The King of Stations

I only saw the King of Stations once, for what must have been 20 seconds, maybe less.
It was back in the February of 1997, when I was in my first year at Worcester University. It was a February, and I had caught the train down to Crawley to visit a friend. I remember the music I was listening to ('Brave Murder Day' by Katatonia) and the grey weather too; vast banks of undulating cloud that allowed no blue to seep through. Rain against carriage glass. Falling into the fragmented rhythms of train-sleep, slight dreams corresponding to the somehow ancient sound of wheels against metal. I remember changing at Reading Station, smoking a quick cigarette on the platform. I somehow ended up having to change at Redhill. It was either just before or just after Redhill that I saw the King of Stations.
The train had slowed, and was coasting through the Sussex countryside. Out of the window I saw a dilapidated manor. Grey stone. Windows blank as sleep, hidden behind trees and bushes. I was immediately interested, fascinated as I am by old houses lost in obscure countryside.
After the train had passed by the manor, the gardens of the manor were revealed, in a similarily dreaming and decaying state. The garden was sloped, statues and fountains, bare trees lining the sides of the garden. Ragged hedges and deep shadows. Shallow walls splitting the slopes. A path ran down the centre of the gardens, and it was down this path that walked the King of Stations.
The King of Stations was a dog. Not a particularly sinister looking dog, in fact it was a 'Lassie' style sheepdog, looking well groomed and healthy, not doing anything particularly alarming, just walking.
My blood ran cold, and I am still unable to explain why.
Maybe there was something in the way the dog was walking, a slow, deliberate, almost arrogant tread. Padding down the steps of the path. It looked like it was going somewhere, had some previously arranged appointment. I couldn't see where it was going; the path and the gardens fell below the line of the railway track. I had some sudden nightmare image of the train stopping at an unnamed station, and the path the dog was walking would loop under the railway line and onto the platform, and the doors would open and the dog would step onto the train.
'The King of Stations' I thought with a strange uncertainty.
The dog continued walking. That same slow, somehow malevolent tread. It didn't stop to engage in the usual canine pursuits, didn't sniff about, didn't look around.
I remember the skies in the distance, the wet February skies, and the sudden splashing of raindrops on the window startling me.
The train moved on and I never saw the King of Stations again.
I have no idea why the sight of a dog walking through an expansive garden had such an effect on me. I have often wandered on it these last 13 years. It was like seeing an image in a nightmare, that alarming realisation that something is inextricably and indescribably wrong, as if the dog had been walking on its hindlegs, or it hadn't been a dog, but was a giant impossible insect, jagged spider walk, centipede segments. A pincer-shaped clattering. Claws on stone.
Nightmares in February.
I still wonder though, where the King of Stations was so obviously heading toward, and of it's previously arranged appointment, and with whom, and why.
Unanswered questions of course.
After all, it was only a dog, walking through a slightly unkempt garden on a gloomy February day.
Nothing more.