Evelyn Dove Coleman: The Howling Man

In a story by Alfred Hitchcock, there came up a bitter thunderstorm. A driver's car stalled so he knocked on the door of a Monastery to seek shelter. He was allowed in out of the harsh rain but he was warned to leave as soon as the storm abated.

The driver was also warned to never go down into the basement, no matter what he heard. As things go, as soon as the driver heard wailing coming from the basement, his curiosity took over. He sneaked down there to see what all the moaning and groaning was about. It appeared that the monks who lived there were holding someone captive in a cage.

The wailing man in the cage explained that he, too, had been a traveling stranger seeking shelter when the monks who lived there locked him up. He accused the monks of mistreating him and refusing to set him free. He pleaded with the driver to open the locked door to his cage.

Beguiled, the driver turned the large key protruding from the cage door.  Whoosh!  In a flash, the devil ran past him to freely roam around creating havoc in people's lives. You see, the monks had actually held the howling man to save an unsuspecting humanity. What the driver hadn't noticed was that the large key could have easily been reached from inside the bars of the cage. It was the key-of-truth so the deceptive howling man could not touch it.