THE THIRD MAN
The following is a true story. High up in the Canadian Rockies, where the icy gale freezes the saliva coating your tongue into a dewy frost, two climbers scale the sheer, icy face of the cliff. Bundled in their thick dermals, tinted goggles shielding their eyes, they hardly see the chunk of ice hurtling towards them. The mountaineer’s cannonball; a fatal omen.
Whitmire, the climber in front, drives his ice axe into the cliff and calls out to Sevigny, his fellow climber below. The chunk of ice slices through the air with a lethal ferocity. They clench, muscles tightening like the ropes bearing their weight. Their hairs stand on end as the chunk narrowly whistles past their heads and into the dizzying void of air beneath them. Relief washes over them.
That is, until the ice axes rattle in their hands. The chunk of ice is an emissary for the coming army: the great rush of snow and ice charging like cavalry down the mountain. An avalanche. There would be no dodging this. The climbers close their eyes and mutter prayers as the deafening roar of thousands of pounds of snow blot out their hearing, and quickly thereafter, vision. The white wave consumes them. It rips them away from the cliff and towards the ground at a terrifying pace.
Two-thousand feet they descend. Like dolls in the wash, they tumble and turn, movement sacrificed to the violent will of nature. Suspended in a savage limbo, their limbs bend in awkward directions; rocks and icicles pierce their skin; thundering blows from all directions batter the air out of their lungs. After what seems an eternity, the cruel ride grinds to a stop.
Sevigny opens his eyes. The tin-penny taste of blood fills his mouth. He runs his tongue over his teeth – jagged like shattered glass. He drags his arm out from underneath his torso. It hangs limp, bones bent in odd directions, his radius bulging against his skin. He tries to push himself into a sitting position and pain, like white-hot lightning, shoots through his body. Several organs have ruptured, tissue lining ripped like paper, blood pooling in the spaces between the muscle and bone. Sevigny’s back and ribs are broken.
Whitmire is a ragged, limp pile leaking sanguine, lying dead in the snow.
Sevigny’s will is broken. He lies beside Whitemire, resigned to die, but as he drifts into eternal sleep, he hears a voice.
“You can’t give up. You have to try.”
Sevigny opens his eyes and bats the powder from his lashes. Who spoke to him just now? He couldn’t see anyone, but felt someone, something, some physical presence, as real as the steaming puffs of air from his lungs, nearby.
“You can’t die here. You have to get up. Help is close by.”
Sevigny doesn’t know whether the presence is a ghost, an angel, or a hallucination, but the invisible guardian keeps encouraging him. He rolls onto his stomach and rises to his hands and knees. He crawls. Torment wracks his body. Fear clouds his mind. But the presence is insistent. It stands just over his shoulder, offering advice and support as he inches through the unforgiving terrain of the Canadian Rockies.
“Focus on the blood at the tip of your nose. It is the arrow home. Just focus on that one point and don’t stop moving.”
In a dim haze – hardly lucid and dying of attrition to weather and wounds – Sevigny endures. The only driving thought is of survival. He crawls, trudges, and drags his broken body through the treacherous cold, guided only by the warm hope offered by the unseen entity at his side. After what feels like days, he crests a hill and sees base camp. Small figures in bright puffer coats ski along the powder, oblivious to the dying man only several hundred feet away. Mustering the last of his strength, Sevigny yells in a coarse, constrained grunt, “Help! Help me!”
The colorful figures turn their heads towards Sevigny and see him outlined against the sky. They approach to help, and as they do, the presence departs, having fulfilled its purpose. Sevigny is filled with momentary loneliness, then gratitude. The presence leaves neither footsteps nor goodbye.
Only a memory.
Many who have been to the brink of death and returned – explorers caught in the wilderness, soldiers bleeding on the battlefield, crash victims emerging from twisted metal – share a curious experience. While in the throes of death, a spectral companion comes to their aid. There are times it comes as a familiar, comforting face – a family member or friend. Other times, it is a complete stranger.
Among those who have seen the “Third Man,” a term coined by TS Eliot, are a NASA astronaut, Charles Lindbergh, and Ron DiFrancesco, a man working on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center’s second tower on 9/11. After the plane hit the building, fire and smoke engulfed the room. Blinded by smoke and gasping for air, DiFrancesco began to lose consciousness. That’s when a voice called out to him. It guided him through the maze of death and destruction – through a hellish descent of rubble and flames. He was the last person to escape the second tower before it fell.
One of the earliest reports of the Third Man – at least within European culture, for it has existed in all other cultures since their conception – comes from explorer Ernest Shackleton. In 1914, an ill-fated Antarctic expedition left him and his crew stranded in ice for two years. During the final leg of the journey, his ship survived a hurricane and made landfall on South Georgia island. The only people stationed on the rugged island were on the opposite side. Shackleton and two others marched 36 hours through uncharted glaciers and mountain passes, facing extreme weather, terrain, dehydration, and starvation. In his book, he wrote that “it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.” However, after the traumatic journey was over and the crew returned safely home, Shackleton was hesitant to open up about this supernatural experience. That is, until the two other men he traveled with came to him and asked him about the fourth man in their party. At that point, Shackleton knew they had been visited by a presence that aided them in their arduous journey.
In these harrowing moments, the veil between mortal and metaphysical thins. From the fabric, an ethereal force emerges. Is it a guardian angel, descended from the heavens to offer divine aid? Is it a ghost – an echo of a life past, evoked back into the realm of the living to save another? Is it a hallucination born from the tormented mind that desperately clings to life? Or is it even something else: an ancient force that dwells in our collective consciousness?
The answer eludes us. Or rather, it is perhaps whatever brings the most comfort. After all, that seems to be the purpose of the Third Man: reassurance. Rather than try to explain it, the presence can be best appreciated through its unquantifiable quality. Our rational, scientific minds want to root out a cause or explanation. We want to explain it as our psyche hallucinating a reason to carry on when Death is knocking, or at the very least, a figure of solace so that we may not pass on alone. Our soul wants to believe it is the universe or Something Greater conjuring a spiritual or celestial entity to our side. That, in the infinite wisdom of things beyond ourselves, we are rewarded for our faith or have been visited by a miracle or agent of fate. Though I am not religious, the sentiment may be explained by a Bible passage, Psalm 23:4:
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
However, I would encourage us to embrace the mystery. There is more truth to be found in accepting the cosmic unknown rather than explaining it. To rationalize it is to rob it of its power. And should we ever be so unfortunate to gamble with Death, it's best that we believe the potency and poetry of the Third Man.
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?
TS Eliot
