He laughs and says, "Y'know, in terms of weird, this place isn't much worse than the city I came from."

Hawkins hadn't always been weird. For a long time it had been as normal as any small town could get, he figures, but that had changed in recent years. Now it had monsters and underground upside-down mirror image worlds with creeping vines and dark shadows. It had cracks between worlds and creatures that looked like someone had combined a dog and a flower with teeth. Girls with super powers, a lab that fed people LSD and kidnapped their psychic children. And now it apparently had Russians.

Hawkins had turned into a goddamn weird place.