I agree about the rocks. They're the perhaps somewhat artificially factored difficulty that's supposed to occur in such places. However, if there is just a single rock and not a row of them, it should still be manageable. Basically, if you can hear multiple enemies behind the rocks and they haven't reached or started chasing you yet, try to lure them to you one by one by walking as close to the rocks as possible very, very slowly. That way, there's a great chance that the enemy who is in the lead of the group will notice you first and chase after you alone, without the rest of them. If you hear that is the case, just take a few jumps back away from the rocks, let the enemy get closer, and bye bye. :-)
That's the reason why I usually find it better to walk very slowly and cautiously, listening very hard to what's far ahead of me all the time, through these parts of a level that I haven't explored yet whenever I'm low on health or am just very concerned about losing a life in a particular spot. On the other hand, there are also often times when I don't have to care about that very much and it could on the contrary be advantageous to run as far as possible as quickly as possible, to get as many creatures as I can chasing me at once, if I am just interested in reaching the next checkpoint before dying, or something like that. By the time you reach that checkpoint and die in the process, there's a great chance you'll have at least some of the currently present enemies killed, and when you respawn at the checkpoint, they'l be ahead of you in most cases, not behind, so you'll find yourself in a much better position strategically when starting over with the next life.
Lukas
I won't be using this account any more or participating in the forum activity through other childish means like creating an alternate account. I've asked for the account to be removed but I'm not sure if that's actually technically possible here. Just writing this for people to know that I won't be replying, posting new topics or checking private messages until the account is potentially removed.