Mike

I told them I had a place they could hide out, so I had to stay true to my word even though I thought it was a terrible place to hide. We drove for what seemed like an hour before we reached the outskirts of town. I parked in an empty lot of an abandoned warehouse.

"This is it. Home sweet home." I joked, but they weren't amused. "Come on, I've got a key to the building. "

We walked stealthily up to the boarded up doors. "Uh, I don't think a key is going to work." Rain was skeptical.

"This is not a normal key." I pulled out my necklace that had been tucked in my shirt. There was a strange shaped piece of wood hanging on it. I shoved the piece of wood into an inconspicuous hole in the door and twisted it to the left. "There is only one of these in existence and it would be nearly impossible to copy, unless of course you could make a tree root."

"Where did it come from?" Jared asked.

"Glad you asked that." I said as I pushed the door open. "It's an old family heirloom. It's been passed down from generation to generation." The kids were surprised to see that it was not a warehouse inside. "The ware house is just a cover. It used to be in use, it probably wouldn't surprise you to know that the door we just opened actually opened into another dimension. If someone were to bust the door all they would find is an empty warehouse. "

"What did they use the warehouse for?"

"Ironically, it was a factor for magic toys: wands, hats, you name it." as we made our way through the tunnels of the warehouse's other dimension I gave the kids a brief history lesson. "Hundreds of years ago there were thousands of magic people, but very few people knew about them. You've heard of the Salem Witch Trials? Well, they were actually magic. Most of the time they spent their time underground, but occasionally one would wander out and try to make a real life for their self. This sanctuary was created thousands of years ago by the magic pioneers if you will. They created it in the hopes that their posterity would never have to use it and their enemies would never find it (being that they were on another continent oblivious that this one existed). Unfortunately, when they did need it they realized there was a major flaw in their design. Only one person could open the door. He had the ability to manipulate trees and all kinds of wood. To this day, no other such person has been recorded. Out of desperation, he asked the magic people to chop off one of his hands so that they could use the sanctuary after he had died. You see, he was very old by that time and didn't have much time to live. And since there was only one key, everyone decided they should remain underground or they would surely perish. And many did, mostly out of ignorance. That's why they were so easy to catch."

"But how did you get the key?"

"It has been kept in a chest in my attic all these years until the day we needed it. My ancestors were magic people, but we no one in my family inherited the gene. We're thinking that it may have been a curse of some kind, but who knows?"

"Wouldn't the wood have rotted away by now?"

"You'd think so, but I guess as long as magic still exists it will continue to live."

"Couldn't you just make a plaster mold of it?"

"We (the government) tried that, but it doesn't work. It has to be wood. And it has to be exact."