Mexican Gothic

Francis gives Noemí a bit of the tincture the next morning and identifies the food that is not contaminated with the fungus. That night Noemí has an acrimonious meeting with Virgil. Virgil asks Noemí to go along with their plan for her, but Noemí criticizes his actions, pointing out that he treated the local mine workers as objects instead of people. Virgil tells her that this is the way of nature—the strong dominating the weak—and calls her a pretty “novelty,” making it clear that he sees her as a thing, an object to be consumed. The Doyles are racists, but they need Noemí’s genetic makeup to invigorate a line of pure Doyle blood ruined by inbreeding.

They also need money since the changes wrought by the Mexican Revolution bankrupted them. Noemí throws all this talk of scientific principles of breeding back in Virgil’s face: The Doyles are murderers, plain and simple. Virgil uses her awareness of their violent natures to force her to write a letter that is convincing enough to warn her father off. The wedding is scheduled for that night.

Virgil runs his hands over Noemí’s body, and the fungus exerts its will by making Noemí feel desire in response. Francis interrupts this assault, but Virgil warns Francis that if Noemí refuses to keep quiet and mind her place, she can expect more abuse. Afterward, Noemí tries to explain to Francis what happens to her when Virgil touches her. She feels a sense of “violence and carnality, but also a heady delight” that is the darkest expression of Noemí’s “greedy, most impulsive self” (241). Although Francis promises to protect her, Noemí realizes he cannot protect her from the part of Virgil’s effect that lies within herself. He promises to give her his shaving razor, a gesture that she finds touching and chivalrous.

Francis tells her more about himself and the Doyles, including his sense of resignation when he saw his father succumb to Doyles. The Doyles left the Old World and came to the new one because they exhausted their European silver mines. In Mexico they were able to hide their supernatural doings and exploit their workers to the point of death, all out in the open just like all the other colonizers.

Having revealed their secrets, the Doyles now allow Noemí to visit Catalina freely. Florence oversees alterations to the yellowed but seemingly intact dress the Doyle brides have used for years and expresses her displeasure that Howard is dirtying the pure Doyle blood with Noemí’s degenerate Mexican and Indigenous blood.

After the fitting, Francis brings her a meal and his razor, which is hidden on the tray. Francis explains that the house, Howard, and the fungus are so connected that it has taken years for the house and fungus to heal enough for Howard to risk seizure of a new body. This connection makes it impossible for Francis to escape without bringing Noemí’s escape to the gloom’s attention. Noemí rejects this idea but suspects Francis is correct.

Afterward, Noemí conjures a dream with Ruth in it. During the conversation with Ruth, Noemí learns that Ruth’s use of the diary page to write down her plans allowed her some cover for her plan to escape. Noemí suspects that if she empties her mind of her thoughts and simply follows a plan she has written down on a piece of paper as if it were a program, she might be able to escape.

That night Noemí, Francis, Virgil, and Florence go to Howard’s room, where Howard presides over a brief ceremony that involves ingestion of the fungus and wine. Afterward, Florence and Virgil lead the couple back to Noemí’s room for wedding-night sex, but Noemí swoons and wakes to find Virgil there. He reveals he let Francis’s plot to free Noemí move forward (he has the tincture in his pocket). Virgil then sexually assaults Noemí, who finds that the gloom forces her to experience waves of lust despite this sexual violence.

The disgusting vision of mold creeping toward the bed snaps Noemí out of this vision. She knocks Howard out and retrieves the razor and tincture, which she gulps down. It sickens her, and she has to inflict pain on herself—biting her own hand—to gain control over herself. Although she is tempted to kill Virgil, she chooses to look for Catalina instead.

Noemí kills Mary, who attempts to block Noemí’s rescue of Catalina; Francis arrives just in time to aid Noemí. Catalina is drugged and of little help. Florence recaptures them using a gun, however, and herds them to Howard’s room, where Cummins is preparing the nearly dead man for transmigration to a new body. To Noemí’s shock, it is Francis who is to be the host, not Virgil. Florence seems unmoved by the idea that her own son will be extinguished by the Doyles’ ritual, but she coldly explains to Noemí that she sees Francis as just another body. This attitude is the same one that allowed the Doyles to consume the lives of the miners who extracted their silver and the women who bore their children and the fungus.

The rite begins with all the Doyles—even Francis—reciting unintelligible words and a repeated demand that Noemí “renounce” herself. Catalina manages to interrupt the transmigration rite by repeatedly stabbing Howard, whose convulsions are echoed by the others in the room.

Florence attempts to kill Noemí with the gun to put a stop to this attack, but Francis makes his choice: He wrests the gun from Florence and kills her.

Howard is not quite dead yet and uses the power of the gloom to attempt to compel Francis to kill himself, just as (it turns out) he did with Ruth. Noemí shoots Howard point-blank and refuses to look back as he dies on the bed.

The escapees attempt to leave the house via the Doyle family’s crypt, which should in turn allow them to exit via the cemetery above. The crypt is so overrun with glowing mushrooms that its contents are visible. In front of them is a floor with the usual snake motif and a stone dais. On the dais is a silver cup and box, and inside the box is a jeweled knife Noemí recognizes from her dreams of the Doyle rites.

Behind these items is a yellow drape hanging from the wall, and from behind that comes the buzzing Noemí always hears when she is caught in the gloom. The buzzing resolves to the point that Noemí realizes it is a voice that belongs to Agnes, whose mind is the necessary matrix for the gloom. Howard will survive so long as the gloom does.

Their situation becomes perilous when Virgil shows up to reveal that the entire escape, even the assault on Howard, occurred because he allowed it to happen to seize control of the gloom from Howard. Noemí has a key moment of insight: The buzzing and the gloom are “the manifestation of all the suffering that had been inflicted on” (289) Agnes.

Noemí acts on impulse and commands Agnes to open her eyes, to wake up, on the off chance that doing so will disperse the gloom. For good measure, she lights Agnes’s remains on fire using a lamp. Catalina and Noemí drag Francis up to the cemetery, where they find it is night and the grounds are cloaked in mist. Francis points them to the gate, while behind them the house (and Howard in it) goes up in flames.

They escape down the mountain, and two farmers take them to El Triunfo, where Dr. Caramillo takes them in. They tell the doctor a made-up tale about Virgil attempting to kill them all in much the same way Ruth slaughtered her family before, but he is a little skeptical. Two days later, Catalina and Noemí discuss what will happen now: Mr. Taboada is on his way with a lawyer and a magistrate. Noemí fully expects that the Taboada name and money will be enough to smooth over their possible legal predicament. Francis is in a deep sleep from which he seems unable to wake. Catalina goes to bed and encourages Noemí to do the same, but Noemí is afraid to sleep. She prays to San Judas Tadeo, the patron saint of lost causes and the desperate.

Noemí wakes her sleeping prince, and she spins him fairytale stories about what will happen now: They will go to live in Mexico City as happily ever after as the princes and princesses of the fairytales from Noemí’s childhood. Francis is fearful even after Noemí tells him the fungus and High Place are completely destroyed—mushrooms and fungi have been known to bloom even more vigorously after a burn—but he listens when she tells him everything will be fine.

Francis thinks perhaps he should destroy himself since the thing that animates the fungus lives in Doyle blood, but Noemí forbids him to do so. She reassures him despite her own fear that one day she will see the golden mark of the fungus in her eyes or his. She decides to accept this possibility—life is always uncertain, after all. They are together and in love, which will have to be enough.