This is Betty, creepiest of creepy dolls, currently residing at 23 Broken Lane, Plymouth.

Her button eyes are dead dull black. Her white linen "skin" stands out stark and white even in a twilight room. Her tangle of "hair" is a curious coarse yarn that is prone to slow hygroscopic movement. Her mouth is a patch of red velveteen cut in the most mirthless of "smiles". Her patchwork dress might be thought bright and gay, but the colors clash subtly, and if you look long at it you might fancy you see the hint of a pattern that is somehow intriguing yet troubling. The way Betty lies when you drop her, the way she slumps and shifts when you are not looking directly at her, the odd voice-like squeak of her stuffing if you press her; every last thing about Betty is Wrong. She does not need to set inexplicable fires in orphanages, or whisper terrible commands in the ears of sleeping children, or any such larks; she just needs to be. Her mere existence is horror in perfection.

And until this morning she prided herself on her magnificent appalling uniqueness. This morning she discovered that she is in fact one of a limited-edition from House of Dolls, released for Halloween 2007. (Her memory of her long-term past was always somewhat vague.)

When the world is wrong, correct it. A little supernatural hacking into the House of Dolls database and she knows the locations of her 764 siblings. Her quest to restore her lost uniqueness begins tonight. 23 Broken Lane is well supplied with kitchen knives, matches and power tools so it might seem odd that she would arm herself only with a battery egg-whisk, but Betty has the Old Serpent's ingenuity and knows how she will use the implement. She is heading for the exit of the cat-flap. (The family cat, a creature of evil itself, has an understanding with her and so lives.) But as she approaches, something that is not the cat comes through it.

Betty is not surprised. She knew that her counterfeit doppelgangers would have the same thoughts and desires as she herself, and she is prepared for the long knockout death-tournament ahead of her. The false Betty stands in the moonlight on the kitchen floor, its bottle-opener held ready for terrible action. And an observer, if such there could have been, might have fancied that the velveteen mouths of the combatants have shifted slightly, that those smiles now hold some hint of true joy.

With a fury that is maybe a kind of love. Betty meets Betty in duel.