The Abandoned Mansion

Imaginary Authors The Abandoned Mansion smells like a house nobody has walked into for years. Dry cedar, oakmoss and the pages of old paperbacks, with a quince somewhere among them, the kind left in a cupboard to scent a room. Autumn here is cold and damp, with none of the baking and cinnamon. The novel behind the perfume follows Calvin and Millie, two twenty-somethings with no plan, hiking in the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York when they walk into an empty manor. They spend the whole afternoon there among stacks of worn paperbacks and decide to see the winter out in it. By spring they are sharing the house with wildlife, and Millie knows she is pregnant. Four more years pass before anyone comes to put them out, and they will not go easily. Imaginary Authors calls the place tattered opulence, and the perfume carries exactly that: fine wood that has lost its shine, and books that have taken on the damp. A house that is nobody’s home and still keeps somebody warm.

Notes: cedar, quince, petitgrain, pimento berry, oakmoss, ambreine, paperbacks