Noemí's father shows her Catalina's letter claiming High Place is haunted and promises university enrollment in exchange for a discreet visit.

Noemí arrives at High Place and is met coldly by Florence, who immediately issues strict rules about smoking, wandering, and conversation.

Howard makes racist eugenicist comments about Noemí's darker skin at dinner, and Noemí sharply counters by citing her Indigenous ancestry.

Virgil grudgingly agrees to allow a local doctor to provide a second medical opinion on Catalina's health.

Noemí visits Marta Duval, who warns the Doyle house is spiritually cursed and recounts Ruth's shocking massacre of the family.

Noemí experiences a disturbing dream of a golden woman made of mushroom filaments threatening to invade the house and consume her.

Noemí secretly gives Catalina Marta's tincture during a card game, but Catalina overdoses and suffers a violent seizure.

Noemí wakes from a vision of being sexually assaulted in the bath to find herself standing in Virgil's room.

Catalina secretly passes Noemí a page from Ruth's journal hidden inside a book of poetry during a chaperoned visit.

Howard forces a repulsive kiss on Noemí, triggering a vision of the original Doyle ancestor discovering and corrupting the golden mushroom cave.

Francis explains the truth about the gloom: a fungal entity storing Doyle memories and enabling Howard to transmigrate into new bodies.

Virgil intercepts Noemí's escape attempt, forces her to write a misleading letter to her father, and schedules the wedding immediately.

Catalina repeatedly stabs Howard during the transmigration ceremony, sending convulsions through everyone in the room and disrupting the ritual.

Francis shoots Florence with her own gun, and Noemí shoots Howard before setting Agnes's remains on fire to destroy the gloom.

Noemí burns High Place and escapes with Catalina and Francis, then chooses to pursue love with Francis despite the fungus's uncertain future.

Noemí Taboada travels to the decaying Doyle estate to rescue her cousin Catalina, who has written a desperate letter claiming her husband is poisoning her and the house is haunted. Despite cold treatment from the family and increasingly disturbing dreams, Noemí investigates and slowly uncovers the truth about patriarch Howard Doyle. She discovers that Howard is a centuries-old creature sustained by a sentient fungus called the gloom, which controls anyone inside High Place and allows Howard to transmigrate between Doyle bodies. The Doyles plan to force Noemí into their bloodline, but a daring escape attempt leads to Catalina attacking Howard and Noemí destroying both Howard and the gloom. Noemí burns High Place to the ground and flees with Catalina and Francis, choosing love and uncertain freedom over the Doyles' dark legacy.

The core horror plot of Mexican Gothic from beginning to end.

Noemí travels by train to El Triunfo and is given a ride up the mountain road to High Place by Francis.

Noemí's brief five-minute visit with Catalina ends with Catalina withdrawing, apologizing for the letter, and claiming she wrote it during a fever.

Noemí explores the library and finds rotting books, racist anthropology journals, and a highlighted passage that echoes Howard's comments at dinner.

Francis takes Noemí to the Doyle family cemetery, where gravestones all bearing the same date mark a mass worker death.

Noemí drives to El Triunfo and uses charm and the threat of tears to persuade Dr. Camarillo to agree to visit Catalina.

Marta gives Noemí a protective bracelet with a bead designed to guard against the supernatural evil of High Place.

Florence scolds Noemí at dinner for taking the car without permission, smoking in her room, and talking during meals.

Howard summons the family to his room, paws at Noemí's hands and hair, and muses over portraits of his wives Agnes and Alice.

Francis and Noemí bond over mushrooms in the garden; his earnest rejection of her casual flirting leaves both of them flustered.

Dr. Camarillo visits Catalina and witnesses her delusional episode about people living in the walls, then agrees she needs a psychiatrist.

Noemí reads Ruth's journal entry confirming Howard is a monster and concludes the house's supernatural effects must have a real cause.

Sentient-seeming mold shifts across Noemí's bedroom wall while she reads a eugenics book; a cigarette burn jolts her back to reality.

Virgil reveals his first marriage to Cummins's daughter ended because his obligations to Howard and High Place consumed everything else.

Francis gives Noemí a small dose of Marta's tincture and hides a shaving razor inside her meal tray before the wedding.

Local farmers help the escapees reach El Triunfo, where Dr. Camarillo takes them in and they construct a fabricated cover story.

These events trace Noemí's experience of arriving at and gradually uncovering the layers of corruption within High Place. From her first uneasy interactions with the Doyle household to the disturbing discoveries she makes in the library, the cemetery, and the town of El Triunfo, Noemí piece by piece assembles evidence that something is deeply wrong. Secondary characters including Dr. Camarillo, Marta Duval, and Francis play important supporting roles, each providing small acts of help or moments of crucial information. Smaller confrontations with Florence and Virgil reveal the household's rigid control over everyone within its walls, while Noemí's own perceptions grow increasingly unreliable. The pool ends with Noemí and her allies escaping to the safety of El Triunfo and constructing a fragile cover story to protect themselves from the consequences of what happened at High Place.

The atmosphere and details that bring High Place and its inhabitants to life.

Francis reveals he has never traveled farther from High Place than the train station and that the house slowly consumed his father.

Catalina whispers that something lives inside the walls and listens to their conversations, then begs Noemí to fetch medicine from Marta Duval.

Virgil takes Noemí to the overgrown ruins of the estate greenhouse and dismisses her repeated demands for psychiatric care for Catalina.

Noemí dreams of Ruth shooting a rotting man and then herself, and wakes to find herself sleepwalking in the hallway beside Virgil.

Marta tells Noemí that Ruth murdered the family because Howard forbade her from marrying Benito, a local Mexican man she loved.

Francis shocks Noemí by declaring that Ruth should have burned High Place to the ground, then refuses to elaborate further.

Francis tells Noemí that Catalina had taken overdoses of Marta's tincture before, suggesting the recent seizure was part of a series of suicide attempts.

Noemí notices that Agnes's gravestone is labeled 'mother' even though only Alice is said to have borne Howard living children.

Noemí wakes at the foot of the stairs after sleepwalking, having dreamed of Doyles chanting 'death, overcome' over a mushroom birth ritual.

Noemí shares Ruth's journal page with Francis, who urgently switches to Spanish and warns her to leave High Place at once.

Virgil announces at the final dinner that the Doyles plan to reopen the silver mines using funds from Catalina's investment.

Noemí experiences a vision of Doyle family members consuming a newborn child and sacrificing the living mother to nourish the fungus.

Virgil forces Noemí to bathe in front of him and reveals that the bath encounter was a real assault mediated by the gloom.

Florence reveals coldly that Francis, not Virgil, is intended as the host body for Howard's transmigration into a new life.

Noemí realizes the gloom is built from Agnes's trapped consciousness and commands Agnes to open her eyes, dispersing the entity.

This pool highlights the moments of revelation and pivotal choice that drive the plot of Mexican Gothic forward. Beginning with small but unsettling clues — Francis's captivity, Catalina's paranoid whispers, and discrepancies on gravestones — the events build toward darker truths about the Doyles' crimes and the supernatural nature of the gloom. Ruth's ghost and hidden journal become a crucial source of knowledge, pushing Noemí toward decisive action. The shocking revelations about Howard's transmigration plans and Agnes's role at the center of the gloom give Noemí the insight she needs to strike back. The pool closes with Noemí's act of commanding Agnes to open her eyes, the critical breakthrough that breaks the Doyles' hold and allows her to destroy the gloom entirely.