Thanks a lot for playing my game!
It was so painful to see you struggling like that. Have you never found any keys? When you find a key there is a symbol written or drawn on a keychain of the door that it can unlock. After you unlock the door with a key there will be the flickering painting. Maybe you got unlucky because doors are randomly chosen to be locked and key positions are random too.
If you are interested you can watch masstortorogamer’s video, he collected everything and completed the game.
The creature actually doesn’t know your exact position, it knows your approximate position but I can see why you can get that feeling. Tried to balance it in a way that would make player anxious.