Mexican Gothic

The truth behind High Place turns out to be far stranger than simple murder: patriarch Howard Doyle discovered decades earlier a strain of sentient, symbiotic fungus that has kept him alive for centuries. The Doyles have inbred for generations to preserve compatibility with the fungus, which infuses the walls of the house itself, creating a psychic residue the family calls "the gloom." The gloom stores memories, can compel and drug the people who breathe its spores, and — crucially — allows Howard to transfer his consciousness into other bodies when his current one wears out. Noemí learns that Howard's original wife, Agnes, was sacrificed long ago to seed the fungus, and that the family's wealth and survival have always been built on exploitation, violence, and the suppression of the women brought into the family.

Because generations of inbreeding have left the family's bloodline weak, the Doyles need fresh, compatible genetic material, and Noemí's biology proves ideal. Howard's plan is to marry her to his gentle, put-upon grandson Francis, and then, after the wedding, to abandon his own failing body and possess Francis's — using Noemí as an unwitting vessel for the family's continuation. Francis, who has fallen for Noemí and is horrified by his family's plans, ultimately turns against them. He secretly obtains the same medicine Catalina had been seeking earlier — a substance that interferes with the fungus's hold — and uses it to help free Noemí and Catalina.

The three of them flee High Place together, and in the process set fire to Agnes's remains, which have been kept as the literal, physical seed of the family's power. The fire spreads, destroying the fungus's stronghold and the house along with it, and presumably killing Virgil, Howard, and Florence in the blaze, ending the Doyle line's unnatural existence.

Francis, who was bonded to the fungus through years of exposure and heredity, is badly weakened by the destruction of the mycelium network but survives and recovers. In the aftermath he confesses a lingering fear: that the fire might not have been enough to kill every trace of the spores, and that he might still carry the family's curse within him, wondering aloud whether he should end his own life to be certain it's truly over. Noemí, who shares his unease but refuses to let fear rule either of them, tells him that whatever remains of the horror, they will face it together — and the novel closes on that note of tentative, hard-won solidarity between the two survivors rather than a fully clean resolution.