Outside, the mouth of the cave is exactly as before, with the airship drifting in a clear sky and a chilly wind scooping up whitecaps on the waves in the bay. I turn to Kenneth, who seems far younger than when he was …

… this is going to sound strange, but I’ll say it anyway …

He seems far younger than when he was alive.

He’s standing at the cave mouth, hands on hips, his face lifted to the sharp autumn sunshine, the breeze flicking his kilt round his knees.

‘What do we do, Kenneth?’ I say.

He keeps his face turned to the sky. ‘Why do you keep asking me, laddie? It’s your dream.’

‘I know, it’s just … you know, I don’t know what to do and I thought you might.’

He looks at me and says, ‘No. You’re in charge, or at least your subconscious mind is, and right now that’s all there is of you. That’s just how it goes.’

I’m beginning to panic, and I can hear my panic-voice getting louder and higher. ‘But you made the Dreaminator: you must know!’

‘Och, I long ago gave up havin’ any proper control over my dreams. I used to meet wee Uri and that was about it. I’d just allow my dreaming mind to do whatever it wanted and you know – as you youngsters say – go with the flow.’

‘And that worked? That was okay?’

‘Aye, it was,’ he says, smiling slowly. ‘And I got to meet my son again.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Of course.’

Kenneth gives me a long stare. ‘This is a lot of talking when you’ve got a job to do, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘Can you run?’ I ask.

Kenneth answers by bobbing up and down on the spot a couple of times, and then starting to jog up the beach like a much younger man, his knobbly knees working hard and his shiny black lace-ups kicking up sand. I catch him up, limping badly, then for the second time in an hour I find myself running up the rocky incline to where the clock tower will be in 10,000 years’ time, through the low, dusty bushes of the Turk’s Head pub, crossing the space where the seafront road will be and on to the wide plain that leads to Custard Canyon and eventually the Gravy Lake that one day will be Marden Quarry.

I keep wanting to test my dream-control. ‘Fly!’ I shout, and stretch out my arms, but I remain stubbornly earthbound. I try not to think about how I will rescue Seb if I have to do it, you know, normally. That is, without the power of dream-control.

We run faster and faster. The agony in my foot hasn’t lessened, my chest is hurting, my legs are tired, and we’re still only halfway.

As he runs alongside me, Kenneth seems hardly breathless at all, which must, I figure, be a big advantage of being dead. He lifts up his arm to look at his wrist.

‘I don’t mean to alarm you, wee man, but outside your bedroom it’s getting light and you’ll be awakening naturally in about half an hour. Maybe less, actually.’

In reply, I grit my teeth, pump my arms harder and lengthen my stride until I can see a small speck in the distance, standing on the lip of the canyon. A moment later, I recognise the tiny, round shape, more or less exactly where I had left her before.

By the time I draw up next to Mola, I have a painful stitch in my side, and I am so light-headed with exhaustion that it stops me noticing how much my foot is hurting. Five seconds later, old Kenneth McKinley, ninety years of age, saunters up in his kilt – breathing no more heavily than if he had just walked up the steps to his front door.

Mola and Kenneth face each other warily for what seems like ages. Mola speaks first.

‘So it is you then? You what got them into all this kerfuffling, huh? Your fault, eh?’

‘Madam, you could not be more wrong. Malcolm and Sebastian got themselves into all this, ahh … kerfuffling with no more help from me than the development of the infernal Dreaminator, which Malcolm here stole.’ He looks at me with a wry smile. ‘Sorry, laddie.’

‘How did … you know?’ I wheeze.

‘I didn’t, actually. Well, not until you admitted it just now. But Dreamworld or not, the truth will out, as your Wullie Shakespeare said.’

I’m still too breathless to speak properly, but I’d be unable to say anything, anyway, I am so stunned.

Mola does not look as though Kenneth’s explanation has satisfied her. She shakes her head, angrily, and says, ‘For centuries, people have contemplated the inner workings of the mind, our whole existence. Through meditation, through prayer, and then you come along with your toy and look what happens!’

Kenneth seems a bit embarrassed. ‘Madam, you may be right. But you are mistaking me for someone who is alive and has the power to change things. That power, alas, is no longer mine owing to my essential, well … deadness, I suppose. By the way, I’ve not been in this dream before, but I don’t like the lean an’ hungry look of yon fella coming up behind you.’

Mola and I turn and with a lurch in my stomach I see Cuthbert crawling over the lip of the canyon and he’s looking straight at me with his huge yellow eyes.

I groan out loud.