The Ghost at the Drive-In Movie

by Gertrude Chandler Warner

  “No, something even bigger!” said Jessie. “Big like a bathtub!”

  Uncle Flick brought in a very large plastic storage tub. “I just bought it to store holiday decorations,” he said. “Though it’s not quite as big as a bathtub.”

  “It’s big enough to be my bathtub!” Benny said.

  When the first batches of popcorn were finished, Henry dumped them into the tub.

  “What are we going to put on it?” Violet asked. “Is there enough butter in the fridge?”

  “No, and it’s too messy anyway,” said Jessie. “I have a better idea.” She had gathered things from the pantry—Parmesan cheese, herbs, spices, salt. She poured a little of each into a plastic bag, then shook the bag. She sprinkled the mixture over the popcorn. Everyone tasted it.

  “Delicious!” said Uncle Flick. The others agreed.

  “Now all we have to do is make a lot more!” said Jessie.

  Violet found an old coffee can and made holes in the plastic lid to make a big shaker for the popcorn seasoning.

  While Joey and Henry worked at the stove popping popcorn, Violet shook seasoning mixture over the popcorn while Jessie scooped it into small paper bags. Then Grandfather and Benny loaded the golf cart with the bags and drove them to the theater.

  Uncle Flick lined them up on the counter of the snack bar to sell. He put up a sign that Violet made. It said:

  No snack bar service tonight.

  We are sorry!

  But please enjoy fresh cheese popcorn!

  Only 75 cents a bag.

  By now the drive-in theater had opened for the evening. The customers who came to the snack bar were surprised to see the sign, but they were glad to have popcorn.

  “It’s delicious,” said one woman. “And such a good price.”

  The children and Joey worked in the kitchen of the Fletcher house for another hour, popping as much popcorn as they could. When there was one last big batch in the tub, they took it over to the snack bar, where it would be ready to be scooped into bags. And Benny had found something even better than bags.

  “Wow,” he said, holding up two of the plastic buckets that said GET SPEEDY DEALS AT BRINKER’S AUTO on them. “These are perfect for popcorn!”

  “You’re right, Benny,” said Jessie. She spotted Dan Brinker walking by the snack bar. She grabbed one of the buckets and ran after him. “Mr. Brinker! Do you have any more of these buckets that we can use for serving popcorn?”

  “Sure,” said Dan. “I’ve got plenty more! I’ll dash across the street and bring them over in a jiffy!” He winked and hurried off.

  “Thanks!” Jessie called. She turned around and went back inside the snack bar. She helped her sister and brothers serve popcorn while Joey rang up customers.

  Uncle Flick grinned. “You really saved the day, kids,” he said.

  “We’re glad we could help,” said Violet.

  “Maybe I can help, too,” said a voice from the doorway of the snack bar. It was Mr. Duke. He was carrying a cooler and a bag of ice. “I … I heard what happened. And I brought over some soda from my stand.”

  Uncle Flick scratched his head. “Why, thank you, Duke. But you know, I’m letting folks bring in food from your place tonight. You didn’t have to do this.”

  “I know,” Mr. Duke said. “But I’m sorry about last night, too. I lost my temper. And I know that you didn’t break my sign.” He lugged the cooler and ice to the snack bar counter.

  “Yes,” said Uncle Flick. “Whoever’s playing tricks around here is playing them on both of us.”

  As the Aldens scooped bags of popcorn, Mr. Duke and Uncle Flick opened sodas and filled cups with ice. The children listened as the two men talked for the first time in a long time.

  “Is it true you might sell the theater, Flick?” Mr. Duke asked, as he got ready to leave.

  “Yes it is,” Uncle Flick replied. “But I’m going to make sure it doesn’t close down.”

  “That’s good to hear,” said Mr. Duke. “Because I can’t imagine life without the Diamond Drive-in. I don’t know what would happen to my hot dog stand if the theater wasn’t around.” He chuckled. “Though it’s not going to be as much fun without you around to argue with.”

  Uncle Flick laughed, too.

  Henry whispered to Jessie, “We’re not any closer to solving the mystery,” he said. “But at least we’ve helped fix a friendship.”

  CHAPTER 6

  What Everyone Wants

  A half hour later, the popcorn the Aldens made was still selling well. So well, in fact, that they were running out of containers to serve it in. Violet looked at the crowd in the snack bar and began to worry.

  “Shouldn’t Dan Brinker be here by now, Jessie? You said he was bringing more buckets for us to use,” she said.

  Jessie looked at her watch. “I guess something came up at his store,” she said. “I’ll go to Duke’s Dogs and see if I can get some spare bags.” She was sure that Mr. Duke would be helpful, now that he and Uncle Flick were friendly again. She hurried out the door and ran across the lot.

  Not too long after she left, Uncle Flick turned to the other children. “Why don’t you get a soda, kids? Joey and I can take it from here. You’ve done plenty.”

  Henry, Violet, and Benny were glad to have a break. They walked out to the theater lot with their sodas. There was a small playground at the front of the theater near the screen, and they sat on the swings and watched the sun set.

  “Why does everyone have to wait until dark to watch the movie?” Benny asked. “At home we don’t need to turn out the lights to watch TV”

  “Watching a movie in a theater isn’t the same as TV,” Henry explained. “The projector throws flickering light on a screen. The darkness makes this easier to see. But if the sun was out—or if the lights were on—it would be much harder to see the movie.”

  Violet was thinking about this. “That’s sort of like the ghost!” she said. “Remember how we couldn’t see it when Uncle Flick turned on the lights out here in the theater?”

  “You’re right,” said Henry. “Maybe this ghost is just … made of light somehow. We’ll have to get closer next time we see it.”

  “And we won’t turn on the lights and scare it away!” said Benny.

  Meanwhile, Jessie was at Duke’s Dogs, hoping Mr. Duke had some spare bags that they could use for popcorn.

  “Of course I’ve got extra bags,” Mr. Duke told her. “Let me get them.”

  Jessie looked around the hot dog stand while she waited. There were plenty of customers eating at picnic tables. One of them looked familiar. It was Dan Brinker. He had three empty hot dog wrappers and a half-eaten tray of fries in front of him. He was reading a magazine. It looked like he’d been sitting and eating for a long time. Why hadn’t he brought over the buckets like he’d said he would?

  Maybe he forgot, Jessie thought. Or maybe he made a mistake and didn’t have any after all. She wondered if she should ask him. But then Dan had started to talk to a young woman in a Duke’s Dogs uniform. He laughed and joked with her as she picked up the wrappers from his table. Just then, Mr. Duke brought out a bundle of paper bags for Jessie.

  “Thank you, Mr. Duke,” she told him.

  As she hurried out she overheard just a little bit of Dan Brinker’s conversation with the young woman. “If you ask me,” he was saying, “I think that Flick is up to no good.”

  After all the popcorn-making, the Alden children were tired. They went back to the Fletcher house. Grandfather brought them sandwiches on the porch, and they sat on the steps with Watch. They all ate and looked out over the theater filled with cars. Tonight, the first movie was Pirate Spy. They could see it on the giant screen in the distance.

  “It almost doesn’t matter that we can’t hear the movie from here,” Henry said. “We’ve seen it twice already!”

  “And we know the story,” said Violet. “I wish we could say the same for this mystery. So many things are happening! I’m sure it all fits tog
ether somehow—but how?”

  Jessie nodded. “I know what you mean. It’s like when we watched this movie for the first time,” she said, pointing towards the screen. “We didn’t know why the pirate captain was acting so strangely. We didn’t know it was because he wanted to steal the diamond ring for himself.”

  “But then, the second time we saw the movie, we knew he never took off his boots for a reason,” said Henry. “He’d hidden the ring there! It made sense once we knew what he wanted.”

  Jessie had an idea just then. She took out her notebook and opened it to a new page.

  “What does everyone want?” she asked. “Everyone involved in this mystery, that is. Maybe if we thought about that, it would help.”

  “I think you’re right, Jessie,” said Henry.

  So Jessie wrote WHAT EVERYONE WANTS at the top of the page.

  “Let’s start with Amy,” she said.

  “She seems worried about the theater. She wants … to keep her job, I guess,” said Violet. “And she wants us to stay away from that shed.”

  Benny wanted very much to say something about the shed. Should he? he wondered. But he took another big bite of sandwich instead.

  “What about Joey?” asked Violet.

  “I think Joey wants to help Uncle Flick,” Henry said. “Even if Uncle Flick doesn’t think so.”

  Jessie wrote that down, too. She bit her pencil as she thought. “What if Joey wants to make trouble for Mr. Duke? Maybe he thinks that would help Uncle Flick,” she said.

  “I guess that’s possible,” said Henry. “But we don’t know for sure. So write it down with a question mark.”

  So Jessie did. Next she wrote DAN BRINKER on the page. “What does he want?”

  “To sell cars!” Benny said. “And put ads up all over town!”

  Violet giggled. “He wants ‘speedy deals!’” she said.

  “And he wants to run the theater, too,” Henry added.

  Jessie wrote it all down. Soon she had a list:

  WHAT EVERYONE WANTS

  AMY—Wants to keep her job.

  Wants us to stay away from shed.

  JOEY—Wants to help Uncle Flick.

  Wants to make trouble for Mr. Duke???

  DAN BRINKER—Wants to sell cars.

  Wants “speedy deals.”

  Wants to put ads all over town.

  Wants to run the theater.

  MR. DUKE: Wants to stay in business.

  Wants theater to stay open, too.

  UNCLE FLICK: Wants to sell the theater.

  “Dan Brinker wants to do lots of things,” Violet said, looking at the list.

  “Dan Brinker says lots of things, too,” Jessie said. She told her sister and brothers what she’d overheard at Duke’s Dogs. “He said he thought Uncle Flick was up to no good.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Henry. “He told us the same thing about Mr. Duke last night, remember? So whose side is he on?”

  “I would think he’d have to be on both their sides,” said Violet. “He wants to buy the theater from Uncle Flick. And he needs to get along with Mr. Duke next door.”

  “Well, maybe he didn’t really mean what he said,” Jessie said. “Maybe he says things that he thinks other people want to hear. He seems very good at that.”

  “But he’s not good at watching movies!” Benny said suddenly. The other children turned and looked at him. What on Earth did he mean?

  Benny pointed to the movie screen. It showed the scene in Pirate Spy when the captain found the buried treasure chest. The captain grinned as he dug it out of the sand.

  “Remember when I told Dan Brinker that this was my favorite scene?” Benny asked. “Then he said he liked it too. He said he liked when the captain opened up the chest and found the gold! But that’s not what really happened in the movie. Look!”

  The children watched the movie as the captain opened the treasure chest. His smile vanished. The chest was empty!

  “That’s right!” Henry exclaimed. “We all thought there would be gold in the chest—but there wasn’t! Dan must have forgotten about that part of the movie.”

  “But it’s a really important part of the movie,” said Jessie. “It changes the whole story. And Dan Brinker has seen the movie more than once—just like us!”

  “Maybe he didn’t really watch it closely,” said Violet. “Maybe he was busy doing something else.”

  Jessie wrote that down in her notebook, too. Then she looked at the list again. “Now we know what everyone wants, but we still don’t know what’s going on! Or what this has to do with the ghost!”

  “Maybe it’ll all make sense later,” said Henry. “And as for the ghost, I think we should go look for it tonight.”

  CHAPTER 7

  To Catch a Ghost

  It was late when the second movie ended and the last of the cars had left the drive-in theater. Uncle Flick had returned to the house, and all seemed quiet outside.

  Watch stood at the door to the porch. He wanted to go for one last walk before bedtime.

  “We’ll take him,” Jessie told Grandfather. The children put on their shoes and found their flashlights. Jessie picked up Watch’s leash. Then they walked across the lawn of the Fletcher house toward the theater. Everything was dark—except for the neon sign that read DUKE’S DOGS. It shone brightly in the distance.

  “Look, Mr. Duke’s sign is fixed!” said Violet. “We were so busy tonight we didn’t even notice.”

  The children and Watch walked towards the sign to get a closer look. When they had gotten as close as they could, they were behind the movie screen. They were close enough to the road to hear cars going by. Though it was night, the Aldens didn’t need their flashlights, because the pink and orange glow of the big neon sign was so bright. It lit up the back of the screen.

  “Wow,” said Jessie. “The other day I thought that someone was hiding something back here. But it’s too bright to hide anything! You can see almost everything from the road.”

  “But wait,” Violet said. “What if that’s why the sign was broken last night?”

  Henry thought about this. “That’s possible. All along we’ve thought someone broke the sign to make Mr. Duke angry. But maybe somebody wanted it to be dark back here.”

  “But why?” Jessie said. “There’s nothing here.” She looked on the ground by the screen. Nothing.

  Violet wasn’t looking at the ground. She was looking up and she saw something along the top of the screen. Had that always been there? she wondered. It was high up and hard to see. She wanted to look closer. But then Benny made her forget what she was doing.

  “Ghost!” he said, in a very loud whisper. “Ghost!” Watch started barking, too.

  The children turned and saw the ghostly figure. It walked along a fence in the theater lot. The children hurried out to see it better. But while Jessie, Violet, and Benny raced towards the ghost, Henry did not. He turned and ran toward the projection booth.

  “Hey!” he called. The others stopped and watched him as he ran up the steps of the booth and threw open the door.

  “Henry, what are you doing?” Violet yelled.

  Amy and Joey were in the booth. The film projector was on. Amy gasped and then reached over to turn it off. As soon as she did, the ghost disappeared.

  “I knew it!” said Henry. The other children had run up to join him. “I knew the ghost had to be a movie of some kind.”

  Jessie glared at Amy and Joey. “Why were you doing that? Why were you trying to make the theater seem haunted?” she said.

  “I know why!” Benny said. But he wasn’t able to finish. Just then, Uncle Flick drove up in his golf cart with Grandfather.

  “What’s all this about?” he said to Amy and Joey. “I heard voices out here, and I saw this ‘ghost’ of yours. What are you two up to?” he was very angry.

  “We can explain,” said Joey.

  “You’ll do no such thing!” growled Uncle Flick. “I’ve had it! You’re done h
ere! You’re—”

  “Wait!” Benny yelled. He turned to Joey and Amy. “Tell him!” he said. “Tell Uncle Flick about the haunted house!”

  “What?” said Jessie.

  “How did you know?” said Amy.

  “Haunted house?!” said Uncle Flick. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll show you!” said Benny. “Follow me!”

  Benny led them all to the storage shed, where Amy had told the children not to go. Benny pulled open the door.

  “Turn on the light!” he said to Joey.

  Joey did. And the children couldn’t believe what was inside.

  “Yikes! A huge spider!” Violet said. Then she laughed.

  “Oh my gosh, look at that bat!” Jessie exclaimed. And she laughed, too.

  “Wow, that mummy is amazing!” said Benny.

  The shed was filled with all kinds of haunted house things—fake skeletons, cobwebs, and plastic bats hanging from the ceiling. There were spooky gravestones made from painted wood, and even a casket with a lid that lifted to show a mummy inside.

  “This stuff is even better than the haunted house they have every year at the Greenfield Town Hall!” Henry said.

  Amy grinned. “We’ve been working on it for two months,” she said.

  “It’s very impressive,” said Grandfather. “But what’s it all for? And why were you keeping it secret?”

  Joey pushed the hair out of his eyes. He turned to Uncle Flick. “Well, see, Amy and I had this idea to do a special event here at the theater this fall. We would call it ‘Haunted House Days’ and open the theater during the day.”

  “And at night we would show monster movies. And have hayrides,” said Amy.

  “And we’d decorate the whole theater with all this spooky stuff and special effects. But …” said Joey.

  “Go on,” said Uncle Flick.

  “We were afraid that you wouldn’t want to do it. We were worried you’d think it was too much work. So we decided to do it all by ourselves and surprise you,” Joey said.

  “During the day, we worked on making things here in the shed,” said Amy “And at night, we tested out the ‘ghost’ special effect. I’m a film student at college, so I made a short movie of Joey walking around draped in a sheet. Then we projected it against the fence so that it looked like a ghost.”