Chapter One
Chicago
 
THE FIRST TIME I saw Brunhild Towers was the day we moved in. Even though it wasn't that long ago, I saw a lot of things differently back then. I thought old people were boring. I thought learning history was a good way to fall asleep. I thought dying was simple.

You probably noticed I said Towers, not Tower.

Pay attention and I'll explain everything.

***

Mom had been driving all day with my brother, Mal, and me in the back seat. The air conditioner in our old van barely worked, and the August heat was making us sweaty, tired, and crabby. My right arm was red and sore from where Mal had been punching it, and Mal's left arm looked even worse--I was better at using my knuckles.

Mom's voice was fried from telling us to knock it off. Every few miles she tried again.

"Malcolm. Stop arguing."

"Malcolm! Stop hitting!"

"MALCOLM! If you make me pull over and stop this car, you'll lose all your screen time for a week!"

She was talking to both of us, actually. You see, Mal's full name is Malachy, and my name is Colm. Whenever we're in trouble, Mom drops the and between our names and we become Malcolm.

The screen-time threat was the only one that worked. Mal's favorite thing is building stuff in Minecraft, and mine is wrecking stuff in video games--Mal says I'm just a griefer, but I prefer to think of myself as a demolition expert--so the idea of being grounded from screens after we finally got out of the car was a nightmare.

Still, I just don't think there's any way you can put twin brothers in the back of a minivan for the 926-mile drive from Dallas to Chicago without both of them needing to throw a few punches.

After two days on the road, we were positively sick of each other. We were sick of the way the upholstery rubbed against our sweaty legs, and we were even sick of fast food. All my favorite foods come from drive-through windows, but if I had to unwrap one more burger or breakfast sandwich, I was going to projectile vomit all over our minivan, and we would need to call in a hazmat team to make it habitable again.

The van was so full of stuff, it was almost impossible to move. The space behind us was crammed with boxes. Our feet were resting on duffel bags full of clothes, so we couldn't even straighten our legs, and we had to hit each other over Eric the cat, whose carrier was on the seat between us. The front passenger seat had a lamp, a computer, and our TV in it, which was strapped into the seat belt to protect it from disaster.

If you're wondering why our dad wasn't in that seat, well, it's because he's dead. He was in a car accident two years ago, when Mal and I were ten. Dad was the one who named the cat Eric, but I still don't know why. I've asked him, but he just laughs.

I know what you're thinking: I'm crazy, because you can't talk to dead people. But you're wrong. You can talk to them. You're only crazy if you expect them to answer you. I talk to Dad all the time, just to hear his voice in my head. Who cares if I'm making up all the stuff he says? Even so, sometimes I'm afraid he'll stop answering.

Sometimes I'm afraid I'll forget what his voice sounded like.

Moving was Mom's idea. She never even asked what we thought about it. One day, she just told us it was time for a fresh start. She said she had gotten a new job in Chicago and we were leaving in the middle of August. I didn't want to go. I wanted things to stay the same, but it seemed like ever since the policemen came to our door the day Dad didn't come home from work, our old life had been falling apart piece by piece.

Mal didn't like to talk about moving, or Dad, and I hated making Mom cry, so Dad was pretty much the only one I had to talk to.

***

Chicago traffic made Dallas traffic look minor league. It took us an hour and a half to get from the big green Welcome to Chicago sign above the highway to our new apartment.

By then, the sun was going down, and I was so hungry that I might even have been able to eat a cheeseburger without spraying it all over the back seat.

Finally, we turned right, and Mom swore and hit the brakes. She swears sometimes, but Mal and I act like we don't hear it. If we swear, that's a different story. She can hear it a block away.

"There it is: Brunhild Tower," she said. "I missed it!"

Then, instead of going around the block like a normal person, Mom backed right down the street, ignoring all the honking horns, while Mal and I scrunched down in our seats and tried to hide. Eric moaned like he was embarrassed, too.

When Mom pulled into the driveway, I couldn't see much--all the stuff crammed into the van blocked the view. But I could tell it was old and fancy: Through the windshield, I glimpsed gray stone, big windows, and some flowers and plants, if you care about that kind of thing.

Mom stopped in front of four tall gray pillars and climbed out of the car.

"Wait here and don't try anything," she said. "I'll just check in with the doorman."

When we heard the word doorman, Mal and I exchanged a look. In our old house, you had to jiggle the key in the lock forever before it worked. And in the apartment we moved into after Dad died, we had to enter a key code to get into the building. But we had never lived in a building with a doorman.

"Maybe Mom's new job pays a lot better than her old one," said Mal.

"Who knows?" I said. "She wouldn't even tell us if she won the lottery."

Mom never talked about money. I knew things were tighter now that Dad was gone, but it wasn't like we were rich or anything before that. Still, Mom always tried to act like everything was just great. Like she didn't mind working a part-time job in the evenings and like having a giant old box of a TV was somehow better than having a flat screen like everyone else. Like it was somehow better for Mal and me not to have cell phones when the fact was we just couldn't afford them.

Mal usually went along with her and pretended, but it drove me crazy. It's embarrassing not to have a cell phone or a flat-screen TV. We were lucky our computer wasn't made out of wood.

Mom came out of the building with a man wearing a black-and-gray uniform. The man pointed at something behind us, and Mom got back in the car.

"Who's that?" I asked.

"That's the doorman, dummy," said Mal, taking advantage of my being distracted to hit my arm right on the bruised spot.

I had my fist raised to retaliate when Mom stopped me with a look. So I sent him a telepathic message instead: I'll get you later.

"His name is Virgilio," said Mom. "He said there's parking behind us. We can't bring our boxes through the front door--we have to go to the loading dock. But I think it's too late to unload, don't you?"

"Yes," we said at the same time, not wanting anything to get between us and dinner.

We had to drive back onto the street to get to the parking lot. Fortunately, this time, there were only a couple of honks. The way people in Chicago laid on their horns, you'd think they drove horn-powered cars.

Inside the lot, Mom parked in the numbered space Virgilio had given her. Then we got out of the van and stretched. Mom started pulling things out of the back while Mal and I had a quick kickboxing battle that I totally won.

"Malcolm, enough!" snapped Mom, holding out things for us to carry.

We took our duffel bags, backpacks, the cat carrier, and the litter box and headed across the lot to the main building.

Brunhild Tower loomed over us, huge and dark. Above the gray stone on the first few floors of the L-shaped building, black iron fire escapes zigzagged up the redbrick walls that faced the parking lot. It was so big, I felt like it would swallow us up. Suddenly, a stupid hope occurred to me: What if we couldn't find our apartment? Since we weren't unloading the van, we could just drive back to Dallas.

It was still hot as an oven outside. The heat coming off the blacktop practically melted the bottoms of my sneakers. I'm no expert on big cities, but it did seem weird that there was room for such a big parking lot when there were so many tall buildings crowded around.

Mom stood there for a moment, staring up at the building with that look she gets that makes me think she's going to start crying.

"Your dad would have loved this place," she said. "He always liked older buildings. He said they were built to last."

I tried sending Mal a telepathic message: Quick, change the subject.

"Why is it called Brunhild Tower?" he asked. Studying his face, I couldn't tell if he'd gotten my message. He probably just asked because he's always going out of his way to learn things he'll never need to know.

"I have no idea," said Mom, snapping out of it. "But it sounds like something out of an old folktale, doesn't it? Brunhild."

"Sounds like a witch's name," I muttered as we started walking toward the building.

None of us had any idea how close Mom and I were to being right.

---

Excerpted from The Phantom Tower by Keir Graff
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.