social media, there was no way of finding resonance in the pain of what happened to her, nor any way to prove that she, Lyla Knight, wasn’t a liar. That 3am on the night of June 22nd 2001, was the moment when she had burst out of the car with a cloud of Benson’s following her and blood trailing from her petite frame. When she had run into Harvey’s, the 24/7 petrol station on the main route out of Trafton, she told of everything that had happened. But eventually, as time had passed and more interviews, scrutiny, and rumours came her way, Lyla’s story grew smaller and her reputation grew larger.

Attention-seeking bitch, slut, whore and pathetic all manifested into what would become Liar-Liar, Lyla, the girl who told a terrible lie about a night in summer 2001 when everyone else was at the end of year party and she was drunk and in love with Jason Mane, who that very night had rejected her for Keeley Stanley. No one else saw her after she had run away from the party, nor the red Volvo that had collected her. It had been assumed that Liar-Liar Lyla was simply jealous. In the aftermath, Lyla had moved far away from Trafton but the name continued to haunt her just as 3am would continue to wake her.

2024.

Picking up another sleeping tablet from the plastic dish, Lyla knew it was pointless. Her insomnia was the same as any other night - 3am glinting from her iPhone as she tried moving it without being distracted by its lures. These days it was a double bed to herself with the maroon knitted blanket she had made for comfort, something that was her own rather than someone else’s castoff. It had made things easier as she had adjusted to nights alone. Waking up crying, or in a cold sweat from another nightmare about being trapped inside a car; Skunk Anansie’s Weak playing as he weighed her down.

Lyla shifted her knees up to her chest while gripping the soft layer formed by the blanket. Tonight’s nightmare had been new; a gentle man with a solemn expression guiding her through a run-down terraced garden. Its highest terrace had overlooked a pool of water far below with a frail set of steps to the left. Yet when she went to follow them, the calm man had suddenly turned, glaring at her as a choir began a foreboding harmony. In the moment, she could still hear traces of their melancholy voices.

You’re going to die, she heard, You’re not listening to me, are you?

The rasping voice made Lyla shiver as her ‘Night Creatures’ began to stir. They were not supernatural, they were the deepest and darkest parts of her mind. At first, there was only one. But soon, confusion merged with the voices, closely followed by another that made her heart palpitate and her chest burn.

You’re pathetic, taunted the creature, as flashbacks of long-forgotten memories drowned her mind…

Ignoring medical advice, Lyla picked up her phone needing the distraction. Her wallpaper – interchangeable by the hour – flashed a photo of her and Roy from 2007.

“Fuck you,” Lyla whispered to the dark.

A quiet voice hushed outside the door, “Lyla, I can hear you’re awake in there. Have you taken your medication tonight?”

The voice was Bryan’s – one of the kinder ones. He always knew that Lyla would wake at this time and would only ever ask about her meds, unlike Tracey and Ian, who would tell her she wasn’t helping herself. That if she didn’t work with all that they had done for her then it would be ‘discussed’, her residential place given to someone more deserving.

“Yes, I’ve just taken it. All ok.”

Lyla felt a short pause before the gentle pad of Bryan’s footsteps indicated that he had gone back to his room. She hadn’t wanted this life, but it was the only thing that would keep her out of a secure unit. Lyla’s nickname had had much graver consequences than a damaged reputation – it had marked her with a psychiatric label whose legitimacy was debated to this day. Glancing at the phone, it was now 3:24 am. Lyla knew she would not sleep for at least another hour, tonight’s creatures wouldn’t allow it. Scrolling through her dream diary there were more than five years of notes - an old counsellor had once told her would be helpful. He’d said it was therapeutic, a form of sense-making.

The dreams had become more vivid since she’d heard from Uncle Marty two months ago - a simple postcard from Spain, Missing you, little Lyla, Love M x. The second had been a fox greeting card, Lyla’s soul creature, attempting to be poetic with a few lines about its mystery. Clichéd, but that was Marty - he always remembered every little thing about her. Even at fourteen while leaving Trafton with her first social worker, her Nokia 3210 silently flashed the words, Don't be frightened, I will find you princess. I’ll always be there - M.

And unlike others, Marty was always there. Even when there had been gaps in time, Marty always kept his word. He had reassured Lyla that he was her protector, the one who cared. Marty didn’t call Lyla a liar, just as Lyla’s Night Creatures didn’t. They knew Lyla from her darkest dreamworlds, there were no lies when it came to the night. There were no lies at 3 am.

Lyla suddenly felt heavy, a creature of pain had crept into her thoughts. Words began circling, echoing the dream she had woken from –choir calling me, an angry man… a new diary entry began to form. Before she could write any further, daylight broke through. Lyla opened her eyes to find her phone under her pillow, the notes app still loaded with those 3 am words.

A sharp banging came.

“Lyla, it’s past 8 and you’ll miss breakfast if you’re not down in ten minutes. Get up now, please,” a short hesitation between the command and the please, Tracey only allowed as much kindness as professionalism required.

“Coming now,” Lyla croaked, still fuzzy from the medication. Yet the man in the dream remained clear, his face still etched in her mind. Unlike dreams of yesteryear that had been filled with abstract forests and feelings, there had been a clear warning in this one.

Another bang thumped at her door.

Three days later.

For the time that has passed, you cannot salvage. For the time to come, your truth is near. The fading choir whispered in chorus with their haunting melody. The man, now raging, stood beside the pool which was turning brown, flecked with crimson clots. A black horse reared on a distant hillside, as a woman laughed, a noose around her neck.

Lyla woke freezing and drenched, the melody persisting. Tears came quickly as she felt her creatures stirring once again, this time with flashbacks of the cruellest kind. Memories of being told she was beautiful, that doing those things would make him the happiest man alive… things that had hurt her, things that made her bleed. Shaking them from the surface, she reached for her plastic dish, the fresh pill packet reminding her that she now needed to take two tablets and not one. The glow in the corner reminded her that a new alarm clock had been installed to wake her at 7 am every day. Words competing for 3 am rumination…

Increasing dose for insomnia.

No contact from next of kin.

Tends to mix with undesirables and often fabricates stories.

She’s going to die soon.

Lyla sat upright suddenly. She didn’t need to check the time. She was tired of this life, tired of being caged in other people’s decisions and thoughts about her, tired of being Liar-Liar, Lyla. She needed to leave to save herself before something terrible happened - her night creatures had warned of it. “My truth…” Lyla grunted in muffled anger. She was going to the place where she would be protected. That place was Marty.

 Weeping, Lyla wrapped the maroon knit around her as she gathered the small bag beneath her bed with his most recent letter, telling her of his illness and how he needed her. His instructions concealed in poetic verses, telling her where to go, that she could choose the night and that he would be there whenever she was ready.

Lyla crept out into the hallway, her ground-floor bedroom giving her an advantage, allowing her to creep towards the back door that had just one key to turn. Her Night Creatures now singing as Uncle Marty waited just a mile away, in the lay-by beside the hotel where he had been staying for the last three weeks. As Lyla left the house she left her final words, everything she had written at 3am: the dreams, the pain, and all that had happened to her. That these writings were her truth. A truth that had been torn out of her by those who called her Liar-Liar, Lyla Knight.

As she fled into the night, Lyla did not hear the choral singing, nor the voice of a man that trailed her in a whisper, …the shadow is falling now. Lyla did not see her reflection in car windows, her brown hair now jet black, her eyes amber. Nor did she see the drunken teenagers who crowed after her as she had hurried away in the dark. While Lyla had grown stronger with her night creatures, she never fully overcame what had happened all of those years ago. Meanwhile, Marty had grown sicker, sicker than Lyla could ever have known.

It was three weeks later when Lyla was eventually found. The police noted the time as 3am while torches floated over her body, bound and slashed in a pool of congealed blood without a heartbeat or breath remaining. An act of sadism had taken her, a world of ignorance had led her to her fate. Lyla’s truth would now be known, her life as Liar-Liar Lyla was gone forever. The scrawled note beside her, covered in blood, phlegm and torn maroon fragments read:

Listen to 3am. It’s where lies the truth.

Lyla Alicia Knight