Hey, thank you for playing!
Yes, skeletons - that is the relation to the strangeness theme! Korolev lost most of his teeth then and I thought - maybe he was thinking he was going to die (thousands of people did die there)... How can such a pessimistic outlook be represented? Maybe visually by presenting all the miners as dead men walking, just a matter of time, just another brick in the wall (or foundation for the road as it were in Kalyma).
Noted about the audio.
If you reached the skeletons then you must have reached the second level which has the core loop of the game. Because the transition is automatic in a few moments. This is also on the Itch page walkthrough section. Did you reach it?